Maurer - Gentlemen bastards: on the ground in Afghanistan with Americas elite Special Forces

You can tell a lot about a soldier just by looking at his body armor.

Climbing aboard the Shadow flight, a sort of private charter flown by the air force for the special operations community in Afghanistan, I scanned the other passengers. I could tell from their scruffy beards and worn gear how long the group of rail-thin Rangers had been in country. The other soldiers, a few Special Forces soldiers with equally worn gear, were mixed in with the staff soldiers who wore pristine and clean armor.

It was fall 2010. I was flying from Bagram, the large American base near Kabul, to Kandahar, the largest base in southern Afghanistan, to meet up with a Special Forces team I would embed with for the next ten weeks. Special Forces teams were playing an integral part of President Barack Obamas revamped strategy to surge thirty thousand additional troops into Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and build a stable government.

The Rangers barely looked at me. To them, I was some civilian analyst or contractor. My body armor, for one thing, was clean, lacking any of the moon dust that coats everything in Afghanistan. Two, I didnt have any pouches needed to carry essential gear on patrols or raids. And finally, my beard was thin. I was a nobody, or worse, a Fobbit, which is a derogatory term for those who live and work on the large bases.

I quickly found a spot on the floor, near the crew chief, and settled in for the flight. Unlike the way it was across the tarmac at the conventional side of the airport, there was no formality. You get on the manifest, meet the plane, and find a spot on the floor.

Big-boy rules.

Propping myself up against my backpack, I ran a hand through my thin whiskers, the starting point for my future beard, and glanced down at my pristine body armor. While Id worn the gear on two trips previously, it lacked that battle-hardened look of the Rangers and Special Forces soldiers. I didnt have to look up to know the Rangers and other soldiers had already taken one look at me and made their assessment. I knew that in the eyes of the men around me, I was a cherry. A new guy who hadnt done anything yet.

That was true for this trip because only a few days before, I was flying out of Atlanta on my way to Bagram by way of Dubai. But in reality it was my thirteenth trip overseas to cover the war and my fifth trip with Special Forces. This time was different because I wasnt coming as a reporter. This time I was coming to write a book. And not any book. Id somehow come up with this idea that I was the man to write a contemporary version of Robin Moores Green Berets.

The latter book is the unofficial bible of the Special Forces. All of them have read it, can quote from it, and point to it as a source of inspiration. It also doesnt hurt that John Wayne turned it into a movie.

Moore, a civilian, is credited with giving Special Forces its nickname. Though they had worn a beret unofficially, it wasnt until a visit to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 that the green beret was made the official headgear of the Army Special Forces. Moores book made the units headgear more than just a hat. It became a household name. A symbol of the Armys most elite soldier.

Moore, author of several books and a classmate of JFK, got the first look at the new unit and became the first true embedded journalist by training with and fighting alongside the Green Berets in Vietnam. He recounted stories of Green Berets defending remote outposts, of a lone Green Beret who goes native to fight alongside tribesmen in Laos, and finally how the Green Berets recruited a beautiful Vietnamese woman and used her as bait to capture a Vietcong colonel. The fact-based novel reads like a thriller and created the Green Berets reputation.

Ive had the unique experience of living with and following Green Berets in combat. But I, myself, am not a Green Beret.

I am not even a soldier. The closest Ive ever come to being in the military was three years of Naval ROTC at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. But I quit in 1997 with one semester left. Id just returned from my senior cruise around the Baltic Sea with stops in Northern Ireland, Norway, Russia, and Scotland on a frigate.

I loved the port calls. Drank way too much beer and still dont properly recall exactly how I got from the ship to the airport to go home. The times I spent with the officers and crew of the ship are still fond memories. But when I wasnt working, I was asking questions. A couple of times when I wanted to know why something was done a certain way, I was summarily told it was the Navy way, which only left me to ask why again like a petulant two-year-old. And when I finally went to my rack in officer overflowreally just a hallway with bunksI dreamed of larger staterooms. It was then that I was convinced I wasnt a warrior.