Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [184]
There is also the Phase IV Commander’s Review Board. The board composition is much the same as those in Phases I and II: company and battalion commanders, company and battalion sergeant majors, and selected cadre sergeants. Before a candidate appears before the board, his performance is addressed by his cadre team officer and cadre team sergeant. Nine-one-five had no candidates for board consideration.
“This is a tough business,” Sergeant Major Rick Martin says of the Phase IV review board’s work, but it was my sense that he was talking about the Q-Course and Special Forces work in general. We talk during a break in the board deliberations, and are joined by Group Command Sergeant Major Van Atkins. He didn’t sit on the board, but was there to observe.
“To get to our level—the Special Forces detachment level—you have to get to the Robin Sage level,” Atkins says. “If our students don’t get in character and play this game, it’s hard to play the game for real on deployment. If these students can’t drop into character with their G chiefs and the other role players, or even with the G soldiers, what’re they going to do with their platoon of Afghan militia? We can’t leave Afghanistan or Iraq until the Afghans and the Iraqis can do the job, and they can’t do the job until we train them to a point where they can take over. A lot of people think the tip of the spear for Special Forces is the business end of an M4 or kicking in a door. That’s the easy part. For us, the tip of the spear is squatting by a fire with your Afghan company commander, sharing a little tobacco, and planning the next day’s training. Or out there on the range with a group of Iraqi policemen who just drove down IED alley to get to the range to train with you. Some guys like to kick doors; hell, I like to kick doors—who doesn’t? But for us, breaking bread around the fire with the locals is more important. And it serves two purposes. One, you may learn which door to kick—where the really bad guys are. And two, maybe in time we can train them to kick the door so we don’t have to even do that. Being a good Special Forces soldier is all about training them to do our job. And, as soon as we train them to do the job, we can get the conventional guys off the checkpoints and Humvee patrols, and out of harm’s way so they can go home as well.
“Most of us in the senior cadre, like the sergeant major here, have been doing this for a long time,” the group command sergeant major adds. As I stand and talk with these two veterans, I remind myself that between them there’s almost sixty years of experience. “We worked in the shadows before 9/11 and now, perhaps, not so much in the shadows. We’ve fought more than a few wars, and been immersed in foreign civilian and military cultures around the world. Now our job is to prepare the next generation to carry on. Their fight will probably be more difficult than ours and certainly more important. But as we assess and train these young soldiers, we must never forget how young and stupid we once were. That light Sergeant Major Martin speaks about so often didn’t go on for some of us until we reached our Special Forces groups.”
“We have to go back to work,” Sergeant Major Martin says. “Good luck with your book, Mister Couch.” He and Atkins return to the classroom where the phase review board is being held. As I watch them go, I’m reminded of Fredric March’s line in The Bridges at Toko-Ri. March’s character, a Navy admiral, in referring to the heroic performance of his carrier pilots, wondered admiringly, “Where do we find such men?” Indeed, where.
Phase IV Class 2-05 began with 308 candidates. Two hundred and eighty-four graduated from the phase. Fourteen were recycled