Got to know the Colonel in the mid-1980's. In the 80's and 90's, Col. Bank worked as the head of security for a Capistrano Beach beachside neighborhood. Even at his advanced age, Col. Bank was still fit and enjoyed longer ocean swims and did his job better than anyone before or since. He would often sign notes/books ..."It takes a real hell-raiser to be a Green Beret". Good man...Good American.
http://www.military.com/Content/MoreContent?file=PRabank Aaron Bank: Father of the Green Berets
As a member of the Office of Strategic Services, Aaron Bank worked with guerrilla forces--and learned about political struggles behind enemy lines.
By John M. Glenn
Early in July 1944, Aaron Bank and two Frenchmen, each suspended in a parachute harness, drifted silently through the pre-dawn darkness toward a clearing on a forested mountaintop near the town of Alès in southern France. The months that followed would be a defining period for Bank--and, eventually, for the U.S. Army.
Revered today throughout the Special Forces community as "The Father of the Green Berets," now-retired Colonel Bank recently recalled his first steps into guerrilla warfare and covert operations with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in an interview with John M. Glenn. In the comfortable home that he shares with his wife, Catherine, in San Clemente, Calif., the honorary colonel of the 1st Special Forces Regiment is a continent away from New York City, where he was born on November 23, 1902. It was there that his mother and grandfather, both Russian immigrants, taught him the languages that would shape his destiny--French and German.
Military History: You led an interesting life in the Depression years before you joined the U.S. Army. Please tell us about it.
Bank: I was a lifeguard and swimming instructor during the summers at Biarritz, in France, where speaking French and German, as well as Spanish, was a necessity. In the winter I moved on to Nassau, in the Bahamas. You could say I spent those years entirely in the sunshine.
MH: Why did you join the Army?
Bank: In my travels around Europe, it became clear to me that war was coming. In Germany, men were marching around with shovels carried like rifles on their shoulders. You couldn't get any sleep at night because of the torchlight parades. Warmongering songs filled the smoky air in the Bierstüben.
MH: So you enlisted?
Bank: Yes, in 1939. I was commissioned from Officer Candidate School.
MH: How did you come to join the OSS?
Bank: Officers who could speak a foreign language were invited to volunteer. Actually, that was a godsend. In early 1943, I was a tactical training officer for a railroad battalion at Camp Polk, La.--a real hellhole. I was considered too old for combat in the infantry, my original branch. The OSS was my chance to get into the war, and I jumped at it.
MH: What was your first impression of the Office of Strategic Services?
Bank: We trained at the Congressional Country Club in Washington, D.C., which was very plush. Everything was supposed to be top-secret, but when I paid for the taxi ride there, the driver said, "Oh, you're one of those guerrillas." Every cabdriver in town knew what was going on! We trained on the golf course and along the Potomac River. It was mostly commando training. None of the instructors had experienced guerrilla warfare. I was disappointed.
MH: But that changed?
Bank: Most certainly. We got the real McCoy in England. The instructors had all fought with guerrillas in Yugoslavia, Greece and France. The training was outstanding; the living arrangements were excellent.
MH: What aspects of your training in Britain stood out compared with the previous instruction you had received?
Bank: The training--in communications, demolitions, weapons, hand-to-hand combat, subversion, sabotage and guerrilla warfare--was conducted at different manor houses in Scotland and England. There was always a break as we traveled between schools, so we never got stale. And we were kept on our toes. British Major W.E. Fairbairn, the co-developer of the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, took us out one moonless night on a sentry-elimination exercise. Easy, I thought, we've done this before. I crept up to the dummy, jerked the head back and plunged the knife--into a knapsack! It was a lesson about observation that I was glad to learn in England and not in France.
MH: How was the parachute training?
Bank: The most harrowing part was jumping from a balloon, which was required. Because there was no prop blast, you fell about 200 feet before the parachute opened. The balloon was only 800 feet in the air. And the British jumped without reserve parachutes. We didn't exit the aircraft through a door but through a hatch in the floor. I was still nervous about not having a reserve and asked an instructor what I should do if the parachute didn't open. "Do a proper PLF [parachute landing fall]," he said, "roll up your 'chute, take it back to the lass who packed it and see if you can get a date."
MH: Why were the Special Operations teams called "Jedburghs"?
Bank: Jedburghs consisted of two officers and an enlisted radio operator. The name "Jedburgh" was derived from a town in Scotland where Scots, during their wars with England, waged guerrilla warfare. We thought it appropriate.
MH: How were your Special Operations teams selected?
Bank: We actually selected ourselves. It was thought--correctly so--that compatible individuals would form their own natural groups. Most of the countries occupied by the Germans were represented among the Jedburghs. However, by order of General Charles de Gaulle, each team going into France had to have a French officer in it. So the Frenchmen were courted like debutantes at a ball. They were in demand, and they knew it.
MH: Your team consisted of yourself and two Frenchmen?
Bank: Yes. We had an American radio operator initially, but the French officer, Henri, was concerned that if something happened to me he would not be able to communicate effectively with an American. So Jean [the French never revealed their surnames for security reasons] became our radio operator. I'm still in touch with the American radio operator, Bill Thompson, who went on to earn a Croix de Guerre with another team.
MH: With all the different nationalities involved, was there any friction?
Bank: Only once. When our troopship sailed into Oran, it passed markers in the harbor showing where French ships had been sunk by the British fleet after the French capitulation. There was a distinct coolness between the French and British operatives for a while.
MH: Where did you go from Oran?
Bank: To Algiers, where we camped with French colonial troops. Their latrine was anywhere the urge struck, and the ground was littered with soiled toilet paper. Soon many Americans, including myself, were down with fever. I was in the hospital when Henri told me to get well in a hurry, as we were leaving for France that night.
MH: What did you do?
Bank: Still in my pajamas, I sneaked past the military policeman guarding the hospital gate. I had to go AWOL [absent without leave] to go to war.
MH: What did you bring with you when you parachuted into France in July 1944?
Bank: Money, of course. The plane also dropped canisters filled with medical supplies, explosives, ammunition and arms--mostly Sten guns that the British manufactured for about $1 apiece. And a lot of boots. The guerrillas were short on footwear.
MH: Were the guerrillas waiting for you on the ground?
Bank: Yes. They had a truck that ran off of a boiler fired by charcoal--the Germans had all the gasoline--but it ran pretty well, and it carried all the supplies.
MH: How was security?
