parent organization.
• Hell need to be expert in all the basic soldier skills, not only as a military practitioner but as a teacher. He also needs to be familiar with a wide range of foreign weapons and systems, and he should be expert in various forms of hand-to-hand combat.
• He needs to be reasonably proficient in the language of the country in which he's operating, and knowledgeable about the culture, political situation, and physical conditions of the people.
• Since he'll be operating behind the lines, he must be able to live a cover story and handle other aspects of the tradecraft of the secret world.
• He must have the psychological strength to handle the stresses with which he'll be faced: living on his own, the absence of support, the inevitable scrcwups of others, inevitably magnified by the absence of support.
• He must be endowed with considerable resourcefulness, flexibility, and ingenuity. More important, he must demonstrate a high level of psychological, political, and military acuity. He must be able to sell, persuade, cajole, browbeat, and convince people who dislike him, distrust him, and are doing their best to con him. His best weapon in this conflict will often be his ability to do his job so well that his adversary/friend can't help but come to trust him.
• The stakes he faces are high. He and his team represent on their own the policies of their country. They will often have to make choices on how to implement these policies with little or no guidance from above. They have to be competent to make the right choices. At the same time, their choices directly affect not only the lives of the guerrillas or partisans with whom they are working, but — perhaps more important — the lives of both 'innocent' and 'involved' civilians.
Each of these elements and skills comes more alive within a historical context — which brings us to Colonel Aaron Bank, who learned them at the same school as Singlaub, and later became one of the founders of U.S. Special Forces. Aaron Bank is on every Green Beret's shortlist of Great Ones.
AARON BANK
Aaron Bank, another Jedburgh, parachuted into the south of France in 1944 and operated in Provence, where his experiences closely mirrored Jack Singlaub's: attacks on strategic facilities and convoys, guidance and instruction of Maquis, conflicts with Communists. Following the liberation of France, Bank, who spoke passable German, and who was by then a major, was asked by his OSS superiors to create a special operations company of dissident German soldiers. Their mission — personally assigned by Bill Donovan himself — was to capture Hitler alive, in the event he and his henchmen attempted to barricade themselves in what the Nazis chose to call their National Redoubt in the mountains of Bavaria. The European war ended, the Redoubt proved to be a myth, and Bank's mission was aborted. Later, Bank was sent by the OSS to lndochina, where, among other things, he spent a pleasant day or two traveling with Ho Chi Minh, as well as several fascinating months increasing his knowledge of peoples' wars and guerrilla operations.
The OSS was disbanded in September 1945, and Bank was brought back — somewhat reluctantly — into the main body of the Army. There he sorely missed the old Jedburgh thrill of always being on the edge of the action, and the Jedburgh freedom of operating on his own behind the lines (though he knew some traditionalists were uncomfortable with giving people like him so much leash — they called it lax and unmilitary). But he was himself a good soldier, and went where he was sent without public complaints.
Far more important: He was certain the Army was losing something essential when it did not pick up the capabilities abandoned with the dissolution of the OSS Jedburgh teams and operational groups (the latter were teams of thirty men that could be split into two teams of fifteen — precursors of the twelve-man Special Forces A- Detachments). During World War II, operational groups were inserted behind the lines in Europe and Asia (primarily Burma), where they performed direct-action combat roles, such as sabotage, or linked up with guerrillas and partisans, as the Jcdburghs did.
Bank believed that the postwar Army required similar units, but ones that were even better trained, equipped, prepared, and staffed. In his view, special operations forces designed to organize, guide, and equip indigenous resistance or guerrilla movements could turn out to be as essential as any of the conventional combat arms in the U.S. arsenal.
In 1947, the CIA was formed, with a mission to re-create the intelligence operations of the OSS. It was also given a covert, special operations role, to deal with resistance movements and guerrilla organizations, but it was never comfortable with it. Even after the creation of the CIA, Bank continued to feel a strong need for the Army to take on the entire task once performed by the Special Operations branch of the OSS.
This conviction was not shared by the majority of the Army. Conventional soldiers tend to see unconventional warfare primarily as a sideshow, peripheral to the
Over the years, U.S. soldiers have been especially vulnerable to this attitude. As noted before, our army is traditionally nervous about elites. It's a citizens' army — ordinary folks. Superior soldiers and superior units are welcome, but they aren't expected to call much attention to themselves. Special forces, by their nature, call attention to themselves. A few years later, after the formation of U.S. Special Forces, assignment there was not thought to be a lucky career move.
The U.S. Army is no more friendly to oddballs and reformers than it is to elites. It is bound by rules, nervous about innovation, slow to change. Revolutionaries need not apply. Yet, as Aaron Bank knew, the Army is not a monolith. It's a very large house with hundreds of rooms. Reformers aren't exactly encouraged, but smart, politically savvy, courageous men who are patient, do their homework, and are willing to risk their careers have a shot at making their changes stick — especially if an inspired few others share the dream.
Meanwhile, during the years between the dissolution of the OSS and the outbreak of the war in Korea, Bank did his homework. Specifically, he read all he could find about unconventional warfare. What is it? How does it differ from 'conventional' war? What does history say about it? Why do we have operations called 'special'?
UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE
Unconventional warfare is hard to pin down, but over the years, a working understanding has developed. It is far from complete, and is blind to many nuances, but it's not a bad place to start:
Unconventional warfare primarily involves operations different from the conventional fires and movement of massed troops, armor, artillery, and airpower. Normally, unconventional warfare is performed by small, highly trained units, takes place behind regular lines of battle, and involves such activities as reconnaissance, sabotage, raids, raids in force, assassination, and, above all, the training and support of friendly guerrilla forces. This comes under the overall title of direct action.
One prime example of direct action was a blowtoreh-violent joint U.S./Canadian ranger unit, called the First Special Service Force (FSSF), that so distinguished itself in World War II that it has been designated an official ancestor of today's Special Forces. The FSSF was formed to make lightning raids on targets such as the Germans' heavy-water production facilities in Norway and the Romanian oil fields, but was used primarily to crack through mountain fortifications in Italy (where it took heavy losses).
But unconventional—'special' — warfare also has other facets, as every Jedburgh knew: Screwing with your enem's head is one. Helping people in trouble — with medical aid, organizational advice and counsel, assistance in building bridges and roads, and getting clean water — is another. 'Screwing with your enemy's head' is called
