The magic of “the unit,” as they referred to it, was its people. Most new members came from the Rangers and Green Berets, but some came directly from the Army’s conventional units. An extraordinarily rigorous selection process tested each applicant’s fitness, intelligence, courage, and mental balance. The process was so good at selecting for certain characteristics that the operators shared many traits. They tended to be hyperfit, opinionated, iconoclastic, fearless, intelligent, type A problem solvers who thrived without guidance. They affected nonchalance around garrison and between missions. But beneath the beards and civilian T-shirts were to-the-core military professionals. I often joked that if I had inspected their bureaus, I’d have found their underwear neatly folded. As one veteran operator told me, “a place for everything, and everything in its place.” They couldn’t help themselves.
Enlisted men weren’t eligible to attempt admission until they were sergeants, but once in, most stayed until retirement. This embedded the unit with an unprecedented level of expertise and talent. In a conventional army brigade, there were about five sergeants major—the highest enlisted rank—and over two thousand young privates. In Green, a brigade-size organization, there were sixty-three sergeants major and no privates. Given the seniority of the force, rank was less important, and operators earned credibility through performance. Because few ever left the unit, joining Green, meant taking on a separate career altogether. Its members forsook traditional career advancement upon entering, as the small unit had only so many command spots. While few ever left the unit voluntarily, membership was always provisional—and could be revoked if an operator were to go slack.
During its early years, Green gained a reputation as an old boys’ club and a refuge for the cowboys of the Army. Even later, some saw them as prima donnas, too long pickled in the privileges and esteem that came to the finest military unit in the world. When I worked in special operations in the early 1990s, I considered Green an effective—but also arrogant—organization.
Entering the Green compound was always a bit intimidating, seemingly by design. But the commander, then-Colonel Bennet Sacolick, and the command sergeant major, Jody Nacy, welcomed me warmly. We moved to one of the larger conference rooms, where I found myself standing in front of a collection of operators. Many were fresh from combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I was the new commanding general, just out of the safe halls of the Pentagon. I scanned the faces of the fifty or sixty operators there that day as they sat in rows of chairs in front of me. I quickly realized that I knew many of them from their earlier service in the Rangers. Familiar faces were reassuring. But though many were old comrades, they had graduated to a higher level. We no longer shared the same haircut, and they were not as young as they had been when I first served with them. I needed to recalibrate our relationship.
These men were older—the average age on any operation was often at least thirty-five—but they were immaculately fit. A paunch triggered scorn. Their maturity and experience when molded together in small teams made them extraordinarily effective. During the previous decades, when most of America had enjoyed peaceful lives, they had repeatedly deployed. Many in the folding chairs had fought as Green operators or as Rangers in Mogadishu, some in Panama. More recently they had done quiet work in the Balkans before being thrust into the war on terror. Their hard-wrought intuition would deepen in the years to come.
Unlike many young, untested soldiers, the men in the seats did not think they were bulletproof. They had built up lives beyond mere soldiering. Nearly all were married and had children. Often their children were not infants but teenagers growing into adults while their fathers fought overseas. In the years ahead, more than one would have a child fighting in the same war, elsewhere in the country. I would have the wrenching duty to write a letter of sympathy to a veteran operator and his wife, a couple I’d known for years, when their only son was killed serving in the fight as a young paratrooper.
That day, I wondered what the members of the unit saw in me. As always, their demeanor betrayed nothing. They appeared patient and attentive but not obsequious. I saw none of the slouching that signaled disinterest or disdain. As usual, I hadn’t prepared a speech; I wanted to get their attention and dispel any feeling that the wars we faced were nearly over or that TF 714 could limit its role. Instead, we needed to display unconventional adaptability.