Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [4]
Only one writer has ever been allowed the privilege to attend the modern version of this training start to finish. I’m honored to be that writer, albeit I only audited the course. The real thing is for the brave, the bold, and the young. And the talented. My special operations training took place almost forty years ago. In my day, I was a good special operations trainee and graduated first in my SEAL training class, so I believe that I’d have been up to the physical challenge of Special Forces training. But I have to ask myself, would I have been able to master the skill set of these cross-cultural warriors? I was good behind the gun, but would I have been good enough to work alongside and live with others, and teach them to be good behind the gun?
In early January 2004, I received permission from the U.S. Army to do this book, subject to the approval of the U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Army Special Operations Command. These commands had the final say since they are, after all, engaged in fighting a war. I was then directed to the commanding general of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Major General Geoffrey Lambert. During our initial meeting, General Lambert made it clear to me, and to his subordinate component commanders, that he wanted me to tell the story of Special Forces training and that I was to have full access to all training venues, students, and training cadres.
I am no stranger to Fort Bragg; in the past, I’ve lectured to the officer candidates during their Special Forces training. As a young CIA case officer, I attended the Army Military Free-Fall (HALO) School as well as several heavy and special weapons training courses at Bragg. This time I was taken out to Camp Mackall, west of Fort Bragg and just south of Pinehurst and Southern Pines, where the heavy lifting of Special Forces training is done. There’s a world of difference, as I was to learn, between the manicured golf courses in these affluent communities and the wooded sand hills of Camp Mackall. Yet I’ve never been so warmly received or welcomed at a military facility.
Camp Mackall is a fifty-six-thousand-acre military reservation forty miles west of Fort Bragg and the city of Fayetteville. During the Second World War, Camp Mackall was the home of the airborne, where upwards of seventy thousand troops lived and trained for war. The brave men who parachuted and landed in gliders behind the German lines in Normandy prepared for D-day at Camp Mackall. All that remains from those days are the hundreds of concrete foundations that supported the tar-paper barracks and training facilities, and the Mackall Army Airfield, which is still in use. The 82nd Airborne Division, located at Fort Bragg, and other military units still use Camp Mackall for occasional training, but the only permanent training compound at Mackall is the Colonel Nick Rowe Special Forces Training Facility. This is where the serious business of selecting and training Green Berets takes place.
I arrived at Camp Mackall on 1 August 2004, along with my wife, Julia, and our border collie Jenny. We were allowed the use of one of the few residential structures on Camp Mackall. It was a small log