Delta Force (16 page)

I went up to talk to the 10th Special Forces Group. Its commander, Othar Shalikashvilli, who had earlier recommended me to General DePuy, again couldn't have been more helpful. On a Saturday morning, he stood in front of his own officers and senior noncoms and said: “The job that Colonel Beckwith has to do is a lot more important than the job we have to do. I would encourage anyone who has the desire to try out for this unit.” On the basis of this presentation and an old affiliation with the 10th that Country had, we got nearly sixty people signed up to run through our next selection course, which was scheduled for January 1978.

Because its terrain was more rugged and resembled more closely the SAS's Brecon Beacons, Delta eventually moved its selection course to Camp Dawson, tucked into the harsh mountains of West Virginia. Having not yet received permission to make this move, the second selection course was again run through the forested hills and valleys of Uwharrie. Out of the almost sixty volunteers who participated, Delta selected five recruits.

Everyone worked eighteen-hour days, seven-day weeks. The paperwork never ended. Everyone chipped in—Country,
Buckshot, Chuck Odorizzi, Curt Hurst, and Dick Potter. Every evening before bedtime I'd write memos and messages. There was a lot of justifying that needed to be done. Lots of letters replying to General Mackmull, and the various support divisions that were doing business with us needed to be written. We wanted 180 people from Special Forces to participate in our second selection process. These were people who'd rung our bell, met our qualifications, and volunteered—180. Mackmull blinked, coughed, and said, “No way!”

I tried to get Rangers to try out. I knew Joe Stringham; he'd previously run classes through the Ranger School. Initially, I wanted him to come to Delta as my deputy. When I learned he was being considered to command the 1st Ranger Battalion—no one wants to be someone's deputy if he has the opportunity to command—I immediately fell off. I was told that the generals at FORSCOM, particularly Kaplan, appreciated my taking the hook out of Joe, and it eased some of the tension we were having with the Rangers. However, General Meloy continued to monitor very closely both Ranger battalions. Consequently, absolutely no Rangers ran through the second selection course.

Meloy also contacted Mackmull, and some of their message traffic inadvertently found its way to our headquarters. It appeared to me both commanders felt that if they completely cooperated with Delta it would cause chaos in the Ranger and Special Forces communities. It was decided, therefore, that Delta could talk to a handful of potential volunteers, but only those who were on a list prepared by the Rangers and Special Forces. General Mackmull allowed Delta to talk only to people with certain skills—demolition and weapons, for example. Under no circumstances, though, could we talk to medics or noncoms skilled in communications, operations, or intelligence. Experience had taught that the demolition and weapons skills were the easiest to acquire. Conversely, the medical, communications, operations, and intelligence skills were the most difficult and took the most training. It was apparent then that if Delta's staff recruited only those soldiers who appeared on Mackmull's list, they would not necessarily be talking to the
best men available. General Mackmull was not entirely responsible himself for this policy, as he was receiving advice from his staff and the two group commanders. In civilian business it would be called “restraint of trade.” Delta was being hamstrung and it couldn't survive that way. We stated our dissatisfaction with the system time and time again. However, the Special Forces list continued to be our only access to potential Green Beret volunteers. On the other hand, no Rangers, whatsoever, showed up.

Mackmull's small group of men, incorporated into the second selection course, did very badly. Absolutely no one on the list got through. Mackmull could not understand this. “I'm not sure they really wanted to be there,” I told him.

Water temperature at Bragg began getting warmer and warmer. People kept beating down my door. “Colonel, I can't get over here. My unit won't let me.” It got to the point that during grievance periods they were going to General Mackmull directly to complain to him. When this didn't change the situation, some of the men wrote to Department of the Army.

General Mackmull began to get nervous, and I thought rightly so. I became more and more unpopular, not only with my boss, but with the rest of the Special Forces community. “He's one of us, but now he wants to go his own way.”

General Mackmull earmarked a lieutenant colonel from his personnel section to work with Delta. His name was Whitey Blumfield. He prescreened applicants for us, but when our people went over for interviews they'd find men who didn't even meet the prerequisites. We wasted a lot of time working with a nonresponsive mechanism. The pressure continued to build: Mackmull got angry with Blumfield; Blumfield got angry with Delta; Delta got angry with Mackmull and Blumfield. Friction and bad blood were the order of the day. Life at the JFK became tough for everyone who had any dealings with Delta.

It was at this point that General Mackmull began to throw some weight Blue Light's way, began to give them everything he was capable of giving. Mountel had gained momentum. His line was, “Delta really belongs in Special Forces but Beckwith
doesn't want it there. Blue Light is in the community. Come out and look at what we're doing.” They had been training hard and were motivated. Mountel had one problem, though. Blue Light did not own its money. No funds had been allocated directly to it. Whatever it had, Mountel had to take out of the hide of 5th Special Forces Group; and since he also commanded this unit, he was caught between a rock and a hard place. If Mountel needed more money, he had to go to the JFK Center to see if they would cough it up. This meant, with only one pot to dip into, that in order to strengthen one unit Mackmull had to weaken another. This, as you can imagine, caused problems.

