Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces

  There was also plenty to enjoy up in the mountains (they call it hiking these days; we called it climbing)—cave formations, waterfalls, spectacular views; and the copperheads were an ever-present but exciting challenge. Nearby Norris Lake always beckoned for swimming, boating, and fishing. It was a beautiful lake, nestled in the mountains, narrow, deep, and huge, with lots of jags and branches running up into the hollows—more than eight hundred miles of shoreline. We’d go fishing on a Friday or Saturday night, build a big fire, and sit there and fish until the next day. In season we went hunting.

  My dad was a superb hunter, and he always owned a pair of splendid bird dogs. From the time I was old enough to recognize what a shotgun was for, I wanted to go with him. He started letting me do it about the time I started to help him work the farm. Not that I was old enough or big enough to carry a gun or shoot. But I could stalk thickets and brush piles, and flush birds out; and 1 could learn weapon safety from him, as well as all his hunting tricks.

  I was thirteen when I was given my first shotgun. It was a single shot, and I couldn’t load it until a dog was actually pointing. That way I’d have a chance at hitting the bird, but wasn’t otherwise dangerous. If I missed the bird, my dad still had time to shoot it himself.

  When I was older and had learned everything he felt I needed to know about hunting, I was allowed out on my own. In high school, a bunch of my friends and I would always go out on Thanksgiving Day, rain or shine, for our annual quail hunt (for safety purposes, there were never more than four in a single hunting party). We’d be out all day, without stopping to cat. And then our mothers would put out the big turkey meal in the evening.

  It was a great place to be young. We found adventure in everything we did. If it wasn’t there already, we made it that way. We went out and found things to do that gave us enjoyment, and learned to see the good and the purpose in whatever we were doing—even the heavy, manual farm labor. This meant it was pretty hard to be bored and frustrated.

  I always enjoyed what I was doing and took a lot of satisfaction from it. And this has stayed with me. I live and farm there still. Something just clicked in me, I guess. I left just after college, and spent most of my life away. But I had to go home and make whatever contribution I could for what my community had given me in my younger days.

  Looking back on those days, I feel very fortunate to have been reared in a home where discipline, love, respect, and adherence to principles were the standards by which we were raised.

  The most powerful influence on me, without a doubt, was my father. He was tough—hard as the concrete he used to work—but fair, and expected every person to pull his own weight. He was a man of high principles, and required us kids to conform to them. Yet he was not rigid. He cared deeply for everyone in his family, and wanted us all to be (in the words of the old Army ad line) “all we could be.” He would have made a good first sergeant.

  It’s worth mentioning some of his principles that have stayed with me and that I have tried to apply in my own life: Always respect other people, unless they give you reason not to.

  Don’t run with sheep-killing dogs, unless you are willing to suffer the consequences of being caught up with them.

  Anything that is worth doing is worth doing right. Nothing good ever comes without hard work.

  Don’t ever accept less of yourself than you are capable of.

  You’ve got to set the example for anybody who works for you. Don’t expect them to do anything you wouldn’t do first. (For us kids, he expected us to do more work than any man he could hire.)

  Look beyond the end of your nose, and work toward what you want to become.

  My father had few illusions. He never wanted us to follow in his foot-steps and bend our backs to a lifetime of brutally tough construction and endless farm work. He understood what education would give us (though he himself only got through eighth grade). The older we grew, the harder he and my mother pressed us to get the best education we could. “You don’t want to do what I’m doing for the rest of your life,” he kept telling us. “Your back won’t hold out forever, and you will never be able to give your children what they need to prepare them to support their families.” I will never forget his charge when he and my mom dropped me off at college (it was my first time there; I’d never visited the place before I was accepted). He said: “Boy, get an education, or don’t come back.”

  His advice bore fruit. All but one of the children ended up with college degrees, and most went on for advanced degrees.6

  There was another big education motivator in those days. Before the war, college was not in the cards for most young men from Appalachian Tennessee. But the postwar period saw GI Bill—trained doctors, lawyers, and other professionals bringing their expertise back to our Eastern Tennessee communities, and this brought us all long-term benefits. Those who didn’t seek college were still able to take advantage of the technical skills and training opportunities they had gained in the army and other armed services to become skilled tradespeople—electricians, mechanics, plumbers, and the like.

  It was amazing to see how all this skill and expertise began to grow our community. And it wasn’t hard to apply these lessons to ourselves. So my objective was to go directly into college after high school. I applied to two or three, and all of them accepted me.

  In those days, we didn’t have high school counselors to steer us, and in any case, I didn’t know much except agriculture. At the same time I was strongly aware of the obligation to serve my country after college (and felt it would be better to go in as a commissioned officer). For those reasons I elected to go to Tennessee Polytechnic Institute, called Tennessee Tech, which was the only one of the three colleges I applied to that offered both a degree in agriculture and an ROTC program. Tennessee Tech was in Cookeville, Tennessee, cighty-two miles north of Nashville.

