mold his followers into guerrilla units, and get them to do what the A-Detachment wanted them to do — blow up bridges, blow down power lines, set ambushes, and perform other unconventional warfare — type tasks — as well as civil affairs work aimed at winning the hearts and minds of the local people.
Soldiers who did this successfully were rewarded with the flash on their green berets. If not, they were given the opportunity to take another Q Course or they'd be sent back to the conventional forces. Of those who took the course with Stincr, most passed.
That is not the case today. Today there are more washouts, partly because standards are higher, and partly because Stiner and the other officers with him had been carefully selected for assignment to Special Forces. The Army wanted them there. Today, Special Forces is a totally volunteer force—'a three-time volunteer force,' as Stiner likes to point out, 'once to join the Army in the first place, second to get parachute-qualified, and third to join Special Forces.'
Then or now, it wasn't easy. Those who successfully completed it could be proud of the accomplishment. More important:
After the Q Course came still more training. For example…
CLANDESTINE ENTRY
There are several ways to get into a country where American soldiers are not wanted. They can come in covertly — as tourists, workers, or businessmen — or clandestinely — by submarine, boat, or aircraft — or they can drop in by parachute, which is more often than not the way it gets done.
That means Special Forces troops spend a lot of time jumping out of airplanes.
When a lot of people are dropping out of a formation of large aircraft, the first priority is getting them all down safely. Conventional airborne units jump with a standard (not maneuverable) parachute in order to minimize the risk of midair entanglements — a good way to get seriously hurt, or killed. The other priority is keeping them together in some kind of order, so thousands of soldiers are not scattered all over the countryside. This priority is handled by a technique called 'cross-loading': squads, platoons, and crews are loaded on each airplane so that they exit near where their mission is to be accomplished on the ground. This minimizes assembly time after landing and maximizes the fighting effectiveness of the units.
On a jump mission, the pilot flying the airplane is in charge overall, but the jumpmaster in the back is responsible for all the jumpers. That means he has to know where he is at all times. And he does that by communicating with the pilot, by studying the map, and by plotting checkpoints on that map — points on the ground such as rivers, bridges, or natural features that he can recognize from the air en route to the drop area.
Meanwhile, since the pilot is up in the cockpit where he can see more, he helps by calling out, 'We have crossed such and such a river,' or, 'We're approaching such and such a terrain feature.'
When you were inserting an A-Detachment into what we called denied territory (territory where we weren't welcome and where it could be dangerous to be an American soldier), you wanted the team to be able to land as close to each other as possible.
By that time, Tojo parachutes had replaced the older, simpler parachutes on which I had originally trained. In those days, the Tojo parachutes were steerable to a degree. Not steerable enough for you to aim at a point on the ground and hit it, but enough to permit the detachment to assemble in the air and then come down in the same immediate area.
The Tojos looked like your regular umbrella canopies, but they had a twenty-square-foot orifice in the back in the shape of an oval, and out of this would come thrust of about eight knots. The chute had a system of slip risers on rollers that you activated after you exited the airplane. By tilting the canopy one way or another, that allowed you to direct that thrust.
When you jumped, the slip risers were secured to your harness with forks. Once you were in the air, you pulled the forks out, and the risers were released to slip on the rollers. Then if you wanted to turn to the right, for example, you'd reach back with your right hand and grab the right rear riser, and with your left hand you'd grab the left front. Then you'd pull the right rear down and push the left front up. That would tilt the canopy so you would turn to the right. When you got turned around as far as you wanted to go, then you'd center them again and you'd straighten out…. Or you tried to, because you never really kept going in that direction.
The big problem for the jumper was orienting the chute to face the wind as he was coming in for his landing. (If a jumper came in running with the wind, he would hit the ground at the speed of the wind, plus the eight knots of thrust coming out of the chute's rear orifice.) The tendency of the parachute was to turn and run with the wind, which meant that jumpers had to work at the risers constantly to keep themselves properly oriented. Since most Special Forces jumps were at night, the best indication of wind direction was the sensation of it on a jumper's face.
If everything was going right, the team would leave the airplane as a chalk or string. The lead jumper would normally face into the wind and hold until everybody else could assemble on him by steering their parachutes. They'd try to work it so they'd be about a hundred feet apart. Fifty to a hundred feet was the normal separation distance for experienced jumpers. That way, all of the detachment had a better chance of landing close to each other and defending itself upon landing. You're vulnerable on the drop zone!
The separation distance was very important, because if chutes became entangled there was a serious risk of a canopy collapse. This was especially true of the Tojo chutes, because these chutes tended to push each other.
Each jumper also had a reserve chute that was good as long as you were more than 500 feet up. Should it become necessary to activate your reserve, you would pull the handle with your right hand while holding your left hand in front of the reserve in order to catch it when it popped out of its container. Then you worked your right hand underneath the skirt of the reserve and threw it down and to your left as hard as you could to facilitate inflation.
If this didn't work, you would have to try again. Sometimes the reserve would just go up partially inflated and wrap around the main chute, which was not fully inflated. People who get hurt jumping usually get hurt when they land. But when you get an entanglement, you're looking at real trouble.
Nowadays, reserve parachutes are much improved. These arc equipped with a cartridge that propels the canopy far enough out to give you a much greater percentage for inflation, regardless of the malfunction with your main chute.
A jumper was also taught not to look for or reach for the ground on a night parachute jump. Rather, he was trained to look for the silhouette of the tree line, which would tell him he was thirty to fifty feet from the ground and could start preparing to land by making sure he was facing into the wind and by holding his feet and knees tightly together, which allowed the jumper to roll instantly in the direction of drift, and thus minimize the risk of a broken leg.
After everyone had assembled on the lead jumper, he would aim as best he could to drop into the drop zone — there was normally not much space, maybe a small opening in the trees, a clearing perhaps two or three hundred yards wide. Once he was on the ground, the other jumpers, who by now have stacked themselves above him, could aim directly on him and could usually land within a circle of a hundred feet.
After you were down, the first order of business was defending yourself as a team, but you had to do something about the parachute, and you had two options. You could take it with you or you could bury it. You could never leave it lying where you landed, because if you did, it could be spotted either from the ground or from the air.
Of the two options, taking your parachute with you was the least desirable choice. It was a lot of extra weight and volume to lug around. The best solution was to move off the drop zone, find a secure location in a gully or wooded area, and bury it so it couldn't be found.
Either way, you wanted to get out of the drop site almost immediately, carrying the parachute. Once you had reached a concealed location, you could usually bury your parachute in about fifteen or twenty minutes.
