Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [68]
“I’d heard that,” I replied.
“It was well before my time, but he was here. He was a poor candidate and quit before he even got to the Star course, but he surfaced big-time on the psych profiles as a highly unsuitable candidate. Special Forces soldiers often have a great deal of responsibility on deployment. We have to make sure they have the mental and moral equipment as well as physical and professional tools to do this job.”
For the next two days, the candidates will be fully immersed in the team events. The previous two weeks have reduced Phase I Class 8-04 to a group of individual candidates who’ve physically endured the phase up to this point and who’ve shown themselves smart enough to negotiate the land-navigation courses. Now these exhausted men will be evaluated in a team environment. They are segregated into teams, and each team is assigned a phase cadre sergeant. The cadre sergeant gives them a general set of instructions regarding the task before them, and monitors the team as they execute the task. These tasks come in the form of physically challenging, team-centric movements that put a premium on leadership, organization, and teamwork.
My team is given the initial task of moving an old jeep trailer, with only one wheel, from the starting point at the Rowe Training Facility to a distant location on Camp Mackall. To assist them, the teams are given lashing materials, twelve-foot metal pipe sections, and a hundred-foot length of rope. At the start time, the team sets about rigging the crippled trailer using the pipes to set up a counterbalance for the one-wheeled vehicle and crosspieces for pushing bars. They use the rope to fashion a makeshift harness for members of the team. When rigged and balanced on the single wheel, the team begins to move this part wheelbarrow, part unicycle toward a set of coordinates across Camp Mackall. The cadre sergeant designates one of the enlisted men as the team leader. Throughout this and subsequent evolutions, the team leader is always an enlisted soldier, and each enlisted soldier takes his turn as team leader. The trailer is rigged and moved under the direction of the assigned team leader.
My team leaves the training facility about 0800 and begins to make its way along the sandy roads that border the Camp Mackall Army Airfield. The team I’m following includes a big candidate who played football at Iowa, a former professional snowboarder, a tall redhead whose father is a career navy man, a Pennsylvanian who worked in the family farm implement business, and a Coloradan in his early thirties who owned a shop that sold mountain-climbing equipment.
Nursing this unwieldy vehicle through the soft sandy roads takes teamwork—some men pull, some push, some lift, and some work to balance the trailer. Most of the jobs are very taxing; the others, not so much. It’s the job of the team leader to assign and rotate his men, give orders, and make adjustments, always seeking to get the trailer to its destination within the proscribed time. He must use his men carefully—men who are very tired and who’ll be on their feet for this and other team events for the next two days. For these enlisted team leaders, it may be the first time they’ve had to weigh the welfare of their men against the needs of the mission. If they become Green Berets, they’ll do this routinely and in harm’s way. Halfway to the first destination, the cadre sergeant chooses a new team leader, makes a few suggestions about the movement of the trailer, and off we go. The new team leader assigns duties to his men and shouts encouragement as they bend to the task. The trailer