Green Beret Training: "Ain't Nothing But a Thing"
Army Special Forces graduates
Tony Schwalm
[The following is an excerpt from the book The Guerrilla Factory: The Making of Special Forces Officers, The Green Berets, an inside look at Green Beret training by a former Lieutenant Colonel of the U.S. Army Special Forces.]
We sat four to a side in the back of a panel van with no windows, two rows facing each other. Each man tried not to look into the face of the man sitting across from him, tried not to betray fear, tried not to look overly confident, tried not to look like he was trying. By October 1993, we had been together most of four exhausting months -- we had formed relationships that sustained through the hard times. We had exchanged glances before a night jump. We had surreptitiously shared in Sunday barbecues with unsuspecting civilians. We had played commando and encouraged each other by word and deed. But the type of courage cowards find in numbers would evaporate as soon as each of us left the van. There was no "we" in this test.
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