Bank: As we drove through small towns on our way to the command post, the villagers lined the streets and shouted, "Vive les Américains!" It was hard for the French to keep a secret. That night we stayed in a farmhouse that was supposed to be safe. I told the team to sleep with their boots on. During the night, the alarm was raised, and I jumped out of a window wearing only my underwear, boots and cartridge belt and carrying my rifle. The guerrillas kidded me about that, saying, "Captain, you're out of uniform." But we all escaped. Security was always on the edge. Sometimes it was pretty good and sometimes it was lousy.
MH: What was your primary mission in southern France?
Bank: Initially, we were to lay low, get organized, conduct training and wait for the invasion. The guerrilla chief, Raymond, commandeered a car from a collaborator--that is, he just took it. We drove through the mountains and woods, going from camp to camp. I began to train the guerrilla leaders, and they trained their men. Most of them had been in the French army, so training was not too difficult, but they did have some bad habits.
MH: What sort of bad habits?
Bank: They had a tendency to stay in one place too long, and their camps were too close together. Food was rationed in France, and if a shortage developed anywhere, the Germans could figure out that the populace might be feeding guerrillas. If the Germans swept the area and found a camp, other nearby camps would also end up in the bag. So we kept the guerrillas moving and more dispersed, but close enough so that they could be rapidly assembled for action.
MH: Were there other problems?
Bank: One problem was medical support. It is hard to recruit a guerrilla if he thinks he might suffer a minor wound and then be left behind--perhaps to be tortured, certainly to be killed, by the Germans. We enlisted a French doctor to operate an aid station in a barn and set up a system to move serious cases to hospitals in smaller towns that were relatively safe. Another problem was ammunition. We had all sorts of weapons--American, British, French, German. Many of them used bullets that were similar but not exactly the same.
MH: Was there a problem separating the different types of ammunition?
Bank: Absolutely. In one of our early ambushes we had a truck convoy pinned down when the machine gun stopped firing. We had to withdraw, and we found out later that the machine-gunner had bullets of two different calibers in the belt. When the wrong caliber was fed into the chamber, the gun jammed. In another ambush, we placed mortar fire on a convoy, but instead of high explosives going off, smoke covered the target, and we couldn't see what the Germans were doing. We had to withdraw again. I had told the guerrillas earlier to get rid of the smoke rounds, but the French never throw anything away.
MH: It seems as if the guerrillas didn't always do as they were told. What was the command relationship?
Bank: The guerrillas had their own leaders. If we had tried to take over their operation, we would have been lucky to get out alive. Our job was to help them plan and keep them supplied. But they knew we were there to help them, so they usually did as we advised. And make no mistake about it, they were very courageous. You didn't have to kick them in the ass to make them fight.
MH: What was the German reaction to guerrilla ambushes?
Bank: If an ambush occurred near a town, the Germans would round up men and boys from the town and shoot them. We tried staging ambushes between towns so that the Germans would not know which one to retaliate against, but they just took hostages from both towns.
MH: Did that cause a problem?
Bank: The mayors of some of the towns began to plead with the guerrillas to move elsewhere, but Henri and the guerrilla chiefs were very tough. They told the mayors that the price of liberation was high, and the people must make the sacrifice.
MH: Was there conflict between guerrilla groups?
Bank: Yes. Our guerrillas were the Forces Françaises de l'Interieur [FFI], the nationalists. Also in our sector were the Franc-Tireurs Partisans [FTP], who were Communists. The FTP actually hijacked one of our resupply drops. While our guerrillas were collecting the canisters on the ground, the FTP caught them unawares and made off with all the equipment. The FTP also became a political problem after liberation, but the people in our sector preferred the FFI.
MH: Did you get involved in any of the political infighting among the guerrilla groups?
Bank: No. That was a job for Henri, our French officer.
Next: Expanding the Operations
Copyright (c) 2000, PRIMEDIA Enthusiast Publications, Inc.
Aaron Bank: Father of the Green Berets
As a member of the Office of Strategic Services, Aaron Bank worked with guerrilla forces--and learned about political struggles behind enemy lines.
By John M. Glenn
Early in July 1944, Aaron Bank and two Frenchmen, each suspended in a parachute harness, drifted silently through the pre-dawn darkness toward a clearing on a forested mountaintop near the town of Alès in southern France. The months that followed would be a defining period for Bank--and, eventually, for the U.S. Army.
Revered today throughout the Special Forces community as "The Father of the Green Berets," now-retired Colonel Bank recently recalled his first steps into guerrilla warfare and covert operations with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in an interview with John M. Glenn. In the comfortable home that he shares with his wife, Catherine, in San Clemente, Calif., the honorary colonel of the 1st Special Forces Regiment is a continent away from New York City, where he was born on November 23, 1902. It was there that his mother and grandfather, both Russian immigrants, taught him the languages that would shape his destiny--French and German.
Military History: You led an interesting life in the Depression years before you joined the U.S. Army. Please tell us about it.
Bank: I was a lifeguard and swimming instructor during the summers at Biarritz, in France, where speaking French and German, as well as Spanish, was a necessity. In the winter I moved on to Nassau, in the Bahamas. You could say I spent those years entirely in the sunshine.
MH: Why did you join the Army?
Bank: In my travels around Europe, it became clear to me that war was coming. In Germany, men were marching around with shovels carried like rifles on their shoulders. You couldn't get any sleep at night because of the torchlight parades. Warmongering songs filled the smoky air in the Bierstüben.
MH: So you enlisted?
Bank: Yes, in 1939. I was commissioned from Officer Candidate School.
MH: How did you come to join the OSS?
Bank: Officers who could speak a foreign language were invited to volunteer. Actually, that was a godsend. In early 1943, I was a tactical training officer for a railroad battalion at Camp Polk, La.--a real hellhole. I was considered too old for combat in the infantry, my original branch. The OSS was my chance to get into the war, and I jumped at it.
MH: What was your first impression of the Office of Strategic Services?
Bank: We trained at the Congressional Country Club in Washington, D.C., which was very plush. Everything was supposed to be top-secret, but when I paid for the taxi ride there, the driver said, "Oh, you're one of those guerrillas." Every cabdriver in town knew what was going on! We trained on the golf course and along the Potomac River. It was mostly commando training. None of the instructors had experienced guerrilla warfare. I was disappointed.
MH: But that changed?
Bank: Most certainly. We got the real McCoy in England. The instructors had all fought with guerrillas in Yugoslavia, Greece and France. The training was outstanding; the living arrangements were excellent.
