Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [95]
As the board, which is similar to that of the SFAS selection board, sorts through Class 1-05, there’s a growing number of candidates gathering in the holding area outside the classroom where the board conducts its deliberations. When they are finished, eighteen candidates join PFC Wagner in the reassessment group. There’s an even mix of X-Rays and veteran soldiers. Only one of them is an officer. For those eighteen, their chances of continuing in Special Forces training are still alive. The board also relieves nineteen candidates from Phase II. They are no longer members of Class 1-05 and are bused back to Fort Bragg. Two candidates with minor medical problems are recommended for recycle in Phase II Class 2-05.
“This is a tough cut,” Sergeant Major Frank Zorn tells me after the midcourse board adjourned. “A lot of dreams end at the Phase II mid-course board. For the men in the reevaluation squad, it’s their last chance. They’re still having problems with small-unit tactics, and it would be wrong to send them forward. But each has shown us something, and all of them have the desire. They’ve come a long way, and we owe them another look before we make a final decision. For most, it’s a proficiency issue. The guys with bad attitudes or who have character issues or who are physically weak have gone away. For the most part, these guys’re giving it their best shot, but they’re just not cutting it.”
I notice one soldier with Wagner and the others who has a large coil of climbing rope draped over his torso. One end is tied to his belt and the other to his rifle. I ask Zorn about this. He chuckles and shakes his head.
“That kid is something of a story.”
“Sergeant Major, that’s why I’m here—for the stories.”
“That’s Specialist Scott. We saw him at the board during assessment and selection. He was having problems then, and he’s still having them. He’s prone to get a little too far from his rifle, and the rope is to remind him to stay close to his gun. He’s also having problems in the field. But he has a talent, and we’d like to keep him if at all possible. Scott came to us from Germany; he was a truck driver, and he’s fluent in German. At the SFAS board, his personal statement said he spoke Russian. One of the board members was a Russian speaker, and he and Scott carried on a lively conversation in Russian. Scott also claimed he spoke Arabic, and he did—almost without an accent. I ask him how it was he spoke Arabic. ‘When I was in Germany,’ he told the board, ‘I watched a lot of TV.’ So I asked, what’s that got to do with it? ‘Sergeant Major,’ he says, ‘I watched Al Jazeera.’”
Two senior instructors are assigned to the retraining detachment along with an experienced contractor. The detachment is formed up in a single retraining ODA and given a crash course in basic small-unit tactics. After a few hours in the classroom, the ODA returns to the field for tactical reevaluation.
“This was one of the toughest assignments I’ve had since I became an instructor,” one of the retraining cadre sergeants told me of the assignment. “We had to give each of them a chance to succeed, to prove they had sufficient command of small-unit tactics to remain in the training pipeline. They had to show us they can lead well and they can follow well. When it was over, they were exhausted and I was exhausted.”
The other student ODAs—including ODA 811, with its remaining twelve soldiers—start preparing for their final field training exercise. “This training exercise is designed to sharpen their skills and to challenge them in different tactical scenarios,” Jan explains. “At this stage of the game, those who remain are pretty much good to go unless they really screw up or are careless about safety. We put a lot of time and effort into this final exercise, and we ask the student ODAs to, within the constraints of the exercise, play it for real—to improvise and use their imagination to get the job done. When a Special Forces ODA is on their game in a tactical environment, they’re like jazz musicians. They know the basics, and they know