In January 1965, and for the next six months, he was commander of a B-Detachment in A Company, 3rd Special Forces Group. More field, training followed, and on a larger scale.
One exercise I particularly remember (modeled after "Cobbler Woods") involved two B-Detachments — mine in a counterinsurgency role against Captain Charlie Johnson's in a UW role. This exercise was conducted in an area of Florida, bounded in the north by the city of Titusville, in the south by the city of Melbourne, in the west by the St. John's River, and in the cast by the Atlantic Ocean. All of this was civilian-owned land, and virgin territory for military training activities. A large segment of the civilian populacc was organized and trained by one or the other B-Detachment, and they participated enthusiastically. Army aviation was used extensively in support. Air boats were also used by both sides (great preparatory training for Vietnam!).
At the conclusion of the exercise, and in an effort to desensitize and reunite our civilian friends who had participated (some had gotten a little too involved — they actually wanted to keep fighting their "enemies," some of them with guns), we hosted a barbecue supper — and military demonstration — for the entire community. This worked. Peace was restored.
As we were flying back to Fort Bragg the next day, I noticed a commotion up near the front of the airplane.
Some NCOs had been trying to smuggle a four-foot alligator back as a company mascot. When I checked out the commotion, I discovered that the alligator had gotten loose, and they were trying to subdue him. They eventually did, binding him with rope from one end to the other.
When we landed, we were met by our commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hoyt, and Sergeant Major Arthur. the sergeant major immediately detected the smuggling operation, and took the four smugglers, along with the gator, to the company area and had them spend most of the night digging the gator a pond. They secured him there with leg irons so he would not get loose and cat the real company mascot, a dog.
It didn't stop there. The NCOs allowed that the gator had to be "airborne-qualified, especially since the dog was. So they connived with the riggers into making him a harness and a special parachute. About a week later, during a scheduled jump on St. Mere Eglise Drop Zone, they threw the gator out of an aircraft and followed him to the ground. He made it down just fine, but when they got to where he'd come down, all they found was the harness and chute. He'd eaten his way out of the harness and disappeared.
Thirteen years later, the Fort Bragg game warden discovered a seven-foot alligator in the swamp at the western end of St. Mere Eglise Drop Zone, the only gator ever at Fort Bragg — and it remains a mystery to this day how he got there.
Soldiers, and especially Special Forces soldiers, are always looking for imaginative ways to entertain themselves, and there is nothing wrong with it, so long as it is legal, ethical, and no one is hurt.
In July 1965, following the training exercise in Florida, I became the Company S-3 (Operations Officer), responsible for the training and readiness of the company. 1 remained in that position until the spring of 1966, when I left Special Forces to attend the Command and Ceneral Staff College at Leavenworth, Kansas.
During this period, when all the services were undergoing the buildup for Vietnam, large numbers of draftees were being brought into the Army, and the training centers were filled to capacity.
In August, the entire company, which consisted of the headquarters and two B-Detachments (the third B-Detachment was on mission to Ethiopia), had deployed to the Pisgah National Forest in western North Carolina for training in the higher and more rugged parts of the mountains. This had been ongoing for about a week, when I received a call on my FM radio from Lieutenant Colonel Hoyt, who, I could tell, was in a helicopter, asking me to meet him at a road intersection about ten miles away from our base camp.
I jumped into my leased pickup truck and headed for the intersection, thinking as I went that it was unusual for him to fly this far (more than a hundred miles). Whatever the reason, it must be important.
I arrived at the intersection before he did, and marked a landing zone in a small clearing beside the intersection with the orange panels that we always carried.
When he landed ten minutes later, he came running up to me (the helicopter did not shut down). "How long will it take you to get the company back to Fort Bragg?" he asked — the first words out of his mouth.
"It'll take a while," I answered, "because they are spread out all over these mountains in various operating areas, and we don't have enough transportation to move the entire company in one lift. I guess with the vehicles that we have, and with what they can come up with through their local civilian contacts, we could all close Fort Bragg sometime during the night."
"Good," he said. "Go back and get them organized and moving."
Then he explained: "The training centers have overflowed, and just this morning we received the mission to conduct basic entry-level training for approximately five hundred new infantry draftees that will arrive at Bragg within three to four days.
"Group is working on where to house them," he went on, "and what parts of the training might be done more efficiently by committee" — weapons training and the like—"and this should be pretty well finalized by the time I get back.
"You have more training experience of this nature than anyone else in the Group," he continued, "and the Group Commander" — by then Colonel Leroy Stanley—"and I want you to lead a group of selected cadre to Fort Jackson, departing at six in the morning, to observe how they conduct Basic Combat Training" — in this case he meant the first eight weeks—"and bring back all the lesson plans you can gather up."
"No problem, sir," I answered. "I'll get the company moving right away. As for the basic training part, I've got this cold, from beginning to end, and can teach all the subjects blindfolded. But we'll have to give our cadre some preliminary training to get started, and I can do that in a couple of days, and continuing as we progress through the training cycle.
"What you can do, sir, to facilitate organizing for training," I told him, "is to go back and begin to pick and structure the cadre for a training battalion that will consist of three companies." And then I laid out how the structure ought to work: "These should be commanded by captains, with a sergeant major or master sergeant as first sergcant; four platoons per company should be commanded by a lieutenant, with a master sergeant or sergeant first class as platoon sergeant; and each platoon should consist of four squads, each led by a staff sergeant or sergeant." I also told him that it would be very beneficial if I could take to Fort Jackson with me our three company commanders and one representative (officer or NCO) from each platoon (a total of fifteen), to observe firsthand how it is done.
"Okay," Hoyt said. "You'll be commanding one of the companies. And while you're putting your guys together out here, I'll go back and ensure that the right people are ready for the trip to Fort Jackson."
On my way back to our base camp, I was thinking, "Man, what an opportunity to turn out the best-trained and — motivated battalion ever. With all of these outstanding NCOs, there's no limit to what we can do for these new men."
At the same time, I couldn't help but contrast the performance of our Special Forces guys in a training situation with what I'd had to handle in my last training company at Fort Jackson: It was me and an outstanding first sergeant (Ned Lyle, to my knowledge the only man in the Army authorized to wear the bayonet as a decoration), a Specialist 4 company clerk (who was pending charges for hoarding mail and possessing pornographic materials), four NCOs (all possessing medical profiles that precluded their making the morning twenty-minute run; instead I kept them posted at strategic locations where they could police up the stragglers while I ran the company), a mess sergeant who was addicted to paregorie, and a supply scrgcant I didn't trust. This was all that I had to work with, and I thought we did a good job — considering.