MH: What aspects of your training in Britain stood out compared with the previous instruction you had received?
Bank: The training--in communications, demolitions, weapons, hand-to-hand combat, subversion, sabotage and guerrilla warfare--was conducted at different manor houses in Scotland and England. There was always a break as we traveled between schools, so we never got stale. And we were kept on our toes. British Major W.E. Fairbairn, the co-developer of the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, took us out one moonless night on a sentry-elimination exercise. Easy, I thought, we've done this before. I crept up to the dummy, jerked the head back and plunged the knife--into a knapsack! It was a lesson about observation that I was glad to learn in England and not in France.
MH: How was the parachute training?
Bank: The most harrowing part was jumping from a balloon, which was required. Because there was no prop blast, you fell about 200 feet before the parachute opened. The balloon was only 800 feet in the air. And the British jumped without reserve parachutes. We didn't exit the aircraft through a door but through a hatch in the floor. I was still nervous about not having a reserve and asked an instructor what I should do if the parachute didn't open. "Do a proper PLF [parachute landing fall]," he said, "roll up your 'chute, take it back to the lass who packed it and see if you can get a date."
MH: Why were the Special Operations teams called "Jedburghs"?
Bank: Jedburghs consisted of two officers and an enlisted radio operator. The name "Jedburgh" was derived from a town in Scotland where Scots, during their wars with England, waged guerrilla warfare. We thought it appropriate.
MH: How were your Special Operations teams selected?
Bank: We actually selected ourselves. It was thought--correctly so--that compatible individuals would form their own natural groups. Most of the countries occupied by the Germans were represented among the Jedburghs. However, by order of General Charles de Gaulle, each team going into France had to have a French officer in it. So the Frenchmen were courted like debutantes at a ball. They were in demand, and they knew it.
MH: Your team consisted of yourself and two Frenchmen?
Bank: Yes. We had an American radio operator initially, but the French officer, Henri, was concerned that if something happened to me he would not be able to communicate effectively with an American. So Jean [the French never revealed their surnames for security reasons] became our radio operator. I'm still in touch with the American radio operator, Bill Thompson, who went on to earn a Croix de Guerre with another team.
MH: With all the different nationalities involved, was there any friction?
Bank: Only once. When our troopship sailed into Oran, it passed markers in the harbor showing where French ships had been sunk by the British fleet after the French capitulation. There was a distinct coolness between the French and British operatives for a while.
MH: Where did you go from Oran?
Bank: To Algiers, where we camped with French colonial troops. Their latrine was anywhere the urge struck, and the ground was littered with soiled toilet paper. Soon many Americans, including myself, were down with fever. I was in the hospital when Henri told me to get well in a hurry, as we were leaving for France that night.
MH: What did you do?
Bank: Still in my pajamas, I sneaked past the military policeman guarding the hospital gate. I had to go AWOL [absent without leave] to go to war.
MH: What did you bring with you when you parachuted into France in July 1944?
Bank: Money, of course. The plane also dropped canisters filled with medical supplies, explosives, ammunition and arms--mostly Sten guns that the British manufactured for about $1 apiece. And a lot of boots. The guerrillas were short on footwear.
MH: Were the guerrillas waiting for you on the ground?
Bank: Yes. They had a truck that ran off of a boiler fired by charcoal--the Germans had all the gasoline--but it ran pretty well, and it carried all the supplies.
MH: How was security?
Bank: As we drove through small towns on our way to the command post, the villagers lined the streets and shouted, "Vive les Américains!" It was hard for the French to keep a secret. That night we stayed in a farmhouse that was supposed to be safe. I told the team to sleep with their boots on. During the night, the alarm was raised, and I jumped out of a window wearing only my underwear, boots and cartridge belt and carrying my rifle. The guerrillas kidded me about that, saying, "Captain, you're out of uniform." But we all escaped. Security was always on the edge. Sometimes it was pretty good and sometimes it was lousy.
MH: What was your primary mission in southern France?
Bank: Initially, we were to lay low, get organized, conduct training and wait for the invasion. The guerrilla chief, Raymond, commandeered a car from a collaborator--that is, he just took it. We drove through the mountains and woods, going from camp to camp. I began to train the guerrilla leaders, and they trained their men. Most of them had been in the French army, so training was not too difficult, but they did have some bad habits.
MH: What sort of bad habits?
Bank: They had a tendency to stay in one place too long, and their camps were too close together. Food was rationed in France, and if a shortage developed anywhere, the Germans could figure out that the populace might be feeding guerrillas. If the Germans swept the area and found a camp, other nearby camps would also end up in the bag. So we kept the guerrillas moving and more dispersed, but close enough so that they could be rapidly assembled for action.
MH: Were there other problems?
Bank: One problem was medical support. It is hard to recruit a guerrilla if he thinks he might suffer a minor wound and then be left behind--perhaps to be tortured, certainly to be killed, by the Germans. We enlisted a French doctor to operate an aid station in a barn and set up a system to move serious cases to hospitals in smaller towns that were relatively safe. Another problem was ammunition. We had all sorts of weapons--American, British, French, German. Many of them used bullets that were similar but not exactly the same.
MH: Was there a problem separating the different types of ammunition?
Bank: Absolutely. In one of our early ambushes we had a truck convoy pinned down when the machine gun stopped firing. We had to withdraw, and we found out later that the machine-gunner had bullets of two different calibers in the belt. When the wrong caliber was fed into the chamber, the gun jammed. In another ambush, we placed mortar fire on a convoy, but instead of high explosives going off, smoke covered the target, and we couldn't see what the Germans were doing. We had to withdraw again. I had told the guerrillas earlier to get rid of the smoke rounds, but the French never throw anything away.
MH: It seems as if the guerrillas didn't always do as they were told. What was the command relationship?
Bank: The guerrillas had their own leaders. If we had tried to take over their operation, we would have been lucky to get out alive. Our job was to help them plan and keep them supplied. But they knew we were there to help them, so they usually did as we advised. And make no mistake about it, they were very courageous. You didn't have to kick them in the ass to make them fight.
MH: What was the German reaction to guerrilla ambushes?
Bank: If an ambush occurred near a town, the Germans would round up men and boys from the town and shoot them. We tried staging ambushes between towns so that the Germans would not know which one to retaliate against, but they just took hostages from both towns.
MH: Did that cause a problem?
Bank: The mayors of some of the towns began to plead with the guerrillas to move elsewhere, but Henri and the guerrilla chiefs were very tough. They told the mayors that the price of liberation was high, and the people must make the sacrifice.
