Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [32]
“I’ve been here too long,” he told me. “I should have been back with 10th Group a year ago, but they held me over again. We have a big job here. We’ve got to sort these soldiers out and get them ready for Special Forces selection. We get a new group in here every month or so. I work my TACs like dogs. Hell, I work like a dog. I need to get back to my group.”
Jennings glances at his watch: 0230, or 2:30 a.m. He shrugs, knowing it will take the better part of the day to track down his two missing troopers. He thinks about going back to his office, where he might get a few hours sleep in the cot he keeps by his desk. But the class formation is at 0500, so he decides against it. Instead, he heads for the chow hall. There’s always a coffee pot on, and maybe he can talk one of the mess cooks into frying him up some eggs.
Meanwhile, the new Special Forces trainees make their way to the barracks. They’re wooden frame structures that were built in 1937—open-bay sleeping area in one end with toilets, showers, and laundry facilities at the other. At one time the structures had been modernized to provide sleeping and locker cubicles for four men. Those partitions were taken out when Special Forces Pre-SFAS Training took over the barracks. Overseas, deployed ODAs often don’t have the luxury of privacy. In Special Forces, men train like they fight, even men who have only been in the Army for a few months. In Vietnam, Captain Vernon Gillespie’s Special Forces detachment slept in open bays, just like Class 8-04. The new X-Rays shuffle through the dim light of their new home, trying to find an empty rack. In every other two or three bunks there’s a sleeping soldier. These are rollbacks—soldiers held over from the previous class. One of the new arrivals finds an empty bunk between two sleeping forms. He unceremoniously drops his load to the linoleum floor. One man grunts and rolls over. The other sits up and offers his hand.
“Hey, man, welcome to Fort Bragg. I’m Hal Eshman, a refugee from Class 7-04.”
“Um, I’m Tim Baker. Just checking in from Benning.”
Eshman glances at his watch and gives him a knowing smile. “Try to get some rest; you’re going to need it.”
Private First Class Tim Baker is six-one and a well-set, handsome twenty-two-year-old. He was a sophomore at Texas A&M and an Army ROTC student when he decided to quit collage and put in for the X-Ray program. “I always wanted to be in the Army,” he told me. “By leaving school, I just pushed up the timetable a little.” While waiting for his induction date, he worked on a horse ranch and at Circuit City. He worked hard to get in shape prior to joining the Army, and neither One Station Unit Training nor Airborne School had seriously taxed him. He’s looking forward to the challenge of Special Forces training. But now, he’s pretty well done in from the long bus ride. Baker quickly stows his gear, lays out a clean uniform for formation, and is asleep in a matter of minutes.
In a dozen other barracks, the newly arrived X-Ray soldiers are wearily making up their bunks, stowing their gear, and trying for a little sleep. In addition to the new arrivals, there are perhaps half again as many men from the previous class who have been rolled into Class 8-04. The 8-04 designator is given to this group of X-Rays as they will form the eighth Pre-SFAS class conducted in fiscal year 2004. Technically, these men are in Special Forces training, but this course, the Pre-SFAS Training, is designed to prepare them for their formal selection to the Special Forces Qualification Course. The mission of Pre-SFAS Training is to prepare X-Ray soldiers