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By Root 1655 0

The most common of these that relate to the land-nav problems are students walking on the roads or found sleeping on the nav course. The first relates to cheating, and a second offense will lead to involuntary withdrawal. These are called, appropriately enough, roadkills. The second’s a safety issue. A man found sleeping on the course or on the roads while waiting for pickup after expiration of the course time limit will be asked to leave. The sleeping issue may seem harsh, as these men are very tired. Sometimes, just to sit down is to doze off. But the 18X Pre-SFAS cadre take safety issues very seriously. Putting this many students out in the woods at night, in rough terrain by themselves, requires strict accountability. None of the cadre, especially Captain Shields and First Sergeant Carter, rest easy until all men are accounted for. If someone has fallen asleep out there and goes missing, training stops and an all-out effort is made to find and recover the missing student.

“One of the best students in my squad sat down on the road to await recovery and fell asleep,” Sergeant Loften told me. “He was a super kid; his dad is a Green Beret. I went to the first sergeant and the captain to try to do something for him, but he’s gone. He’ll have to go to another Army unit for a while and try us again later. But rules are rules. The poor guy was in tears. Hell, I was almost in tears. We told him to do his time in the 82nd Airborne and come back. I hope he does. He’s just the kind of kid we want in Special Forces.”

While the business of land navigation continues, there are other evolutions and training taking place. If the students are not in the field on a nav problem, there are ruck marches under full pack, squad runs, and the obstacle course. All students are timed on a five-mile run for which the cutoff time is forty minutes. The fastest member of Class 8-04 came across the line right at thirty-two minutes. On the second to the last day, the class is again graded on the Army Physical Fitness Test. A few of the students are able to improve their scores, but not many. The three and a half weeks of training have worn them down, and most score lower than they did on the first test. With the final APFT, time is running out for Class 8-04. Collectively, there are two basic avenues open to the remaining class members—those who have not left training by the voluntary- or involuntary-withdrawal route. They can be sent forward to the Special Forces Assessment and Selection phase, or they can be recycled.

The burden of deciding who will and who will not be advanced to SFAS and Phase I of the Q-Course falls to Captain Shields and First Sergeant Carter, and to the recycle board. Before we talk about the function of the recycle board, there is another evaluation criterion that comes into play. It’s called the peer review, or, simply, peers. Midway through the phase and during the last week, the students in each training squad evaluate and rank their peers. Each man rates the members of his squad from top to bottom—one through sixteen or eighteen or however many are in his squad. He puts in a chit on the top man, a blue half-sheet of paper, saying why he’s number one or best suited for Special Forces. He also puts in one on the bottom man, and says why he feels this man is last or least suited. These are pink-colored slips. The peer ratings, by average rank and any first or last chits, become part of each man’s package.

“Each class is a little different,” First Sergeant Carter told me, “but after the last APFT, we complete each man’s package and we take a look at them. We have no quotas or numbers, but we do have a clear definition of our role. In the Pre-SFAS course, we prepare; we do not select. If this class is like previous classes, of those still in training, about half of those who came to us four weeks ago will have earned their ticket to selection outright. Of those on their second time through the 18X Pre-SFAS course, about half of them will have met the standard, and while it took them two tries, they have made the grade and,