MH: Was there conflict between guerrilla groups?
Bank: Yes. Our guerrillas were the Forces Françaises de l'Interieur [FFI], the nationalists. Also in our sector were the Franc-Tireurs Partisans [FTP], who were Communists. The FTP actually hijacked one of our resupply drops. While our guerrillas were collecting the canisters on the ground, the FTP caught them unawares and made off with all the equipment. The FTP also became a political problem after liberation, but the people in our sector preferred the FFI.
MH: Did you get involved in any of the political infighting among the guerrilla groups?
Bank: No. That was a job for Henri, our French officer.
Next: Expanding the Operations
Copyright (c) 2000, PRIMEDIA Enthusiast Publications, Inc.
Aaron Bank: Father of the Green Berets
As a member of the Office of Strategic Services, Aaron Bank worked with guerrilla forces--and learned about political struggles behind enemy lines.
By John M. Glenn
Early in July 1944, Aaron Bank and two Frenchmen, each suspended in a parachute harness, drifted silently through the pre-dawn darkness toward a clearing on a forested mountaintop near the town of Alès in southern France. The months that followed would be a defining period for Bank--and, eventually, for the U.S. Army.
Revered today throughout the Special Forces community as "The Father of the Green Berets," now-retired Colonel Bank recently recalled his first steps into guerrilla warfare and covert operations with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in an interview with John M. Glenn. In the comfortable home that he shares with his wife, Catherine, in San Clemente, Calif., the honorary colonel of the 1st Special Forces Regiment is a continent away from New York City, where he was born on November 23, 1902. It was there that his mother and grandfather, both Russian immigrants, taught him the languages that would shape his destiny--French and German.
Military History: You led an interesting life in the Depression years before you joined the U.S. Army. Please tell us about it.
Bank: I was a lifeguard and swimming instructor during the summers at Biarritz, in France, where speaking French and German, as well as Spanish, was a necessity. In the winter I moved on to Nassau, in the Bahamas. You could say I spent those years entirely in the sunshine.
MH: Why did you join the Army?
Bank: In my travels around Europe, it became clear to me that war was coming. In Germany, men were marching around with shovels carried like rifles on their shoulders. You couldn't get any sleep at night because of the torchlight parades. Warmongering songs filled the smoky air in the Bierstüben.
MH: So you enlisted?
Bank: Yes, in 1939. I was commissioned from Officer Candidate School.
MH: How did you come to join the OSS?
Bank: Officers who could speak a foreign language were invited to volunteer. Actually, that was a godsend. In early 1943, I was a tactical training officer for a railroad battalion at Camp Polk, La.--a real hellhole. I was considered too old for combat in the infantry, my original branch. The OSS was my chance to get into the war, and I jumped at it.
MH: What was your first impression of the Office of Strategic Services?
Bank: We trained at the Congressional Country Club in Washington, D.C., which was very plush. Everything was supposed to be top-secret, but when I paid for the taxi ride there, the driver said, "Oh, you're one of those guerrillas." Every cabdriver in town knew what was going on! We trained on the golf course and along the Potomac River. It was mostly commando training. None of the instructors had experienced guerrilla warfare. I was disappointed.
MH: But that changed?
Bank: Most certainly. We got the real McCoy in England. The instructors had all fought with guerrillas in Yugoslavia, Greece and France. The training was outstanding; the living arrangements were excellent.
MH: What aspects of your training in Britain stood out compared with the previous instruction you had received?
Bank: The training--in communications, demolitions, weapons, hand-to-hand combat, subversion, sabotage and guerrilla warfare--was conducted at different manor houses in Scotland and England. There was always a break as we traveled between schools, so we never got stale. And we were kept on our toes. British Major W.E. Fairbairn, the co-developer of the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, took us out one moonless night on a sentry-elimination exercise. Easy, I thought, we've done this before. I crept up to the dummy, jerked the head back and plunged the knife--into a knapsack! It was a lesson about observation that I was glad to learn in England and not in France.
MH: How was the parachute training?
Bank: The most harrowing part was jumping from a balloon, which was required. Because there was no prop blast, you fell about 200 feet before the parachute opened. The balloon was only 800 feet in the air. And the British jumped without reserve parachutes. We didn't exit the aircraft through a door but through a hatch in the floor. I was still nervous about not having a reserve and asked an instructor what I should do if the parachute didn't open. "Do a proper PLF [parachute landing fall]," he said, "roll up your 'chute, take it back to the lass who packed it and see if you can get a date."
MH: Why were the Special Operations teams called "Jedburghs"?
Bank: Jedburghs consisted of two officers and an enlisted radio operator. The name "Jedburgh" was derived from a town in Scotland where Scots, during their wars with England, waged guerrilla warfare. We thought it appropriate.
MH: How were your Special Operations teams selected?
Bank: We actually selected ourselves. It was thought--correctly so--that compatible individuals would form their own natural groups. Most of the countries occupied by the Germans were represented among the Jedburghs. However, by order of General Charles de Gaulle, each team going into France had to have a French officer in it. So the Frenchmen were courted like debutantes at a ball. They were in demand, and they knew it.
MH: Your team consisted of yourself and two Frenchmen?
Bank: Yes. We had an American radio operator initially, but the French officer, Henri, was concerned that if something happened to me he would not be able to communicate effectively with an American. So Jean [the French never revealed their surnames for security reasons] became our radio operator. I'm still in touch with the American radio operator, Bill Thompson, who went on to earn a Croix de Guerre with another team.
MH: With all the different nationalities involved, was there any friction?
Bank: Only once. When our troopship sailed into Oran, it passed markers in the harbor showing where French ships had been sunk by the British fleet after the French capitulation. There was a distinct coolness between the French and British operatives for a while.
MH: Where did you go from Oran?
Bank: To Algiers, where we camped with French colonial troops. Their latrine was anywhere the urge struck, and the ground was littered with soiled toilet paper. Soon many Americans, including myself, were down with fever. I was in the hospital when Henri told me to get well in a hurry, as we were leaving for France that night.
MH: What did you do?
Bank: Still in my pajamas, I sneaked past the military policeman guarding the hospital gate. I had to go AWOL [absent without leave] to go to war.
MH: What did you bring with you when you parachuted into France in July 1944?
Bank: Money, of course. The plane also dropped canisters filled with medical supplies, explosives, ammunition and arms--mostly Sten guns that the British manufactured for about $1 apiece. And a lot of boots. The guerrillas were short on footwear.
