My Share of the Task (11 page)

The fight in Mogadishu was to have lingering effects on America, her special operations forces, and my experiences in the years ahead. Just as Grenada, Panama, and the first Gulf War had done much to erase the frustrations of Vietnam, Mogadishu carried a whiff of failure, a reminder that despite the progress we'd made since Eagle Claw thirteen years earlier, the possibility of death and defeat was always at hand. That reality focused and drove us as we labored to develop a force that would win.

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S
everal months after Mogadishu, and several months before the tragedy at Green Ramp, the Army Personnel Command had asked if I wanted to compete for command of a Ranger battalion. Commanding a Ranger battalion was reserved for “second-time” commanders who had already led a conventional unit. A forthcoming board would consider a slate of candidates from across the Army. I went back and forth in my mind as to whether I should pursue the opportunity. Ever since my summer experience with a Ranger company at Fort Hood as a West Point cadet, I'd wanted to lead Rangers. My four years in the 3rd Ranger Battalion had made that a passion. Yet I loved the White Devils and felt I hadn't yet done all I could in command. Ranger selection would cause me to leave just halfway through my command tour.

I was a few days from making the decision, seesawing daily between the two options, when an old Ranger comrade came to visit. Nick Punimata had been a senior NCO in the 3rd Ranger Battalion and had since become a warrant officer in Special Forces. A thoughtful friend in a bearlike body, Nick sat down in my office and congratulated me on getting a Ranger battalion command.

“Nick, the board isn't until next week,” I corrected him. “And I haven't decided whether to compete for one. It might be better for me to stay here.” Nick gave me a look of surprise and exasperation.

“But, sir, what about the boys?”

I made the decision then and there, and a week or so later I was informed the board had selected me to command a Ranger battalion.

*   *   *

S
oon after I was informed I'd return to the Rangers, the Pope crash happened. As a result, my chain of command at the 82nd recommended that my departure be delayed from summer 1994 until November to allow me to help the unit navigate through rebuilding in the wake of the tragedy. It was a good decision, and I was pleased to have seven more months in command of the White Devils.

Those months were exciting. On September 18, 1994, two months before I left the White Devils, I joined most of the 82nd Airborne Division's roughly sixteen thousand paratroopers as we loaded into a fleet of C-130s at Fort Bragg for what was to be the largest American combat
parachute drop since World War II.

Contingency planning had been ongoing for many months as turmoil roiled Haiti. The sizable parachute drop and subsequent operations would secure key facilities on the island. My White Devils would jump on the airfield in Port-au-Prince and move on foot through the city to link up with Rangers at the National Assembly building.

Four days before the designated D-Day, we were instructed to move our units into secure holding areas to conduct final preparations while maintaining as much operational secrecy as possible.

With their commanders and key staff having been sequestered for the past week, the paratroopers no doubt sensed something was afoot and were curious as they marched into the personnel holding area where we would be staging. I assembled them in the corner of what once had been a 1950s-era 82nd Airborne Division unit motor pool.

As I looked onto the sea of faces, they were familiar. I'd seen them dripping with sweat on long foot marches, and shivering with cold but grim determination during long training exercises. I remembered their serious but compassionate demeanor carrying coffins or escorting families of their comrades. Most, like me, had never experienced direct combat. They thought they were ready but needed to hear it from me.

“Gentlemen, they've canceled the World Series on us,” I said, referring to the ongoing baseball players' strike. I paused to confused looks. “So we've decided to invade Haiti.” The paratroopers laughed and cheered.

I wasn't trivializing a combat operation in which people would likely die. But it was important to break the tension. There would be stress enough in the days ahead. As most had already guessed, the operation would be to unseat Lieutenant General Raoul Cédras and his junta, who, having deposed the democratically elected president, ruled over what President Bill Clinton at the time called “
the most violent regime in our hemisphere.”

After three days of conducting rehearsals and repeated reviews of every part of the plan, we moved to the airfield and, beside a sea of parked aircraft, donned parachutes and loaded up. The energy was palpable—and short lived.

