7 Over the years, Ranger School has changed to meet the needs and challenges of the times. Long before the Gulf War, a desert phase, conducted at Fort Bliss, Texas, was added to the program of instruction. It greatly benefited the young leaders who fought in Operation DESERT STORM.
8 The French Army continued to advise the Laotian Army even after Laotian independence—though unenthusiastically. The absence of serious French interest in the enterprise led to U.S. Special Forces involvement.
9 One of his most legendary missions occurred in November 1970, when Simons led a secret commando attack on a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp called Son Tay Prison, deep within North Vietnam a few miles west of Hanoi, with the aim of rescuing better than a hundred American POWs. Fifty-six volunteer SF operators had been gathered from the 6th and 7th Special Forces Groups and from the Special Warfare Center to take part in the raid. They prepared and trained intensively for six months (on, for example, actual-scale mock-ups of the prison), flew into Udorn Air Base in Thailand, and then helicoptered into North Vietnam on the night of November 20th and 21st. The raid went off beautifully, but for one thing: The POWs had been moved some time before. In spite of the failure to achieve its overall aim, however, the Son Tay Raid has joined the very select list of Special Forces defining moments. It’s there because it shows what they can do. It also shows the cost of bad intelligence. SF troops would pay that cost many other times.
10 A statue to Dick Meadows, another legendary Special Forces soldier, was also recently placed at Fort Bragg, not far from Simons’s.
11 The CIA and Special Forces worked very closely in Laos, and later in the early days of the war in South Vietnam. The association is natural. From time to time, Special Forces have been an action arm of the Agency. On the other hand, the association has raised suspicions. As has been noted here, some in the “big” Army, for instance, fear that Special Forces are not “real” Army but some kind of rogue or private Army. The association with the CIA does not ease those fears.
12 In his book To Move a Nation, Roger Hilsman reports that Bill Yarborough was considered for this job but was too junior and too connected with unconventional operations to gain Army backing.
13 When Carl Stiner arrived in Vietnam a few years later, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) was the main threat—not the VC.
14 Tear gas. When the drums hit the ground, they would burst and spread the powdery gas. It would remain inert until disturbed.
15 MIKE Forces were handpicked, specially trained, quick-reaction forces modeled along the lines of U.S. Army Ranger units. Each unit had about fifteen hundred men and an advisory detachment of twelve to fifteen U.S. and Australian Special Forces members. Each field force/corps area had its own MIKE Force. The first one to be trained was comprosed of Chinese Nungs, recruited for their fighting ability, but due to the shortage of Nung recruits, practically all other MIKE Forces were manned by volunteers from Vietnamese Army Ranger units.
16 For a fuller description of MACVSOG activities, see the recent and excellent The Secret War Against Hanoi, by Richard H. Schultz, Jr., HarperCollins, 1999.
17 The Secret War Against Hanoi, p. 240.
18 Operational tempo—A measure of the total demands placed on a military unit, typically the number of days per year the unit is deployed away from its home base or station.
19 In 1975, the Cambodians captured the freighter Mayaguez and held its crew hostage. In response, the United States mounted a major rescue operation, made up of a Navy carrier task force, Marines, and Navy and Air Force special operations forces. Two hundred Marines, plus helicopters, made an assault on Koh Tang Island, off the Cambodian coast, where the hostages were being held. The assault failed—as a result of intelligence, communications, and command failures—and the Marines had to be withdrawn, after losing fifteen KIA, three MIA, and most of their helicopters.
20 More accurately, he was proposing to resurrect STRICOM, which had been REDCOM’s predecessor in the ’70s and had had some contingency/strike responsibilities in places like Africa. When REDCOM was created on the bones of STRICOM, these capabilities were removed.
21 Bartholomew returned to Washington to become a principal deputy in the State Department. Rumsfeld is now the Secretary of Defense.
22 The base on Cyprus is operated by a friendly nation that is sensitive to our using it for counterterror missions. We have therefore not identified the base or the friendly power.
23 His outstanding work caught the attention of the CIA Director, who asked us to give him to the Agency so he could do for the nation what he had done for Special Forces. though I hated to lose him, I couldn’t refuse.
24 Fast response combat operations—smaller scaled than a theater war.
25 U.S. Army Forces Command (FOHSCOM) was responsible for the readiness of all CONUS-based Army forces. XVIII Airborne Corps was included in his command.
26 When officially activated for combat, this would be the warfighting headquarters, and would include the XVIII Airborne Corps, all forces stationed in Panama, and everything else that would eventually be included in what became known as Operation JUST CAUSE.
27 A message personally written by the commander reflecting his views and priorities on the conduct of an operation, and serving as guidance to subordinate commanders and planners for developing their detailed tactical plans.
28 Bombing that aims to barely miss a target.
29 Burney’s brigade had just arrived in country; two battalions were being positioned at Rio Hato when the “Ma Bell” program got under way.
30 Guitan remained in the Nunciatore and eventually left. He is believed to be in Peru.
31 A slang term heard mostly in Korea: someone who runs around doing menial work for some organization—“an errand boy.”
32 In those days, there weren’t enough GPS satellites to cover the world; and that meant there were periods without GPS coverage.
33 In making budgets for their SOF forces in the past, the services had allocated—“cross-walked”—monies to SOF programs as they saw lit. In most cases, they “shorted” them, keeping the majority of approved funds for conventional programs.
34 An “airhead” is the airborne equivalent of a “beachhead.”
Tom Clancy, Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces
(Series: # )
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