MH: Were the guerrillas waiting for you on the ground?
Bank: Yes. They had a truck that ran off of a boiler fired by charcoal--the Germans had all the gasoline--but it ran pretty well, and it carried all the supplies.
MH: How was security?
Bank: As we drove through small towns on our way to the command post, the villagers lined the streets and shouted, "Vive les Américains!" It was hard for the French to keep a secret. That night we stayed in a farmhouse that was supposed to be safe. I told the team to sleep with their boots on. During the night, the alarm was raised, and I jumped out of a window wearing only my underwear, boots and cartridge belt and carrying my rifle. The guerrillas kidded me about that, saying, "Captain, you're out of uniform." But we all escaped. Security was always on the edge. Sometimes it was pretty good and sometimes it was lousy.
MH: What was your primary mission in southern France?
Bank: Initially, we were to lay low, get organized, conduct training and wait for the invasion. The guerrilla chief, Raymond, commandeered a car from a collaborator--that is, he just took it. We drove through the mountains and woods, going from camp to camp. I began to train the guerrilla leaders, and they trained their men. Most of them had been in the French army, so training was not too difficult, but they did have some bad habits.
MH: What sort of bad habits?
Bank: They had a tendency to stay in one place too long, and their camps were too close together. Food was rationed in France, and if a shortage developed anywhere, the Germans could figure out that the populace might be feeding guerrillas. If the Germans swept the area and found a camp, other nearby camps would also end up in the bag. So we kept the guerrillas moving and more dispersed, but close enough so that they could be rapidly assembled for action.
MH: Were there other problems?
Bank: One problem was medical support. It is hard to recruit a guerrilla if he thinks he might suffer a minor wound and then be left behind--perhaps to be tortured, certainly to be killed, by the Germans. We enlisted a French doctor to operate an aid station in a barn and set up a system to move serious cases to hospitals in smaller towns that were relatively safe. Another problem was ammunition. We had all sorts of weapons--American, British, French, German. Many of them used bullets that were similar but not exactly the same.
MH: Was there a problem separating the different types of ammunition?
Bank: Absolutely. In one of our early ambushes we had a truck convoy pinned down when the machine gun stopped firing. We had to withdraw, and we found out later that the machine-gunner had bullets of two different calibers in the belt. When the wrong caliber was fed into the chamber, the gun jammed. In another ambush, we placed mortar fire on a convoy, but instead of high explosives going off, smoke covered the target, and we couldn't see what the Germans were doing. We had to withdraw again. I had told the guerrillas earlier to get rid of the smoke rounds, but the French never throw anything away.
MH: It seems as if the guerrillas didn't always do as they were told. What was the command relationship?
Bank: The guerrillas had their own leaders. If we had tried to take over their operation, we would have been lucky to get out alive. Our job was to help them plan and keep them supplied. But they knew we were there to help them, so they usually did as we advised. And make no mistake about it, they were very courageous. You didn't have to kick them in the ass to make them fight.
MH: What was the German reaction to guerrilla ambushes?
Bank: If an ambush occurred near a town, the Germans would round up men and boys from the town and shoot them. We tried staging ambushes between towns so that the Germans would not know which one to retaliate against, but they just took hostages from both towns.
MH: Did that cause a problem?
Bank: The mayors of some of the towns began to plead with the guerrillas to move elsewhere, but Henri and the guerrilla chiefs were very tough. They told the mayors that the price of liberation was high, and the people must make the sacrifice.
MH: Was there conflict between guerrilla groups?
Bank: Yes. Our guerrillas were the Forces Françaises de l'Interieur [FFI], the nationalists. Also in our sector were the Franc-Tireurs Partisans [FTP], who were Communists. The FTP actually hijacked one of our resupply drops. While our guerrillas were collecting the canisters on the ground, the FTP caught them unawares and made off with all the equipment. The FTP also became a political problem after liberation, but the people in our sector preferred the FFI.
MH: Did you get involved in any of the political infighting among the guerrilla groups?
Bank: No. That was a job for Henri, our French officer.
Next: Expanding the Operations
Copyright (c) 2000, PRIMEDIA Enthusiast Publications, Inc.
Aaron Bank: Father of the Green Berets
As a member of the Office of Strategic Services, Aaron Bank worked with guerrilla forces--and learned about political struggles behind enemy lines.
By John M. Glenn
Early in July 1944, Aaron Bank and two Frenchmen, each suspended in a parachute harness, drifted silently through the pre-dawn darkness toward a clearing on a forested mountaintop near the town of Alès in southern France. The months that followed would be a defining period for Bank--and, eventually, for the U.S. Army.
Revered today throughout the Special Forces community as "The Father of the Green Berets," now-retired Colonel Bank recently recalled his first steps into guerrilla warfare and covert operations with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in an interview with John M. Glenn. In the comfortable home that he shares with his wife, Catherine, in San Clemente, Calif., the honorary colonel of the 1st Special Forces Regiment is a continent away from New York City, where he was born on November 23, 1902. It was there that his mother and grandfather, both Russian immigrants, taught him the languages that would shape his destiny--French and German.
Military History: You led an interesting life in the Depression years before you joined the U.S. Army. Please tell us about it.
Bank: I was a lifeguard and swimming instructor during the summers at Biarritz, in France, where speaking French and German, as well as Spanish, was a necessity. In the winter I moved on to Nassau, in the Bahamas. You could say I spent those years entirely in the sunshine.
MH: Why did you join the Army?
Bank: In my travels around Europe, it became clear to me that war was coming. In Germany, men were marching around with shovels carried like rifles on their shoulders. You couldn't get any sleep at night because of the torchlight parades. Warmongering songs filled the smoky air in the Bierstüben.
MH: So you enlisted?
Bank: Yes, in 1939. I was commissioned from Officer Candidate School.
MH: How did you come to join the OSS?
Bank: Officers who could speak a foreign language were invited to volunteer. Actually, that was a godsend. In early 1943, I was a tactical training officer for a railroad battalion at Camp Polk, La.--a real hellhole. I was considered too old for combat in the infantry, my original branch. The OSS was my chance to get into the war, and I jumped at it.
MH: What was your first impression of the Office of Strategic Services?
Bank: We trained at the Congressional Country Club in Washington, D.C., which was very plush. Everything was supposed to be top-secret, but when I paid for the taxi ride there, the driver said, "Oh, you're one of those guerrillas." Every cabdriver in town knew what was going on! We trained on the golf course and along the Potomac River. It was mostly commando training. None of the instructors had experienced guerrilla warfare. I was disappointed.
