Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [193]
The run back to Al Asad was hot, dusty, and uneventful. The following day, I was scheduled to visit another ODA near the Syrian border. This particular ODA was having a great deal of operational success and was considered one of the premier Special Forces detachments in Iraq. But the helo was delayed until late in the day and would not return until the following evening, too late for me to make the return connection back to Balad. That night, after the AOB contingent had left, I got to talking with one of the warrant officers at the AOB and learned that his sport was judo.
“There was a guy I met in the Q-Course,” I told him, “who was a black belt and professional martial artist. You might know him; his name is Tom Kendall.”
“Tom Kendall!” the warrant blurted. “He’s here at Al Asad.” Moments later we were in one of the AOB’s battered Land Rovers and headed across the base for the compound. As the reader may recall, I met then Specialist (now Staff Sergeant) Kendall in Phase I during selection and was able to track him pretty much through Phase IV. He was now assigned to a special SF unit, one normally reserved for experienced soldiers, but Kendall had been an exceptional performer throughout the Q-Course. He was, as I was to learn, the only first-rotation 18 X-Ray to be assigned to this special team. We found him working out at the base gym. I hadn’t seen him in over a year. It was like visiting one of your sons on the job a year out of college. The open, easygoing face was the same, but I’d never seen him with hair—no beard, but lots of hair.
“So, tell me, what’s been happening to you since I last saw you?”
“Spanish language school, SERE training, and then to my group. Because of my team’s mission, I got a priority slot for the Special Forces Advanced Reconnaissance, Target Analysis, and Exploitation Course. Our team has only been here a short while, and we’ve spent a lot of time in Baghdad, training the Iraqi counterterror units. We’ve been up here at Al Asad for some direct-action work, but most of the targets that would fit our force seem to be going to other units. So we’re headed back to Baghdad in a few days, back to training the Iraqis.”
“Do you like it?”
“For the most part.” Kendall had always struck me as someone who wanted to take whatever he was doing to the next level and then some. I could see he was a little frustrated. “If things don’t pick up this rotation,” he said with an easy grin, “then maybe they will on the next one.” I’d heard this from others in Special Forces. They were obligated to operate in battle spaces controlled by conventional-force commanders, which meant they often felt underutilized. But that’s the nature of this kind of warrior, as much as it is the nature of any conventional-force restrictions.
“Think this is something you might want to do for a career?”
“I don’t know,” he said seriously. “I’m taking a wait-and-see attitude. My daughter starts kindergarten about the time I have to make that decision. For me, that’s a big factor. We’ll see when the time comes—maybe yes, maybe no.” I wished him a safe tour, and we headed back across the base to the AOB compound.
The only other familiar face I saw on my journey was a senior commo sergeant on of the teams who was a cadre sergeant at Camp Mackall during my Phase IV. Time permitting, I’d have liked to have visited other teams. As it was, the next day I was on a C-130 back to Balad. I had a full day and night at Balad—time enough for me to bang out most of this epilogue and undergo two mortar attacks, one of them landing a round just outside the Balad special operations compound. Cheap at twice the price: I got to go on an operation with a Special Forces ODA, and I got to visit with Tom Kendall. Then it was a C-17 from Balad to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and the long trip back to Idaho. I arrived home tired, thankful, and feeling very, very blessed. Few