¨...to Thrive In Ambiguous Environments ...¨

[Basenshukai]

NOTE: The following reflects the opinions of the author alone and does not reflect the opinions of anyone in the Department of Defense, Department of the Army, or anyone working for the US Government in any official capacity. All the names and locations have been changed, or modified, for security reasons.

“… TO THRIVE IN AMBIGUOUS ENVIRONMENTS …�

Time: 1835 (Local); 2335 (Zulu)
Place: Base camp somewhere in one of the largest cocaine producing areas in South America

I was sitting in our operations center reading the latest intelligence updates when Kirk, our sole medical sergeant in the detachment, halfway opened the team house door and scanned the interior until he saw me. "Sir"�, he said as I raised my eyes from the one-inch stack of paper, “… we are having a problem with the Host Nation (HN) guys “ you better come see this."� We were training in a base camp that served as a special operations school for the HN army. The camp is a carbon copy of a Vietnam-style firebase. There are concentric circles of defense that included an anti-tank ditch, barbed wire, anti-personnel mines and clear fields of fire for inter-locking machinegun fire from numerous bunkers. There is a heavily reinforced communications bunker and a helicopter-landing zone (HLZ). There were also several administrative buildings and even an NCO / Officer club. The backside of the base camp rested on a major riverbank and the HN naval infantry forces covered that area. Numerous 60, 81, and 120 mm mortars also protected the large base camp.

Our mission was to train a conventional light infantry organization using the special operations school as our base of operations. This was an uneasy marriage for the HN force commanders. Their military is replete with parochialism and inter-service rivalries. Our Pre-Deployment Site Survey (PDSS) had identified this issue long before our deployment. It was not a good idea to place a poorly equipped, minimally trained HN conventional unit within the confines of a specially selected, specially trained, and well equipped HN force that views the other with institutionally bred disdain and elitism. The base camp commander was only grudgingly supporting the idea of lodging a US Army Special Forces team who was to train anyone else but his own elite soldiers (elite being a relative term, of course). Also, there was the problem of deconflicting the use of ranges and training areas. The function of the school is to train their special forces and not some conventional unit. The US Embassy insisted on our presence in the area, however, and we made the best of it. The team sergeant aggressively developed and pursued a challenging training program while I worked the military politics between adversarial HN senior officers. The rest of the men executed the plan.

The base camp commander placed many restrictions to our movement in the area. We essentially bent, or broke most of the restrictions. We didn’t do it to spite them, or to stir further controversy, but to be able to complete our mission. The most critical rule – one that we took very seriously – was the restriction of movement on, or off the base camp to the hours between 0600 and 1800 hours. The reason for the time restriction is security. The area was only recently liberated from leftist guerrilla control. Interestingly, this control was wrested away not by national army forces, but by a rival right wing insurgent group. Thus, the area is still considered a high risk and we certainly treated it that way. The control of the area is pivotal towards the ownership of the lucrative cocaine production in this region. In other respects, control of the area is also symbolic of dominance in this large section of the country.

Initially, the HN base camp commander wanted to be consulted before the detachment moved anywhere, or executed any training. He wanted to know how many men from the detachment where in the base camp and wanted to be the approving authority for any movement we made on, or off of his camp – at any time. He wanted control of the storage of our ammunition and our vehicles. If we left the vehicles in his camp, he wanted the keys. He did this with a SEAL team that had been training the naval infantry near the river north of the base camp. When they left for a while, they handed him the keys to their SUVs. Weeks later it was found out that the SUVs were being used as personal vehicles for the HN officers. The SEALs quickly recovered their keys and passed this lesson on to any other American commandos that trained in the area.


(to be continued)

[Basenshukai]

As detachment commander I was in the uneasy position of balancing rapport building with our own need for operational autonomy. The top American military authority in the US Embassy personally ensured that the base camp commander understood that we were not to be prevented from accomplishing our mission. As a compromise, they both agreed to the base camp commander’s camp rules, which included many of the restrictions he wanted to place on us. Indirectly, I was bound to follow-through with the agreement while, at the same time, removing any obstacles my men faced. The US Army mission commander for the US Embassy, a senior SF officer, put it this way. “Captain, you are heading towards another Robin Sage and the base camp commander is the G-Chief.�

There was an indigenous village less than a kilometer from the base camp. The native people saw the general population, which is derived from the amalgamation between native people, Europeans and shaped by the Bolivarian Revolution, as oppressors and occupiers of their own land. Many natives had been displaced by nearly 50 years of insurgent warfare. The general population, to include the military, saw the indigenous people as ungrateful and lazy. Historically, there has been a very strained relationship between the local military at the base camp and the indigenous people in the nearby village.