MH: But that changed?
Bank: Most certainly. We got the real McCoy in England. The instructors had all fought with guerrillas in Yugoslavia, Greece and France. The training was outstanding; the living arrangements were excellent.
MH: What aspects of your training in Britain stood out compared with the previous instruction you had received?
Bank: The training--in communications, demolitions, weapons, hand-to-hand combat, subversion, sabotage and guerrilla warfare--was conducted at different manor houses in Scotland and England. There was always a break as we traveled between schools, so we never got stale. And we were kept on our toes. British Major W.E. Fairbairn, the co-developer of the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, took us out one moonless night on a sentry-elimination exercise. Easy, I thought, we've done this before. I crept up to the dummy, jerked the head back and plunged the knife--into a knapsack! It was a lesson about observation that I was glad to learn in England and not in France.
MH: How was the parachute training?
Bank: The most harrowing part was jumping from a balloon, which was required. Because there was no prop blast, you fell about 200 feet before the parachute opened. The balloon was only 800 feet in the air. And the British jumped without reserve parachutes. We didn't exit the aircraft through a door but through a hatch in the floor. I was still nervous about not having a reserve and asked an instructor what I should do if the parachute didn't open. "Do a proper PLF [parachute landing fall]," he said, "roll up your 'chute, take it back to the lass who packed it and see if you can get a date."
MH: Why were the Special Operations teams called "Jedburghs"?
Bank: Jedburghs consisted of two officers and an enlisted radio operator. The name "Jedburgh" was derived from a town in Scotland where Scots, during their wars with England, waged guerrilla warfare. We thought it appropriate.
MH: How were your Special Operations teams selected?
Bank: We actually selected ourselves. It was thought--correctly so--that compatible individuals would form their own natural groups. Most of the countries occupied by the Germans were represented among the Jedburghs. However, by order of General Charles de Gaulle, each team going into France had to have a French officer in it. So the Frenchmen were courted like debutantes at a ball. They were in demand, and they knew it.
MH: Your team consisted of yourself and two Frenchmen?
Bank: Yes. We had an American radio operator initially, but the French officer, Henri, was concerned that if something happened to me he would not be able to communicate effectively with an American. So Jean [the French never revealed their surnames for security reasons] became our radio operator. I'm still in touch with the American radio operator, Bill Thompson, who went on to earn a Croix de Guerre with another team.
MH: With all the different nationalities involved, was there any friction?
Bank: Only once. When our troopship sailed into Oran, it passed markers in the harbor showing where French ships had been sunk by the British fleet after the French capitulation. There was a distinct coolness between the French and British operatives for a while.
MH: Where did you go from Oran?
Bank: To Algiers, where we camped with French colonial troops. Their latrine was anywhere the urge struck, and the ground was littered with soiled toilet paper. Soon many Americans, including myself, were down with fever. I was in the hospital when Henri told me to get well in a hurry, as we were leaving for France that night.
MH: What did you do?
Bank: Still in my pajamas, I sneaked past the military policeman guarding the hospital gate. I had to go AWOL [absent without leave] to go to war.
MH: What did you bring with you when you parachuted into France in July 1944?
Bank: Money, of course. The plane also dropped canisters filled with medical supplies, explosives, ammunition and arms--mostly Sten guns that the British manufactured for about $1 apiece. And a lot of boots. The guerrillas were short on footwear.
MH: Were the guerrillas waiting for you on the ground?
Bank: Yes. They had a truck that ran off of a boiler fired by charcoal--the Germans had all the gasoline--but it ran pretty well, and it carried all the supplies.
MH: How was security?
Bank: As we drove through small towns on our way to the command post, the villagers lined the streets and shouted, "Vive les Américains!" It was hard for the French to keep a secret. That night we stayed in a farmhouse that was supposed to be safe. I told the team to sleep with their boots on. During the night, the alarm was raised, and I jumped out of a window wearing only my underwear, boots and cartridge belt and carrying my rifle. The guerrillas kidded me about that, saying, "Captain, you're out of uniform." But we all escaped. Security was always on the edge. Sometimes it was pretty good and sometimes it was lousy.
MH: What was your primary mission in southern France?
Bank: Initially, we were to lay low, get organized, conduct training and wait for the invasion. The guerrilla chief, Raymond, commandeered a car from a collaborator--that is, he just took it. We drove through the mountains and woods, going from camp to camp. I began to train the guerrilla leaders, and they trained their men. Most of them had been in the French army, so training was not too difficult, but they did have some bad habits.
MH: What sort of bad habits?
Bank: They had a tendency to stay in one place too long, and their camps were too close together. Food was rationed in France, and if a shortage developed anywhere, the Germans could figure out that the populace might be feeding guerrillas. If the Germans swept the area and found a camp, other nearby camps would also end up in the bag. So we kept the guerrillas moving and more dispersed, but close enough so that they could be rapidly assembled for action.
MH: Were there other problems?
Bank: One problem was medical support. It is hard to recruit a guerrilla if he thinks he might suffer a minor wound and then be left behind--perhaps to be tortured, certainly to be killed, by the Germans. We enlisted a French doctor to operate an aid station in a barn and set up a system to move serious cases to hospitals in smaller towns that were relatively safe. Another problem was ammunition. We had all sorts of weapons--American, British, French, German. Many of them used bullets that were similar but not exactly the same.
MH: Was there a problem separating the different types of ammunition?
Bank: Absolutely. In one of our early ambushes we had a truck convoy pinned down when the machine gun stopped firing. We had to withdraw, and we found out later that the machine-gunner had bullets of two different calibers in the belt. When the wrong caliber was fed into the chamber, the gun jammed. In another ambush, we placed mortar fire on a convoy, but instead of high explosives going off, smoke covered the target, and we couldn't see what the Germans were doing. We had to withdraw again. I had told the guerrillas earlier to get rid of the smoke rounds, but the French never throw anything away.
MH: It seems as if the guerrillas didn't always do as they were told. What was the command relationship?
Bank: The guerrillas had their own leaders. If we had tried to take over their operation, we would have been lucky to get out alive. Our job was to help them plan and keep them supplied. But they knew we were there to help them, so they usually did as we advised. And make no mistake about it, they were very courageous. You didn't have to kick them in the ass to make them fight.
MH: What was the German reaction to guerrilla ambushes?
Bank: If an ambush occurred near a town, the Germans would round up men and boys from the town and shoot them. We tried staging ambushes between towns so that the Germans would not know which one to retaliate against, but they just took hostages from both towns.
