Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [129]
Major James then pushes through the phase administrative details and evaluation criteria. On a break from the classroom, I speak to a few of the officers about their senior group instructor.
“Don’t let that Boy Scout image fool you,” one of them tells me with a note of resignation in his voice. It seems Major James’s reputation was a pass-down item from previous classes. “The guy’s a workaholic,” another student officer says, “and a perfectionist. We’ll bust our ass every day and every weekend to get through this phase.”
The 18 Alpha curriculum for this class, Class 1-05, is broken down very precisely into blocks of instruction: five days of MOS orientation, ten days of adaptive thinking and leadership (ATL), and five days of strategic reconnaissance and direct-action analysis and planning, followed by a ten-day field training exercise, a fourteen-day foreign-internal-defense training module, thirteen days of unconventional-warfare training, and four days of advanced special operations training. The final four days of training is a full-immersion unconventional-warfare planning drill that will prepare the student captains for the extended unconventional-warfare exercise and field problem of Phase IV—the Robin Sage exercise.
The MOS orientation is a crash course in the duties and responsibilities of detachment specialties—one day for each. Assigned to Alpha Company are a cadre of experienced senior Special Forces sergeants who serve as instructors and support staff. On successive days, these veteran sergeants lecture the future detachment leaders on what their brother technical specialists can do for them and their teams. They also bring to the class an impressive array of weapons, radios, night-observation devices, cameras, laser designators, and (inert) explosive firing assemblies for hands-on training. A cadre medical sergeant accompanies the officers to the Joint Special Operations Medical Training Center for briefings and a facility orientation. By the end of the week, these captains more clearly understand the capabilities and responsibilities of the weapons, engineering, medical, and communications specialists who will be their teammates. Again and again I heard these veteran Green Beret trainers caution the officers: “These men are the subject-matter experts in their MOS, but you have to manage and supervise them, and take an interest in what they do. And remember, they know the gear and the weapons systems. The company supply sergeant will have you sign for this equipment—all of it. Ultimately, you’re the one who’ll be held accountable if something goes missing.”
The adaptive thinking and leadership (ATL) training module is a unique experience for the 18 Alpha candidates. This is a relatively new block of training and, in some ways, as difficult to put into words as it is to put into practice. The purpose of this training is to equip Special Forces officer candidates with the ability to change or modify the way they approach problems and unfamiliar situations. The ATL training also helps them to understand how others perceive them. Much of Special Forces work is about relationships—relationships with superiors, subordinates,