Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [36]
“These are all good kids, and many of them are great kids,” Sergeant First Class Donovan Tess tells me. We’re in his squad bay, and all around us students are mopping floors, preparing gear, folding uniforms, and polishing boots. “But they all have to get along and work together. There are three showers, two washers, two dryers. This barracks and each individual’s gear and bunk have to be up to standard or the whole squad will be called to task. I may miss one of them sloughing off; the other members of their squad won’t. The ones who look out only for themselves or who consistently put their welfare over others won’t make it in Special Forces. Neither will someone who doesn’t pull his own weight. These kids’re smart enough or they wouldn’t be here. But many have never been in a situation where they had to look out for the other guy. To make it in Special Forces, they all have to get along, and they have to learn to pull together. The graded evolutions are individual efforts, but here in the barracks, they live as a team.”
Tess has been in the Army for eighteen years, but in Special Forces for only eight. Before coming to the training command, he was with 10th Group and deployed to the Republic of Georgia, Slovenia, Germany, and Iraq. He grew up in Phoenix and came into the Army right out of high school.
“These men have to forget about where they came from and what they were doing before they got here. That’s all old business. Their total focus should be on getting themselves and their buddies ready for the next evolution. They should always be thinking, ‘What can I do better?’ and ‘Who needs my help?’ For the most part, those who belong here make it, and those who don’t go away. What breaks your heart is when some kid tries his level best and is always there for his teammates, but he simply doesn’t have the physical tools or situational awareness to do the work. The TACs will always go the extra mile for that kind of soldier, but if this isn’t his thing, we want him gone; we want to get him to someplace in the Army where he can make a contribution. This kind of soldiering’s not for everyone.”
Sergeant Tess ambles around the squad bay, helping some with their gear, dropping others for a few push-ups, and kidding with most of them.
“Miller, you call that a properly stowed locker? It’s a sewer. Drop.” He pulls all the uniforms and gear from the locker and dumps them on the floor. “OK, Miller, recover. And the rest of you, gather around. This is how it’s done.” Tess begins to pull uniforms from the pile, shake them out, fold them, and stow them in the locker. He takes Miller’s rucksack, dumps it out, and repacks it in an orderly manner. Soon Miller’s locker and equipment are a picture of organization and neatness. “Last time, Miller. I’m not your mama. I want all your gear and clothing looking like this, or we’ll be going on a little trip to guess where?”
“Uh, the swamp, Sergeant Tess?”
“That’s right, the swamp. I’ll be back in an hour or so, and I want to see some good-looking lockers and bunks.” I follow Tess out to ask about the swamp. We walk around the building to a shallow forty-foot square of standing, brackish water. It was ugly and looked like the surface of a cesspool.
“That’s the swamp. We used to put ’em all in it as soon as they got off the bus to let them know they were in for a different kind of training than they experienced at Fort Benning. But that was really over the top, and, quite honestly, sent the wrong message. These men’re volunteers, and we need to respect that. We’re here to teach these guys, not harass them. Now it’s more of a remedial thing. Every class has a personality. If the class begins to break down and has real problems, then we run them through the muck to refocus them on their training here and their duty to their squad mates. It may not look like it, but this class is doing pretty well. It’s a matter of effort. We keep a certain amount of pressure on