Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [22]
There’s another SF group that resides at Fort Bragg and operates under the commanding general of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, usually shortened to the acronym SWCS. It’s the training group, the 1st Special Warfare Training Group. This is the group that is responsible for training Special Forces soldiers. In addition to the Q-Course, the 1st SWTG also conducts Advanced Special Operations Training, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) School, language training, and training for the Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations units. In the course of writing this book, I was under the close supervision and direction of the 1st SWTG. Before we get to the various phases of training, a word or two about the Special Forces training cadres. Special Forces training, like all SOF training, is part teaching, part testing, and part mentoring. The effect of these trainers on young men who want to become Green Berets is incalculable. They’re the role models, and the new men watch them carefully. They want to be just like them. The quality and success of the force is in the hands of these Special Forces trainers. Currently, this training staff has never been better. Prior to 9/11, there were only a small number of Special Forces soldiers with combat experience. And duty at the training command was not all that desirable. Most veteran Special Forces sergeants wanted to stay with their detachments and remain in deployment rotation. We were not at war, yet they didn’t want to be away from their operational team if there was a chance for an active deployment.
Today, things are different. Almost all of the training cadre are combat veterans; they’ve been there and done that. Today, deployment rotations are active and dangerous, and they can keep an operator away from home 75 percent of the time. But even the best of the best need time away from the fight. Now, experienced cadre are coming to SWCS after their third or fourth combat rotation. They bring with them current operational experience and knowledge. More than that, they bring a passion for all those things a Special Forces warrior must master—attention to detail, total focus on the mission, cross-cultural awareness, and a sense of duty to their nation and their teammates. And when they go back to the fight, they will go into combat with the men they have trained. This experience, the commitment to excellence, and the inherent role of Special Forces as teachers have produced a superb faculty of Special Forces trainers. Perhaps never in the history of Special Forces has the critical need for top-quality Special Forces operators been met with a more capable and qualified training cadre. I feel privileged for the opportunity to observe their training and write about it.
Before you can train men for this special work, you have to find men—men who are special before they even get to this training. The selection process is critical. For every five men who enter Special Forces training, only about one of them will ever wear a Green Beret. From the perspective of training resources, the higher the quality of the recruit, the fewer men you have to put in the pipeline to get the quality and quantity of Special Forces warriors the groups need. The aptitude and intelligence tests help, but they can only do so much. The tests don’t always predict if a man can readily adapt to foreign cultures and play well with others. And there has yet to be a reliable test for heart and determination. Cast the net too narrowly, and we miss out on some good men. Cast it too widely, and the attrition rates drive up the cost of this already expensive training. I came away from Special Forces training with the sense that quality must never be sacrificed for quantity, though as you will see later in this text, that issue can be hotly debated. So where do these men come from? How does the Army find them? Why do they volunteer for this training?