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By Root 1731 0

on the stopwatch. They are timed on four- and six-mile runs and four- and six-mile rucksack marches, the latter under sixty-five pounds of gear. There are teamwork drills with logs—telephone poles, actually—and calisthenic drills with rifles. And there’s Nasty Nick. Nasty Nick, named in honor of Colonel Rowe, is the obstacle course at Camp Mackall, and I can honestly say I’ve never seen a more robust and challenging course. The candidates crawl through water, under barbed wire, walk on elevated logs, climb ropes, hand swing from horizontal ladders, and negotiate cargo nets. Much of the course is high enough above ground that a fall would likely cause injury. At each obstacle, there’s a cadre sergeant noting the roster number of those students who fail to properly handle an obstacle. “You failed to properly negotiate that obstacle, soldier,” I heard many times. “You can try it again, or you can move on to the next obstacle.” Sometimes a candidate would trot back for another try; other times, he would simply move on to the next obstacle. Only those with superior athletic skills or previous climbing experience were able to successfully manage all the obstacles.

At Camp Mackall and Phase I SFAS, there’s the ongoing question of standards—what is and what is not the standard. From my observation of other SOF training, standards are usually in the form of run times, obstacle course times, swim times, marksmanship, and scores on written tests. Standards also take the form of an acceptable level of performance in leadership roles during field training exercises. Sometimes a standard is subjective and at the discretion of the grading cadre. In most cases, these standards are, in one form or another, sacrosanct; you either meet the standard or you are gone. In Special Forces training, there are minimum standards, but as I was to learn in the weeks and months ahead, exceptions could be and were made to these standards. And these exceptions were not a lowering of the bar. This “moving standard,” for want of a better term, has to do with evaluating the whole man. The criteria has to do with what each individual brings to the table in contributing to the Special Forces mission. Some standards, such as those that relate to character and weapons safety, are very sharply drawn. Others, not so. If a candidate’s run or ruck march times are not quite up to the minimums but his leadership and language abilities are exceptional, these are taken into consideration. His attitude and adaptability are also considered. And above all, there is the question of whether he gets on well with others—is he a people person? The question of standards is always a difficult one, both in the evaluation and the application. What if a young soldier has great potential, but lacks maturity? What if a promising candidate works diligently on a single weakness, shows dramatic improvement, but still doesn’t meet the minimum posted standard. The phase cadres wrestle with these questions throughout the Q-Course. None deal with the issue of standards more openly and contentiously than the SFAS cadre. They are evaluators, but they are also the gatekeepers.

On the Friday of their first week, the candidates are out on short land-navigation exercises around Camp Mackall. They take their classroom work out into the field and conduct day and night compass courses in mild terrain. After these three-hour day and night navigation exercises, they’re back in the classrooms to talk about land-navigation technique—reading elevation and relief on their contour maps, compass intersections and resections, and route planning. The methodology is that after some instruction, they’re put in the field for short periods to test their skills. Then they come back in the classroom to talk about what worked and what didn’t. By and large, the X-Ray candidates are proficient at the basics of land navigation. The veteran soldiers struggle to some degree, depending on their experience and aptitude.

One of the training aids right next to the Rowe Training Facility is the mini stakes compass course.