  Though Tech offered only Army ROTC, that was not a problem for me, since I never considered another service. I guess it was partly because of the influence of the boys I saw going off to the Army and fighting the war, and partly because I grew up outdoors in the country with lots of friends. The Army offered a continuation of that life. And truth was, I didn’t know that much about the other services.

  On my graduation day, June 30, 1958, I was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry. This was a reserve commission; I was offered a regular army commission two years later. Though my mom and two of my brothers attended the graduation and commissioning ceremonies, there was no time for celebration, because I had to report for active duty the same day. I set out within the hour for Fort Benning (near Columbus, in southwestern Georgia), and drove without stopping, so I could report in beforc midnight without being AWOL.

  Fort Benning is a vast military base, primarily infantry—and called “The Home of the Infantry.” Housed there are the Infantry School, the Airborne School, the Ranger School, the basic and the advanced officer courses, as well as officer candidate school. Many combat brigades were stationed at Benning, as was the 10th Mountain Division, which had just returned from Germany. I was initially assigned there as an assistant platoon leader.

  My first duties were as “pit” officer (running the targets up and down) for a known-distance rifle range, and officer in charge of a 106mm recoilless rifle range. And at least two afternoons a week the officers taught general education subjects to the NCOs to help them get their high school GEDs.

  I loved the Army from day one—even though my jobs then weren’t especially challenging, and I hardly had much responsibility. I liked everything about it: the people, the structured environment, the training, the responsibility, and the opportunity for growth by using my own talents, capabilities, and initiative.

  After approximately six months, I took the Basic Officers Course, followed by Jump School and Ranger School. All were completed within eighteen months.

  The Basic Course took up where the ROTC program left off. We mastered more advanced skills and developed technical competence i
n leadership, weapons, and tactical subjects that qualified us to lead an infantry platoon in combat operations. For example, we studied map reading in much greater detail than we had in ROTC; we learned how to effectively employ every weapon that was organic to a platoon; we learned patrolling and tactics at the platoon level, integration of fires, and how infantry should function with armor.

  My other big learning experience in those early days at Fort Benning was meeting Sue, who became my wife.

  Understand that just as Fort Benning is called the Home of the Infantry, Columbus is known as the mother-in-law of the infantry, because so many Columbus girls marry the new second lieutenants that come into town. It certainly turned out that way for me.

  When I drove into Fort Benning on that Friday night after 1 graduated from college, it was 10:00 P.M. I signed in at Division Headquarters, was assigned a BOQ room, and was instructed to return by 9:00 A.M. Monday.

  I had no idea what to do for the rest of the weekend, and I had never been to Fort Benning.

  The next morning, as I was looking for a place to eat, I ran into First Lieutenant Jim Smith, who was also living in the BOQ and who knew a good place to go for breakfast—if I had a set of wheels (he had wrecked his car). What we could do, he said, was go eat breakfast, and then in the afternoon drive over to the officers’ club, where his girlfriend and one of her friends were waiting for him, and we could all go out together.

  That sounded pretty good to me. So we did that. The friend turned out to be Sue.

  Jim Smith’s girlfriend, Ann Scott, met us at the Officers’ Club swimming pool. After I was introduced, Ann pointed to her friend, Sue, who was in the swimming pool, and called out to her to come over. After the introductions, the next order of business was the evening’s activities. “Wouldn’t you all like to go to dinner with us tonight?” Jim asked Suc and me.

  In view of Sue’s good looks and her bright and pleasant personality, I certainly welcomed the opportunity, but I knew that his motivation was my means of transportation. I think Sue might have been a little leery, but we were both caught in a bind with the two of them standing there looking so plaintively at us. Suc and I sort of shrugged and said okay, and then we all went to dinner that night at the Patton House on Fort Benning.

  Over dinner, I learned that Sue was nineteen, employed as a secretary to the president and vice president of Burnham Van Service, and enrolled in night classes at the Columbus Center of the University of Georgia. It also turned out she was the reigning “Miss Georgia Air Reserve” (somebody else had obviously thought she was as good-looking as I did).

  In her family were five sisters and a brother (almost the exact reverse of mine). Her brother, the oldest of the children, had fought in World War II and then become a lineman with the Georgia Power Company, where he was tragically electrocuted. Her dad worked for Bibb Manufacturing Company (a textile mill in Columbus), and her mother kept the home.

  From the beginning, I liked Sue a lot, and as I got to know her family, I liked them also. I’m not so sure that she thought as much of me as I did of her, but we started dating occasionally, and I continued to do my thing, soldiering as a young lieutenant.

  Meanwhile, I became friends with a service station owner named Kirby Smith, who also owned a pair of modified stock cars. Although he did not drive himself, Kirby sponsored his mechanic in stock car racing. I liked racing and would go with them on the weekends, and after a time I started driving myself. We would usually go to Valdosta, Georgia, and race there on a Friday night, then on to Montgomery, Alabama, and race Saturday night, then to Atlanta for Sunday night racing, and then back to Columbus in time for me to stand reveille on Monday morning.

  I liked the racing—the challenge, the competition, the risk, and living on the edge. I guess I have always been that way—and the Army has afforded similar satisfaction in most of my assignments.

