Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [127]
Bonner quickly goes over the history of warrant officers in Special Forces. Warrant officers have been serving as assistant detachment commanders since 1993. Warrant officers are drawn from the ranks. Typically, a capable Special Forces soldier will move along a career path that leads to becoming an ODA team sergeant—a sergeant major and the senior enlisted man on the team. A few of these superior-performing Green Berets will elect not to take the team sergeant route and take the path that will lead to their becoming commissioned as a warrant officer.
“Your warrant officer can do a lot of things for you,” Chief Bonner tells the new 18 Alpha candidates. “He’s a wealth of experience—experience that ranges from your budget to your training. And above all, remember where this guy is coming from. He has enlisted history and possibly enlisted history with the team and the team sergeant. Like you and the team sergeant, he is a type A personality and wants what’s best for the team. You, the team sergeant, and the warrant are the top three on the ODA. What the team does, how it trains, and any problems on the team are going to be handled by the three of you. There may be times when you disagree and have to go behind closed doors to work it out. That’s OK. As team leaders, you are the final authority and will make the final decisions, but don’t overlook the fact that you may have as much as forty years experience between that warrant and that team sergeant. Get to know these guys; break bread with them. Listen to them and treat them with respect.”
Chief Bonner goes on in detail about the duties and responsibilities of the assistant detachment leader. “And one more thought before I let you go. As a detachment leader, you’re the boss—the final authority on that ODA. But keep in mind that when dealing with your warrant and your team sergeant, it’s their team. You will come and go, but in most cases, they will remain with the team. Good luck to all of you.”
Chief Warrant Officer Bonner releases them, and the officers head for their team rooms. There they will meet the key instructors for their Phase III training—perhaps the most important individuals in their entire Special Forces Q-Course training: their two small-group instructors.
“One of the most important things I do here as the battalion commander,” Lieutenant Colonel Robert Sandoz told me, “is to find and select the right officers and noncommissioned officers to serve as small instructors for officer training. My command sergeant major and I personally interview each of them, and not all that I interview are right for the job. There was a time in Special Forces when we got less than the best here for instructor duty. That was true for all phases of training. But that’s no longer the case. To build the force properly, you have to bring your best back here to train the new men, especially the new officers. The good ones naturally want to stay in operational rotation. We’re at war, and they want to keep their guns in the fight. My job is to convince our best officers and NCOs that they can contribute to the fight by coming back here and passing their experience along to the new detachment leaders.”
The officers are broken down into ODA-sized groups for their phase training. In my group, along with Captain Miguel Santos and Captain Matt Anderson, there are two other infantry officers, one of them coming from the 75th Ranger Regiment. There is a field artillery officer, an engineer,