MH: Did that cause a problem?
Bank: The mayors of some of the towns began to plead with the guerrillas to move elsewhere, but Henri and the guerrilla chiefs were very tough. They told the mayors that the price of liberation was high, and the people must make the sacrifice.
MH: Was there conflict between guerrilla groups?
Bank: Yes. Our guerrillas were the Forces Françaises de l'Interieur [FFI], the nationalists. Also in our sector were the Franc-Tireurs Partisans [FTP], who were Communists. The FTP actually hijacked one of our resupply drops. While our guerrillas were collecting the canisters on the ground, the FTP caught them unawares and made off with all the equipment. The FTP also became a political problem after liberation, but the people in our sector preferred the FFI.
MH: Did you get involved in any of the political infighting among the guerrilla groups?
Bank: No. That was a job for Henri, our French officer.
Next: Expanding the Operations
Copyright (c) 2000, PRIMEDIA Enthusiast Publications, Inc.
PART 2 - Ugh posted part 1 twice in the same post - oh well.
MH: When did you expand your operations?
Bank: We went all-out on the night of August 14, 1944, the day before the Allied landing in southern France.
MH: What was your mission after the Allied landings?
Bank: We prevented the Germans from dispersing into the mountains. We kept them channeled in the Rhône Valley, where the Air Force pounded them, and we cut off their retreat to the north.
MH: How many guerrillas did you have to carry out those operations?
Bank: In our sector, we had 2,500 to 3,000.
MH: How many Germans were tied down by the guerrillas?
Bank: There were dozens of guerrilla bands and Jedburghs between Marseille and Lyon. I would guess that at least five German divisions were busy fighting us all.
MH: How many German casualties did the guerrillas cause?
Bank: About 1,000 in our sector, including prisoners. The guerrillas did not want to take prisoners. They didn't want to guard them and feed them, but I told them they couldn't fight a war that way. We kept the prisoners in town jails throughout our area.
MH: What was the reaction to liberation in southern France?
Bank: They were jubilant. In our sector, the main German escape route ran through Alès. We had ambush sites outside of town. When word came that the Germans were coming, everything shut down. All the shops were closed, windows were shuttered, and there was no one on the street. When word came that the Germans had been driven back, the cafes opened, wine flowed, people crowded into the streets, and the firemen's band played. Then word would come of another German column approaching, and the town would shut down again. This was repeated over and over again during the next three or four days until advanced elements of the U.S. Seventh Army arrived.
MH: What happened then?
Bank: The Seventh Army continued in hot pursuit of the enemy, and we were ordered to mop up isolated pockets of Germans still holding out in the towns. There was a lot of bloody house-to-house fighting. That was when we took most of our casualties. Then it became a race between the FFI and the FTP to liberate towns and set up local governments. Whenever the FTP got there first, they set up a Communist-controlled administration and left a security detachment to keep it in power.
MH: Were there any armed clashes between the FFI and FTP?
Bank: No. Henri and Raymond wisely declined to start a local civil war and concentrated on liberating as many towns as possible.
MH: So the FFI never went head-to-head with the FTP?
Bank: Only once. The FTP had beaten us to Nîmes and kicked local officials out of city hall. A delegation of citizens came to us and asked for help. Raymond told them the U.S. Seventh Army would be there soon to establish order, but the citizens insisted that we act immediately. We wanted revenge for the earlier hijacking of our supplies anyway, so we swept past FTP roadblocks and into the city. We took some sniping from rooftops, but soon we were at city hall. Outside, people were chanting, "En bas les Communistes!" Raymond told the Communists they could leave in safety if they left now. They departed under a shower of rocks and bottles thrown by the crowd. We had our revenge for the hijacked supplies.
MH: What happened next?
Bank: Raymond, the guerrilla commandant, shoved me onto the city hall balcony to make a speech. When the crowd saw my American uniform with the American flag sewn on the right sleeve, there was a roar: "Vive les Américains!" It was a very moving experience.
MH: When did the fighting end in your area of operations?
Bank: In September. When American and French troops secured the area, the guerrillas were taken into the French army. I said goodbye and reported to OSS headquarters in London in search of another mission.
MH: Did you get one?
Bank: Not right away. The war was winding down in Europe, and it seemed that many of us would be sent to China. Then came the unexpected German counterattack and the Battle of the Bulge. Early in January 1945, I was given the Iron Cross mission.
MH: What was that?
Bank: The Allies feared that top Nazi officials, defended by die-hard Schützstaffel [SS] troops, would flee to the Austrian Alps and make their way to Spain or some other sympathetic neutral country. The idea was that I would lead a group of German defectors, military and civilian, and parachute with them into the Inn Valley in Austria. Dressed in German army uniforms, we would conduct subversion, sabotage and guerrilla actions. But our main objective was to capture high-ranking Nazis before they could reach the redoubt in the Alps. When OSS chief Maj. Gen. William Donovan was briefed on the mission, he declared: "Don't limit it to the capture of Nazi bigwigs. I want Hitler. Tell Bank to get Hitler!"
MH: Did you speak German well enough to pass as a German soldier?
Bank: Not really, but I also spoke French with an accent. A false identity was created. I became Henri Marchand, a Nazi sympathizer who was born in Martinique. The Germans probably had no idea what kind of accent a fellow from Martinique would have, and it would also account for my ungrammatical German. And I would be masquerading as a corporal in the ranks, not as the German company commander.
MH: How did you recruit Germans for the Iron Cross mission?
Bank: We started with a German dissident we called Karl. He had lost an arm fighting for the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War and had fought with the French Resistance. Karl had a list of German prisoners of war [POWs] who might be interested in clandestine work if they were offered early release after the war. Karl then introduced us to Max and Hermann, two other Germans who had fought for the Loyalists in Spain. They would be trained to accompany me into Austria. We suspected they might be Communists, but "Wild Bill" Donovan's philosophy was, "Use them as long as they kill Nazis." An OSS team, Karl and I then toured POW camps. We selected more than 125 prisoners. We also recruited, from a holding camp, about 50 German civilians, almost all of whom had fought in the French Resistance.
MH: How were they trained?