Sometime around 1800 hrs (Local) a distraught native man brought his bleeding seven-year old son to the main gate of the base camp. Apparently, the young boy had fallen and sustained an injury to his head that exposed about a two-inch diameter circle of skull. The base camp commander had left the area for the capital city some days earlier but had left a standing order that no one was to be allowed in the base after 1800 hrs – nothing new there. However, he also had a standing order that no indigenous people were to ever be allowed into the compound … ever. Kirk, our medic, had gotten word of the injured boy and quickly responded to the main gate with his aid bag. The base camp’s HN army medical officer joined him. Kirk assessed that the injury was bad enough that the young boy needed to come into the base camp for further treatment. The HN medical officer would only go as far as cleaning the wound and telling the boy and father to go away. Pedro, our team sergeant, joined Kirk and looked the boy over. Pedro, a devoted father, saw no point in allowing the boy to wait any further and pushed to have him allowed onto the base camp. The base camp’s executive officer joined the group and staunchly opposed the move. Pedro was in disbelief. “You have to be fucking kidding me! Don’t you have children? How are you planning on winning these peoples hearts and minds?� The two men entered into a heated discussion. The HN guards at the gate looked at each other with interest and confusion. Kirk left the two and, after patching up the young boy, headed towards our team house to find me.

I exited into the deep black night toward the outwards facing floodlights at the main gate. I intercepted Pedro and the operations officer. I spoke with Pedro on the side and he appraised me of the situation. “Sir, we need to get this kid to a hospital and these fuckers don’t want to let us go. I say we go anyway.� “What is Kirk’s assessment?� I asked. “He needs medical care in a more sterile environment. Kirk said that the father has no means of transportation to the hospital and that’s about 14 km away. He would have to carry the boy to the hospital or risk a dangerous infection.� Pedro replied. I thought for a moment. If I authorized the movement I would be violating a standing order that was agreed to by the senior US military official in country, not to mention the base camp commander. Also, I would be exposing the team to a dangerous unimproved road that used to be the focus of ambushes by the left wing insurgent groups. If I didn’t authorize the movement, a young indigenous boy could be severely impaired, or die of infection. I knew that pattern analysis showed no aggressive action on the road within the last three years. “Pedro, grab half of the detachment, drive blacked out with night vision and take all the ammo you might need. Have one of the 18B’s mount the M240 on one of the HMMWVs and stay in radio contact with us. Is there anything else you need?� I asked. “Don’t worry, sir, I got it. We’ll make it happen.� Pedro walked purposely to brief the team.

(TBC)

[Basenshukai]

The operations officer looked at me in disbelief. He understood the English language very well. “Hey, you can’t authorize that without our colonel’s permission. You don’t have the authority!� He exclaimed as I walked towards the team house. I stopped for a second and turned around to face him. “You are telling me that I don’t have the authority to task my own men and move my own equipment?� The operations officer looked and, after a sigh, said, “Ok, you do whatever you want, but, I’ll have you know that I will contact our commander and he’ll contact your embassy.�

The split team, spearheaded by the team sergeant was ready in about 20 minutes. We checked our communications and off they went with the young boy. They were back in one hour with no incident. According to Kirk, the local doctor told him, “This is pretty bad. Why didn’t you guys bring him here earlier?� Kirk didn’t answer him. If only the doctor knew. Later on that night I received a phone call from my company commander. Apparently, the US Embassy had received a phone call before I was able to contact our chain of command. “I just want to tell you�, said my commander, “that I informed the boss about this and we are behind you 150% and that you did the right thing. Good job.�

Our relationship with the HN base commander worsened for a while and they talked about considering expulsion of the team out of the base camp. I had to become a diplomat with the HN and, at the same time, reassure a detachment that felt disillusioned with a group of people unwilling to put aside their differences to save the life of one of their own. Then one day, after the detachment had finished training operations for the day, the HN special operations students dropped a 60 mm mortar on top of their own men. The school was running it’s training without any medics on the base. Their medical staff was conducting training in a nearby base. We quickly rushed to the site. Kirk treated the most critically wounded and supervised the trauma care of the rest. The team sergeant arranged for air MEDEVAC. The other men of the detachment worked feverishly to stabilize the wounded and helped mark the HLZ. By pure coincidence, our own battalion commander and battalion command sergeant major were there for a visit with us and witnessed the whole incident. Our detachment saved those men’s lives.

When I was in the Special Forces Qualification Course, I was repeatedly told that we were specially selected and trained so that we could “thrive in ambiguous environments�. Sometimes being in a course that spans nearly two years makes any such statement seem purely intended for motivational purposes. It’s hard to go through Robin Sage, for instance, and see how one could ever run into those ridiculously unlikely scenarios. The truth is, however, that I have used nearly every skill taught to me in Robin Sage in the last two months alone. The training was well worth it. De Oppresso Liber.


EOM
Basenshukai Sends

[CPTAUSRET]

OUTSTANDING!

Terry

[The Reaper]

Excellent post.

Some commanders would not have backed your play like that.

I know, NDD and I had one.

Glad that we have the leadership that we do now.

Keep the stories coming.

TR

[NousDefionsDoc]

Great post Sir.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Thanks very much for that.

[Sacamuelas]

Great thread.

Originally posted by Basenshukai
“Captain, you are heading towards another Robin Sage and the base camp commander is the G-Chief.�

That is the best description of SF interacting with conventional military that I have seen.

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Great post and good job.

Jack Moroney

[Kyobanim]

Excellent! I hope the 18X'ers are reading this. Great stuff and you have a knack for telling a story.

[Sinister]

And there, gentlemen, is why we're "Special" forces.

[Guy]

"Two thumbs up"

Great job Sir!