Let's get going TEXAS!
Are there not enough "MEN" in all of Texas to fill a Special Forces unit?
Team Sergeant
May 17, 2008, 9:02AM
'Masochists' compete to join Special Forces in Texas
By CHRIS VAUGHN
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
SAN ANTONIO — Thirteen men surrendered a beautiful spring weekend to physically punish themselves.
The objective: to join Texas' most exclusive military club.
They came to a pocket of the rolling Hill Country from different places and backgrounds — former Marines, college students, small-business owners, police officers — in the hopes of one day wearing a beret, green in color.
Trust these men, with bleeding blisters soaking their boots and shoulders in need of a tube of Icy Hot and very little chance of actually succeeding in their goal: John Wayne got his beret the easy way.
"Masochists," said Andres, a 32-year-old who works for a wireless company in Austin and made his judgment after a grueling, hours-long ruck march.
Every month, though, more men like him are showing up for these tryouts to join the Army Special Forces, "silver wings upon their chest," as the Ballad of the Green Berets tells it.
"As our soldiers have started training and as we're becoming more visible around Texas, we're getting more interest," said Bill, the sergeant major of Charlie Company, 5th Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group.
(Special Forces soldiers fall under U.S. Special Operations Command and tend to be very private. The Star-Telegram agreed to use only first names.)
Texas, home to more than 80,000 active-duty soldiers and tens of thousands Army reservists and National Guardsmen, has not had a Special Forces unit in close to 15 years.
But in September, the Texas National Guard stood up its first-ever Special Forces unit, ending a years-long campaign to convince National Guard headquarters to put a company in the Lone Star State.
The Guard eventually prevailed, gaining Charlie Company out of Colorado and relocating it to San Antonio as part of a restructuring and expansion of Special Forces nationwide.
But staffing a Special Forces unit is not a matter of grabbing infantrymen, tank drivers and engineers here and there. It's the most selective part of the Army — about 75 percent of applicants do not make it through — and building an A-team takes time.
The company's first drill, in October, drew seven men, all but one of them officers.
Thirty-one qualified Special Forces soldiers showed up for drill weekend in April, a faster-than-anticipated rate of growth that officials said proves their point that Texas can support a unit.
Many of the soldiers lived in Texas but drilled with out-of-state companies, and still more had gotten out of the military and are now rejoining. In seven months, the company is already at 37 percent strength. Special Forces companies are manned at 84, considerably smaller than conventional companies.
"We put ourselves on a two-year track to be at 100 percent," said Tim, a major from Denton who commands Charlie Company and works for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Like the rest of the Army, Special Forces are under unprecedented pressure from repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and normal deployments to other parts of the world, plus the explosion in the U.S. government's use of security contractors such as Blackwater and Triple Canopy, which pay two to three times what the Army pays.
Of all the special operators in the military — Navy SEALs and Air Force pararescue jumpers, for instance — the Green Berets have the most varied responsibilities.
They are involved in conventional combat and unconventional warfare, typically working closely with the host nations' militaries. They are intimately involved in the hunt for terrorist leaders worldwide and reconnaissance of troubled areas, and they are required to be fluent in at least one foreign language.
Most of their work is done quietly in places such as Colombia, Ecuador, the Philippines, Algeria and Nigeria, talking to illiterate conscripts about infantry tactics, international relief workers about water projects and diplomats about the security situation.
Continued:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/.../5787343.html#