Bank: We trained for about eight weeks on a large estate at St. Germain, west of Paris, practicing raids, ambushes, hand-to-hand combat--everything that we would need to accomplish our mission. We had a lot of physical training [PT] and conditioning runs. The Germans learned fast but complained that the PT was much harder than it had been in the German army. It was during the training phase that we screened out individuals who didn't measure up, and we selected others to be platoon sergeants and a company commander. We also did a lot of German close-order drill. Parachute training was very limited, and I never told them that ground school was all they were going to get. It wouldn't be the first time that a man's first jump was into combat.
MH: What happened next?
Bank: We traveled to Dijon, where the OSS had a staging compound. All decked out in our German uniforms, we waited. Then the jinx set in. Weather over the Alps was bad, and it stayed bad for about a week. Then word came from OSS London: Iron Cross was aborted.
MH: Why was the mission canceled?
Bank: I'm not sure. I've heard a lot of reasons--that the war was winding down and it was too risky, that the State Department objected to putting more than 100 suspected Communists into Austria at that time, that maybe we had learned of Adolf Hitler's suicide. It's a pity though; in terms of numbers, it would have been the biggest single OSS special operation of the war.
MH: Where did you go from there?
Bank: To China. I arrived at Nanking in June 1945. In a few days I was given a new mission. I was to arm and train a company of Vietnamese soldiers of the French army and three French officers and lead them in a raid on a Japanese headquarters on the Red River near Hanoi. We would have to infiltrate about 130 miles through dense jungle in mountainous terrain, all of it controlled by the Japanese. We were ready to go early in July. And then the jinx struck again. The mission was first delayed and then canceled. Intelligence reported that if we tried to infiltrate French elements into Indochina, Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh guerrillas would turn from harassing the Japanese and attack us. They had no intention of allowing the French to return.
MH: But you did go to Indochina?
Bank: Yes. But first I was promoted to major. Then, in September, a team of special operations and special intelligence personnel and I parachuted into the Vientiane area of Laos. We moved south to the 16th parallel to search for hidden POW camps and French refugees. We also reported on general conditions in the area. We found 14 French refugees in the Vientiane hospital. They didn't want to be evacuated, so we left food and medical supplies. We questioned Laotian officials, but they had no knowledge of any POW camps. We crossed the Mekong River into Siam [now Thailand] and continued on toward Nong Khai. We saw several British Special Air Service teams with canisters of weapons and ammunition. We didn't know what they were doing there or who the weapons were for. We crossed back into Laos at Thakhet, and on a reconnaissance north of town we found 80 French refugees who had been interned there by the Japanese. They needed food and medical supplies, which we gave them. We offered to move them across the river into Siam, but they wanted to stay in the hope that the French would soon be in control. We moved into the governor's house. There we met Thao Pheng, a member of the Laotian royal family. He provided a vehicle and driver for us. At Thakhet I saw a funeral for a dozen people, half of them women, who had been bayoneted. Thao Pheng said French commandos had been raiding from the south almost every night. The Laotians, who wanted an independent Laos, fought back with whatever they had--often hunting guns and rifles that the Japanese had given them. This was an explosive situation.
MH: How so?
Bank: French Indochina had been divided along the 16th parallel for military control. North of the line was the American China Command sector, while the area south of it was controlled by the Southeast Asia Command, a British force with French commandos attached. The French were raiding north of the line in violation of Allied policy. I radioed for instructions. Several days passed without a reply, during which the French continued their incursions. I decided that Major Charles "Mike" Holland, my executive officer and a veteran of Indochina operations, and I had to go to the Hanoi headquarters of China Command. But first we reconnoitered the routes the commandos were using for their raids and suggested some ambush sites the locals could use. Then we set off for Hanoi, several days' drive away.
MH: Were you given instructions in Hanoi?
Bank: Sort of. All I would be able to do was tell the French to stay out of our zone. I had no authority to fight back, but it was better than nothing. I wanted to leave Hanoi right away, but our vehicle had two scorched valves, and it would take three or four days for repairs to be made. That's where Holland's acquaintance with Ho Chi Minh came in handy. Ho was traveling south the next day and offered us a ride.
MH: What was your impression of Ho Chi Minh?
Bank: He was a little guy, with a thin wispy beard--and he spoke excellent French. But he hated--despised--the French. We rode with him as far as Hue and had quite a discussion. He said that he admired Americans and hoped for an independent Vietnam with political and economic ties to the United States. "I like you Americans," he said. "You are not colonizers like the British and the French. You gave Cuba its freedom, and you are going to do the same with the Philippines." I thought he was on the level. I knew he was trained in Moscow and was a Communist, but he was a nationalist first. He would have been another [Josip Broz] Tito. At Hue, he arranged a car and driver for us to continue our trip south.
MH: What happened when you returned to Thakhet?
Bank: The attacks in the area had continued, even intensified with the addition of mortar fire. I arranged a parley with the French commando leader, but when we met I became convinced that he was a British officer in French uniform. I told him to keep his people out of the American zone. I got his answer that night, in a heavier than usual barrage of mortar fire. The British and the French were working hand-in-hand to win back their lost prestige in Southeast Asia in the hope of keeping their colonies--a vain hope, as it turned out. It wasn't long before we were recalled to Nanking, where we learned that the OSS had been ordered to disband on October 1, several weeks before our arrival. We were among the last teams to be called in.
MH: Were you decorated by the Allies for your wartime service?
Bank: I was awarded the Soldier's Medal, Bronze Star with V device [for valor], the French Croix de Guerre and the British "mentioned in dispatches" emblem.
MH: Has the Special Forces lived up to your expectations?
Bank: It certainly has. I envisioned that Special Forces would conduct OSS missions; that they would be more teachers than Rambos. But, because the number of missions grew like Topsy, that has not always been the case. In Vietnam--where Special Forces soldiers won 17 Medals of Honor and 90 Distinguished Service Crosses--they conducted anti-guerrilla warfare with indigenous troops that they trained. That was good, but they also were used practically as infantry. That was not their function under my doctrine. I don't believe that conventional military minds have grasped the potential of Special Forces. In Haiti, we had an infantry division sitting around, wondering what to do, while 20 Special Forces teams were out running the country. There were enough dissidents in Panama that 20 Special Forces teams could have raised a revolution that would have taken care of Manuel Noriega. Instead, we launched an invasion in 1989 and then had to pay for the damage.
MH: What future roles do you see for Special Forces?
Bank: Pretty much what they are doing now. Special Forces teams are deployed to more than 20 countries, training foreign troops and building rapport with those troops. That makes them ambassadors in some degree, maybe the best ambassadors we have.
I'm glad to hear Moore is alive and well. His book "The Fifth Estate" is a great read and filled with true stuff. JMO.