Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [150]
The phase begins with the classroom work, learning about air operations and clandestine airborne infiltration into a denied area. During Robin Sage and often on deployment, ODA teams are resupplied from the air. The information comes to them by PowerPoint and a stack of Army and Air Force publications and field manuals. They learn about the rigging and preparation that go into preparing pallets and personnel for a tactical airdrop. There are protocols for marking a drop zone, signaling, authentication, surveillance, and bundle recovery. Communications with the aircraft are very important. The engineering sergeants are responsible for preparing and rigging bundles for aerial resupply and for parceling out the dropped supplies and packing these supplies off the drop zone. Class 2-05 learns about the management of airborne resupply using U.S. and allied aircraft. They also learn to deal with Third World situations in which pilots may not have GPS, nav aids, night-vision goggles, or reliable aircraft. Every airborne drop has to be planned, and there are the mathematical calculations that go with determining the release point and the impact point. Bottom line, a Special Forces soldier has to know how to set up and manage aerial resupply from any type of aircraft, under any weather conditions, in any terrain, anytime, anywhere. Considerations can range from the location of nearby power lines to the pilot’s skill and ego.
After two days of classes, 915 builds two pallets with twelve cases of MREs each. That afternoon the team parachutes, with full equipment, into the Luzon Drop Zone at Camp Mackall. Later that evening, they prepare the DZ for aerial resupply and guide in the aircraft, a twin-engined Casa, that drops their bundle. Staff Sergeant Olin directs the preparation of the DZ for a daylight drop. Five other members of 915 form the recovery team. They break down the bundle and pack the boxes of MREs and the parachute off the drop zone. The chow, parachute, and pallet are loaded on a truck that will take the gear back to the Rowe Training Facility. That night, Sergeant Dan Barstow is in charge of the aerial resupply. He directs 915 as they rig the drop zone for a night drop.
After the air-operations block of training, 915 and the other Phase IV ODAs return to the compound to begin three days and evenings of classes on unconventional warfare. This classroom work is tailored to helping them to support and manage the Pineland resistance forces in the Robin Sage exercise. For the officers, much of this is familiar from Phase III. For the enlisted soldiers, it’s a cram course in guerrilla warfare. These three days of Insurgency 101 in a crowded classroom could have been terribly dull and laborious had it not been for the talented delivery of the cadre sergeant instructors and civilian contractors who make these presentations. Most are well punctuated by historical and anecdotal examples. Much of the material focuses on the three key components of an insurgency. The first are the guerrillas, or freedom fighters, the action arm of the insurgency and the overt irregular/ paramilitary forces the student ODA will be most concerned with. Interestingly, when they are on our side, we usually refer to them as guerrillas or partisans or freedom fighters. When they, the men in the hills, oppose a government we support, we call them insurgents. The second is the underground. The underground is the clandestine, cellular organization that conducts subversion,