Immediately before takeoff, I was informed that the negotiations former president Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell, and Senator Sam Nunn were conducting with Cédras were still ongoing. I knew no operation would take place while they were still there, and I guessed our imminent launch was being used as a powerful lever to get an agreement from Cédras. So it was no surprise when, a couple of hours into our flight, I was passed a note from the air force loadmaster in the back of the aircraft that said we were returning to Pope. I relayed the word to the paratroopers without much explanation. Most looked surprised; all appeared disappointed.

The aborted invasion was a diplomatic success, and the show of force—
sixty-one warplanes thundering toward the island, already ringed by American warships—likely added weight to President Carter's threats that night. It was arguably a textbook use of military power to back up diplomacy. But as we emptied onto the tarmac that night, the force went from being a coiled spring of raw energy to feeling dejected. With time, the aborted invasion was something we laughed about, but often with half-serious teeth gritting.

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I
departed Bragg in early November 1994 for Fort Lewis, Washington, and the 2nd Ranger Battalion. Annie, our son Sam, then eleven years old, and I packed into our minivan and headed off across the country. We had only six days to make the crossing, which began with a short detour to Fort Benning, Georgia, to meet with my new regimental commander. But we had a great time. I bored both of them with an obligatory stop at the Little Bighorn battlefield in Montana.

We pulled into Fort Lewis on a typically cloudy afternoon, and I prepared to take command the following day. My grandfather had served at Fort Lewis just prior to World War II, and my father and Dwight Eisenhower's son, John, had been friends in the neighborhood of our assigned quarters. With Mount Rainier as a backdrop, Lewis was beautiful, and we quickly felt at home.

Like commanding a second rifle company, commanding a second battalion was still hard work, but even more fun. In my first command I had worried whether I would be up to the job. Now I arrived confident and full of ideas. I suspect Ranger NCOs got a bit tired of self-confident commanders arriving with notebooks full of new directions for the unit to take. But if they did, they hid it well.

Famous for its World War II exploits, the 2nd Ranger Battalion was one of the original two battalion-size Ranger units re-formed in 1974. It always had a slight West Coast attitude. Serving in the 3rd Battalion in the 1980s, we viewed “2nd Batt” as more free-spirited and less disciplined than we were, although they performed well in the field. We also envied their great distance from regimental headquarters, which we could see just one hundred meters away.

I took command in a simple ceremony. From the outset, I determined to set a clear direction for the battalion, identifying agreed-upon priorities and forcing ourselves to perform those to a truly impressive level. We would have trouble maintaining the reputation and confidence of a truly elite organization if we didn't do at least a few tasks better than any other units could.

My senior soldier, Command Sergeant Major Frank Magana, and I identified several areas of emphasis. One was foot marching, walking long distances carrying combat equipment, which typically included rucksacks of fifty pounds or more. We directed weekly marches for every Ranger to build stamina and quarterly marches of thirty miles. Running and marching across Fort Lewis, I'd seen small signs posted by the 9th Infantry Regiment, “The Manchus,” guiding their units along a designated twenty-five-mile foot-march route. I knew that Rangers had to do more, so thirty seemed about right.

We also identified the need to increase the physical confidence of young Rangers in hand-to-hand combat. I didn't envision planning operations that would depend upon bayonet charges or fisticuffs, but Ranger operations involving raids or room clearing put Rangers in direct physical contact with enemies. I wanted them to possess the confidence that would come from proficiency in the martial arts.

Training Rangers in combatives, or hand-to-hand combat, was not a straightforward task. First using existing army manuals, then moving to hiring outside experts and nationally renowned college wrestling coaches, we struggled. We could send a few Rangers to specialized training, and they would return proficient and enthusiastic, but their skills wouldn't permeate through the battalion.

