TRIAL BY FIRE by JENNIFER G. WILLIAMS
Only one percent of Army National Guard soldiers belong to Special Forces units, yet they constitute nearly 30 percent of troops with U.S. Army Special Forces Command. The Guard operates two of the Army’s seven elite SF Groups, and drilling soldiers sometimes travel hundreds of miles each month to belong to either the 19th or 20th Group. With today’s military depending more and more on Reserve and National Guard troops in conflicts, these specially trained soldiers are seeing more than their share of action.
The 19th Group, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and with units in California, Colorado, Ohio, Rhode Island, Washington and West Virginia, primarily takes responsibility for Pacific and Central areas of operation, but currently has several hundred troops in and around Afghanistan.
In March 2002, Capt. Doug Paul found himself the senior officer in the middle of Afghanistan’s Paktia province, with about a dozen allied soldiers and roughly 800 Afghans under his command. Only a few months before, the 33-year-old donned a business suit and worked hard to bring in new accounts for Charles Schwab near Denver, Colo.
The 14-year guardsman admits it was a little overwhelming. “Talk about a change,” It was a huge responsibility,” he says. “We got there and they basically said, ‘you’re in charge now, goodbye,’ and that was it. I didn’t think they’d give a Guard guy that much responsibility so soon, but I’m glad they did.”
Capt. Paul and other members of Colorado’s 5th Battalion lived up to their high Special Forces expectations while in Afghanistan, running operations and missions alongside their active duty counterparts with little or no distinction between the two. The impressive thing about this group, says one National Guard Bureau official, is that its members were trained specifically for Southeast Asia operations, yet they went to the Middle East with little advance notice and immediately were put into battle situations, where they integrated seamlessly into the mix.
About 100 personnel from Colorado’s B Company left for the Middle East in late 2001, says Company Commander Maj. Jeff Cercy. They joined another 300 19th Group troops from West Virginia and Utah units in a composite battalion under the West-Virginia-based 2nd Battalion, and returned home late last year. The remaining 300-plus soldiers from Colorado’s 5th Battalion are currently in Afghanistan helping to, among other things, train that country’s fledgling army.
Capt. Paul says he and others from the 19th expected just to support the active duty 5th Special Forces Group when they arrived overseas last year. “We thought our teams would be broken up and our personnel would be used to backfill positions as needed,” he says. “But we ended up taking our teams intact and getting right in the thick of things.”
Once B Company was activated, they went through Fort Campbell, Ky., over to Germany, then were sent to a country neighboring Afghanistan to receive their assignments. “Once you’re there, nerves start going a little,” says Capt. Paul.
According to officials at the National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Va., two National Guardsmen from the 19th Group were subsequently killed in action. One of the two soldiers was in B Company of the 5th Battalion from Colorado, which recently returned from a nearly year-long deployment to Afghanistan.
“There were no televisions, so you’re getting first-hand reports of what’s going on, and then when you see them carrying bodies through the camp from some battle downrange, it hits you that it’s for real,” Capt. Paul says.
Most of B Company’s teams stayed busy while in Afghanistan, says MSgt. Ben Bitonel, who spent six years active duty with the 5th Special Forces Group before joining the 12th Special Forces in the Army Reserve and finally coming to the 19th Group in 1994 when the 12th Group was inactivated. “We weren’t just sitting around,” he says. “We were constantly patrolling the city [Kandahar], checking out areas where enemy cells had been reported.”
One advantage the Guard’s Special Forces troops have over their active duty counterparts is the length of time most teams have trained together, says MSgt. Bitonel, a 42-year-old nuclear plant security officer from Amarillo, Texas. “It definitely helps,” he says, explaining that when teams have been together for a while, members can anticipate what others need in stressful situations, and react more quickly.
Staff Sgt. Marco Hernandez drilled twice before being activated with B Company, having just left active duty after six years with the 7th Special Forces. He says his recent experiences on active duty benefited him as a guardsman. “Modern-day warfare is so complex,” says the Brownsville, Texas, civil engineer. “In the Guard, you try to stay relevant with equipment and terminology. Even so, some of the radio and demolition equipment we used in Afghanistan was new to a lot of guys.” Active duty troops usually get equipment months or even years before it filters down to
Guard units, officials say.
Hernandez also said he felt that coming from active duty helped prepare him for the constant alertness required of troops in Afghanistan.
“If you maintain your awareness, you’re much less likely to be involved in skirmishes,” he says. “The enemy is opportunistic; they’re pretty much waiting for you to let down your guard. The threat is always there, so you have to stay on a higher state of alert at all times.”
Cercy admits that keeping troops motivated and alert during down times was one of the tougher aspects of commanding in Afghanistan.
“You’d go for periods of time when nothing was happening, and guys would start to relax a little,” he says. “But it’s not like other wars, where you had a clear definition of who the enemy was. Taliban and al Qaeda soldiers meld back into society, and
could be anywhere.”
But commanding in the desert was actually easier than commanding part-time at drills, says Cercy.
“The difficult part was really at the beginning, getting everyone prepared to go with all the paperwork involved,” he says. “Once we were there, everyone had their specific missions and knew what they had to do. During drill, most of your time [as commander] is spent on administrative stuff, but this was real. This is what they’d all trained for.”
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