Momentum began slowly to work in Delta's direction. It was imperceptible at first. But movement was there. It was then a matter of continuing to roll forward and of staying in front.

TWENTY

OF ALL THE
papers we wrote during this period, none was more important than the one we called “The Robert Redford Paper.” It justified everything we wanted to do. A few weeks earlier, the Department of Defense (DOD) had gone over to Department of the Army: “You've told us about Delta Force, but what we can't figure out is why it's going to take so long to put together. What if something adverse happens to the U.S., some incident? We're concerned.” They couldn't understand why it should take two years to select, train, and assess combat veterans who had received maximum ratings on their efficiency reports and who were already highly trained and in excellent physical condition. How come they needed two more years to be ready? General Rogers's office had called me in early February. They, too, were now concerned because Delta was also spending big bucks. The Army, pushed by DOD, had wanted to know if we could go faster.

Early on, when I returned to England to update my SAS experience, in late 1976, Brigadier John Watts had made it very clear to me that it was going to take eighteen months to build a squadron. Recruiting, assessing, selecting, running four or five courses to assure we received the best men, then individual training and unit training; it couldn't be done in less than a year and a half. “But, Charlie, don't tell anyone that,” Watts warned. “Tell them it's going to take two years. If you do it earlier, then that's all to the good. But don't box yourself
in. Build in some running room and whatever you do don't let anyone talk you out of this.”

Now Delta had to respond to the Chief of Staff's office: we had to justify why it would take two years to build Delta. I didn't fall off. I got hold of Major Buckshot and he drafted what we called our “Robert Redford Paper.”

In it he outlined why Delta's four-phase assessment/selection process was required to select operational personnel and why the reliance on past records, or on a less thorough assessment/selection process, was inadequate. Johnny Watts told me they didn't know why their selection process worked—only that it did and had for twenty-five years.

The paper articulated historical precedents for this kind of training. At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, at the moment the shooting—which ultimately led to the deaths of a number of Israeli athletes—began, two of the German sharpshooters on the scene, who had terrorists in their sights, failed to fire their weapons. Their marksmanship had been assessed. Their resolve had not. Five years later, in Somalia, when the Germans assaulted the hijacked airliner on the ground at Mogadishu, all four terrorists were taken down without the loss of a single hostage. Ulrich Wegener, the commander of GSG-9, had no question about the resolve of his men. They had been thoroughly assessed before being selected. I knew of another instance. In Vietnam, a five-man Australian SAS patrol tracked an enemy patrol for five days through enemy territory. They eventually attacked and destroyed a North Vietnamese command post. The SAS had not brought those men into the regiment because they were good trackers—the training came later. They were brought into the regiment because, through the SAS selection course, they had proven they were dedicated, resourceful, trainable.

Stress was patterned after that used by 22 SAS and was the most misunderstood. On the surface it appeared to be little more than a test of physical strength and stamina. The volunteers were asked to perform a series of individual, timed, land-navigation exercises that were conducted in the mountains. The length of each increased daily from ten kilometers
to seventy-four kilometers, with equipment increasing in weight from fifty pounds to seventy pounds. By the time the seventy-four-kilometer, or forty-mile, exercise began, the candidates had reached a common level of physical exhaustion. They were totally pooped. We'd used up their reserves. The endurance march revealed clearly those candidates who had character—real determination, self-discipline, and self-sacrifice—and those who did not. The seventy-four-kilometer, independently executed march across rugged mountain terrain had to be completed in twenty hours. The man was given the coordinates of a rendezvous point some eight to twelve kilometers distant. He was not told on reaching the RV how many more remained, what route to take, or whether he was going too slow. He was not encouraged or discouraged, advised or harassed. Simply told, “Your next RV is map coordinate…” It was a matter of seeing what each individual could do. Around the twelfth hour, if the pace was sufficient to meet the requirement, the man would be, in the medical sense of the term, almost totally exhausted. He began to look for excuses to quit, to slow down, even to hope he would injure himself. Anything to allow him to stop. It was then, after the twelfth hour, that many men quit, or rested too long, or slowed to a pace that prohibited them from meeting the time requirement. A few others had the sense of purpose, the courage, the will, the guts to reach down inside themselves for that intangible trait that enabled them to carry on. Without that ability, the man did not succeed. This was, perhaps, a crude method of evaluation, but it was the one on which the British SAS had relied for twenty-five years.

Yes, it would take two years to find individuals who were unusually inquisitive, sensitive, resourceful, and imaginative. Two years to find people who could be at times extremely patient and at other times extremely aggressive; who could operate under unusually restrictive constraints at one moment and be audacious, freethinking individuals the next; operate with orders and operate without them; be able to lead and to follow; withstand prolonged physical and mental activity and endure extended monotony. It would take two years, our paper
clearly and convincingly informed General Rogers. We were building a foundation that would pay off down the road. Department of the Army forwarded our “Robert Redford Paper” to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Delta received no further pressure to push on faster than the time frame that had been proposed.