Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [185]
Author’s Note: Like all phases of Special Forces training, Phase IV and Robin Sage are continuously being evaluated, refined, and upgraded. There was a recent pilot Phase IV in which Phase III graduates were first sent to language school, then to Phase IV. The language was Arabic, and the Robin Sage–like exercise was shifted to the Army’s National Training Center in California. There, the students worked with Arabic-speaking role players during their unconventional-warfare field exercise. The results of this pilot program will be the basis for language-centric Robin Sage training.
COMBAT REHEARSAL. Iraqi soldiers from the Albu Nimr tribe, working with an SF ODA in western Iraq, practice room-clearing drills in preparation for a combat mission.
EPILOGUE:
AFTER-ACTION REVIEW
With the completion of Phase IV Class 2-05, most of the successful candidates will begin their final journey toward the Green Beret. A very few, like Captain Miguel Santos, will take a few days off and head for their assigned Special Forces group. In the case of Captain Santos, it’s the 7th Group based at Fort Bragg. Because he’s met the requirements of the Q-Course for survival and language training, he’ll don his beret ahead of his former Phase IV classmates. For the others, there’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) School and Special Operations Language Training. Before my time at Fort Bragg and Camp Mackall, there were two graduation ceremonies for Special Forces students, one that awarded the Green Beret and another that awarded the “tab.” Most of us are familiar with the beret, but what’s perhaps most coveted by these chosen soldiers is the tab—a small arc of cloth that rides just under, and conforms to, the left shoulder seam of the soldier’s uniform. It simply says, “Special Forces.” That tab will snuggle concentrically above their airborne tab, or, for soldiers like Miguel Santos, above their Ranger and airborne tabs.
Prior to the beginning of 2005, Phase IV graduates were awarded their Green Beret at a formal dinner ceremony and their tab at a more modest celebration when they completed SERE and language training. That’s all changed. As mentioned in my note at the end of chapter 5, SERE training is now a part of Phase II and the Special Forces tactics portion of the Q-Course. More recently, language training is now being taught throughout all phases of the course, with special emphasis in Phase IV. There are some distinct advantages to these changes in that both survival skills and language skills are now part of the new Phase V and Robin Sage. The Pinelanders and the guerrilla chiefs can now, when practical, interact with the students in a foreign language. Language becomes a learn-it, use-it skill, just like communications for the 18 Echos and trauma care for the 18 Deltas. Moreover, it allows for a soldier to formally complete the Special Forces Qualification Course with the completion of Robin Sage. He can then be recognized in an appropriate combined ceremony that awards his beret and tab before sending him on to his group for duty. Those like Captain Santos, because they completed the Q-Course at odd times and in small numbers, often missed proper recognition of this milestone in their career.
“It’d have been nice,” he told me, “but I have no complaints. I got to spend a little extra time with my family, and I got to a group sooner than most of the others. I have two new roles now; I’m a father and a Special Forces detachment leader. Life can’t get much better.”
I have elected not to deal at length with SERE or language training. SERE training is a nineteen-day Level C Code of Conduct course followed by a five-day Peacetime Governmental Detention/Hostage Detention course. Level C is a course for warriors “whose military role entails a relatively high risk of capture or makes them vulnerable to greater-than-average exploitation by a captor.” In addition to survival and evasion training by some of the finest live-off-the-land