  Sue and I dated for eighteen months, and in August 1959, we became engaged. Three months later, we were married in her church, the Porter Memorial Baptist Church in Columbus, Georgia. Proposing to Sue, though, put an end to my racing career. When I popped the question, she gave me an ultimatum. “It’s either your racing, or me,” she said. “You make the choice.” It didn’t take me long to sort out my priorities.

  As I look back over the forty-one years of our marriage, Sue has proved the best companion and wife any man could ask for—my closest friend and toughest critic. She has been a role-model mother, raising two outstanding daughters, while taking care of the family and wifely responsibilities in every command I held. Marrying her was the soundest decision I ever made.

  JUMPING OUT OF AIRPLANES

  Clancy: Jump and Ranger Schools came after the Basic Course. For Stiner, Jump School came almost immediately. He graduated from the Basic Course on Friday, had Saturday off, reported to Jump School on Sunday, and started training on Monday morning.

  Parachute and Ranger training are tough! Few people enjoy jumping out of airplanes. The risk is always there, rushing up at you; parachutes don’t always open; and even when they do open correctly, bones can break when a trooper lands.

  However, it’s also not much fun to spend a couple of hard weeks in a swamp in summer or in the mountains in winter, with little or no sleep, having to live off the land when food is not available while conducting training as stressful and physically demanding as real combat. Ranger experience puts a soldier up against the absolute limits of mind and body.

  On the other hand, soldiers who successfully make it through these ordeals have a right to feel good about themselves. The best soldiers are usually Airborne- and Ranger-qualified; and Airborne or Ranger units are usually thought of as elite.

  All of this notwithstanding, in the 1960s every officer had to go through either Jump or Ranger School, and officers who expected to be assigned to a combat unit, whether infantry, armor, or artillery, had to go through both. The Army expected officers to be versatile. It wasn’t enough to serve effectively in their own technical specialties; officers had to have all the skills necessary to lead a unit in combat, and the broader perspective that gave. Even officers who weren’t in combat branches, such as quartermaster, ordnance, or signal, were expected to handle specialized combat-oriented tasks and challenges.

  Every officer served at least two years in a combat unit before going to the branch in which he was commissioned, and to the basic officer qualification course in that branch. For those in noncombat branches, this was not only valuable experience in itself, but helped them later in serving and supporting the combat units.

  This is no longer the practice in the Army, partly because the shortage of officers has meant that the services can no longer afford the luxury, and partly because of the way the Army has evolved over time. Now the Army is run the way business is, where most people are specialists. Forty years ago, everyone outside of the technical branches was seen as a generalist. The perception was that it didn’t matter who you were on the battlefield, you were a better leader if you had a core of basic officer skills that enabled you to take care of your men under all circumstances.

  In most ways, today’s Army is a better-prepared and more effective force than the Army of forty years ago, but the discontinuation of combat unit training and experience for all officers is a real loss.

  THE objective of Jump School has always been to teach a soldier how to put on his parachute and equipment properly, then how to exit an airplane, descend, and land safely. Mental alertness, confidence, and the ability to react automatically to just about anything that might happen during a jump are critical.

  The course normally took four weeks, but the Army was testing to see if compression could save training time and money without affecting performance, so for the 1958 class of infantry lieutenants, the course was compressed to three weeks. The instructors were all handpicked NCOs, all master jumpers—and they were professional and tough.

  The program of instruction consisted of a ground week, tower week, and jump week—
all punctuated with an extensive physical training program and a very stringent personal inspection each morning, especially during the first two weeks.

  Following the in-ranks inspection by the Black Hats (the Airborne cadre), daily training started with a one-hour session of rigorous physical training: push-ups, squat jumps, sit-ups, pull-ups, deep knee bends, squat thrusts, and a three-mile run in combat boots. The Black Hats’ favorite technique for teaching alertness was to bark: “Hit it!” This could be directed at an individual or at the whole group. The instant anyone heard the words, he immediately had to hop up about six inches off the ground and go into the correct position for exiting an aircraft—that is, chin on chest, forearms and fingers extended as if grasping the reserve parachute, elbows held tight to the sides, and counting: “one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand,” representing the seconds it takes a parachute to open. Once in the exit position, he’d start jumping up and down with knees bent and toes pointed to the ground. Anyone who was slow to react and/or did not do any of this correctly could expect to hear “Give me twenty,” or however many push-ups the Black Hat wanted to lay on.

  Their favored “weapon” for ensuring conformity and mental alertness was push-ups or squat jumps for every infraction or mistake in training—no matter who committed it—so on any given day, a trainee could find himself doing two hundred or more extra push-ups.

  During the first week, Stiner and the others were taught how to perform parachute landing falls from any direction (left front, right front, left side, right side, left rear, right rear). They started by standing on the ground in the sawdust pit and hopping up and then falling in whichever direction they were told to. After they’d mastered this skill from the ground—maybe a hundred or more parachute landing falls (PLFs)—they moved up to a PLF platform, a wooden structure five feet off the ground. They continued falling from there until they were proficient in every kind of PLF.