Finally, after almost a year of dead ends, we hired two of the Gracie brothers, Royce and Rorion, who were famous competitors and instructors in Brazilian jujitsu, a fighting style their family had pioneered. They would run a two-week course at Fort Lewis. Instead of sending just Rangers who had exhibited interest in or aptitude for it, I sent all of the platoon sergeants.

While we could have chosen any one of several fighting techniques, the breakthrough was sending the right people to training. Platoon sergeants controlled the culture and training schedule of each forty-two-man platoon, which they commanded as senior NCOs. Lieutenants led the platoons, but platoon sergeants shaped the organization and were its heart. As long as the platoon sergeants lacked confidence in their personal mastery of combatives and did not share a strong belief in the importance of the skill, we'd never get real traction. The course proved the point. After finishing the course, the platoon sergeants, now zealots for combatives and eager to demonstrate their skills, demanded their platoons follow their lead. Within months, combatives had infused into the culture of the battalion. In a couple of years, it had spread across the regiment, and soon it infected the Army as a whole. It was a lesson in leadership I never forgot.

I believed that more than anything else, soldiers and units must learn to win, and yet the Army's Joint Readiness Training Center, or JRTC, unintentionally undermined that. Designed to exercise units under demanding conditions against a highly proficient opposing force (OPFOR) who mastered the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System (MILES) training device, allowing them to routinely defeat units larger and better armed. Many units blamed their failure on MILES. In my second year in command of the 2nd Rangers, we were programmed for an early spring rotation to the JRTC, and I decided to focus the force on winning.

Winning at JRTC would demand that the 2nd Rangers adjust our tactics away from what would work in actual combat to what would be better suited to the MILES fight. It would require us to spend precious training time mastering MILES, at the expense of more realistic live-fire marksmanship. Many experienced leaders in the battalion felt we were “training to win at training” when we should be training for war. It was a valid point.

But to me, it was training to
win
. Future combat would be unpredictable in nature, and winning at JRTC, with the odds stacked against us, would build the Rangers' confidence that they could win at anything. We trained. Week after week in the field consisted of combat lanes run against MILES-equipped OPFOR that we'd designated and trained from within the battalion. I became a fanatic on MILES marksmanship. Before the start of many lanes I'd pull two or three Rangers from the squad or platoon, place several targets a couple hundred meters away, and demand they demonstrate the ability to “kill” the targets with their MILES on the first shot. In the first weeks, few could do it. I could feel some of the NCOs seething, feeling MILES proficiency a gross waste of time.

Finally, at about 2:00
A.M
. one night, after a difficult platoon lane, we were conducting a critique of an operation in a tent we'd erected. We were exhausted and frustrated, and I was tired of haranguing leaders, when a squad leader, Ken Wolfe, who was later a command sergeant major in Afghanistan, stood up. Grabbing his M16 rifle with a MILES transmitter mounted, he erupted.

“This is what we have to do,” he said, pointing at the transmitter. “This is the war we'll be fighting and the war we have to win.”

I watched him intently, hoping he was saying what he appeared to be.

“It's the MILES fight. We might not like it. But if we're going to win we have to be better at it than the OPFOR.” His voice rose. “And goddamn it, we're better than any OPFOR.”

He got grudging but genuine concurrence from the Rangers. I could have hugged him. Because at that moment I knew we'd win. And we did. That commitment—to fighting, and winning, the kind of war we were in, not the one we wanted—showed up again in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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I
n June 1996 I relinquished command of the 2nd Rangers and we moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a fellowship at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government instead of attending the Army War College.

Harvard was a tremendous opportunity to explore subjects I'd been too busy to consider while in troop units and to meet a collection of bright faculty and students. I'd expected Harvard to be full of antimilitary sentiment, but instead we received compelling questions and thoughtful looks, as if we were rare animals they'd never seen up close.

And our family life was good. Annie rented an apartment for us close to Harvard Square and got a job at the Kennedy School. There was time to explore Boston, watch the Red Sox, and take occasional trips to elsewhere in New England. Sam's hockey season was in full swing, and we spent evenings and Saturdays watching him play.