Free Delta Force by Charlie A. Beckwith

Evans-Smith was out there with us. “I’d like to see you in my office after this formation,” he said. I showered quickly and reported to him. Looking at me, he picked up my proposal. “Implement the damn thing. You’re right.”
    I was shocked.
    What my proposal did was articulate the principle that before a Special Forces Green Beret soldier could become a good un conventional soldier he’d first have to be a good conventional one. He had to understand what a rifle squad was all about, what a rifle platoon was supposed to do, what a rifle company needed to know. To break the rules you need to know what the rules are. You can’t be unconventional until you’re conventional first. So to get down the road where we’d teach unconventional warfare, we needed to go back to blocking and tackling—the basics. Because I had commanded rifle and weapons companies, I was appalled on arriving in Special Forces to find officers who had never commanded conventional units.
    Many people didn’t support me. “Beckwith’s reinventing the wheel. He thinks he’s back in the 82nd Airborne.” Evans-Smith understood conventional soldiering. So when I laid out squad-platoon-company attack exercises, or night withdrawals, or delaying actions, he knew what I was talking about.
    We ran rifle companies in the attack and we used live ammunition. Sergeants participating in the exercises would come up to me and say, “Sir, this is the best goddamn training we’ve ever done.” I felt great. We went through this conventional period for about three months, restructuring the training of the 7th Special Forces Group. From there we returned to unconventional training.
    I got to know almost everyone in the 7th Group by his first name, and I learned what each could or could not do. I knew who the performers were. I knew who the duds were.
    About this time Capt. George Chapman from 22 SAS came to Bragg as the exchange officer. George had been in D Squadron, and I knew him to be a switched-on officer. Some strings were pulled and George Chapman was assigned to B Company. It was comforting knowing an SAS officer was on post. Maybe the two of us could fight the battle.
    The other officers in the operations office shared my feeling that we should set up an exercise back up in the Pisgah National Forest near Hickory, North Carolina. I got George Chapmanover to the house one night. We began to talk about going up to Pisgah and running some skill station training. In this case we’d run a mountain climbing station and a communications station. Additionally, we’d teach everyone sketch-map reading. Then we agreed as a grand finale we’d have an E and E (Evade and Escape) exercise. George and I almost talked in shorthand, because we’d done these things before.
    We selected some very sharp officers and noncoms to go with us up to Pisgah; and while we were in the mountains, I received word that Colonel Evans-Smith was being replaced as CO of the 7th Group by Col. Ed Mayer. As soon as Colonel Mayer had settled into his new headquarters, he came up to Pisgah to see what we were up to. One morning he grabbed me. “Charlie, I want to see some more training. Just pick out something you want me to look over and let’s go do it.”
    That was fine. Grabbing two 12-foot sling ropes, I drove him over to Wilson Creek, high over which had been rigged a 1-man cable bridge. “Follow me, Colonel,” I said. I whipped on my Swiss seat, tied it around my waist, put the mountaineering snap link in, hooked it onto the cable, and pulled myself the full sixty feet across. I unbuckled and looked back to the other side at Colonel Mayer. He shouted over to me, “Hey, Charlie, come back over here.” “Yes, sir.” I put my rope back on and slid back across. “Now, let me tell you something,” Colonel Mayer said. “The name of the game is to train the soldiers. The