Delta Force by Charlie A. Beckwith Page A

me.

SIX
    KATHERINE AND THE girls went to Michigan and I caught the first train for Fort Bragg. I’d shaved the morning we docked but not again. I rode all night, arriving in Fayetteville, North Carolina, around 10:00 A.M . I took my bags and grabbed a cab to Smoke Bomb Hill, the location of the 7th Special Forces Group. It had been a year since I’d been in my old headquarters and I saw many new faces. I told the adjutant who I was and that I had, just the day before, returned from England. “Well,” he said, “you need to see the deputy commander.”
    I was still in civilian clothes and probably looked somewhat scruffy. But I really didn’t care. I was a man with a mission. I found Lt. Col. Ed Mattice seated behind his desk. I don’t remember exactly how he put it, but his meaning was clear. “Captain, you’ve been gone for a year and we got things here that are happening every day. I’m going to assign you down to A Company and you can sort of put your report in when you want to.” In other words, “We don’t really care where you’ve been or that now you’re back.” I spent a lot of time listening and he did a lot of talking, trying to impress me with his experience. The only thing he impressed me with was that he seemed to be an old man who was worried about getting promoted to full colonel.
    A few minutes later Lt. Col. Mert Kelty, who commanded A Company, came along followed by his little Dalmatian dog. This particular officer was a bachelor who lived with this dog.Colonel Kelty immediately told me that I needed a shave and a cleanup. He said I was to accompany him down to the Company area.
    We started across the parade ground. I said to the good colonel—he, too, seemed a somewhat elderly gentleman—“It’s a beautiful day, sir. Why don’t we drop down and knock off fifty push-ups? Which hand, sir, right or left? You just make the choice.” Colonel Kelty was flabbergasted. I’m sure he thought to himself, How in the hell did I get this buffoon hung around my neck?
    We marched into A Company’s headquarters building, and behind a desk sat a forty-pound-overweight sergeant major who I’d casually known in the 82nd and who, I knew, had never been in the mud of the Special Operations business. The sergeant major immediately snapped, “It’ll cost you fifteen cents, Captain, for having your hat on.” I told the sergeant major I wasn’t paying no goddamn fifteen cents for having no hat on.
    In Colonel Kelty’s office I said, “Sir, I don’t think A Company is big enough for me and you, and since you are the commander here, I think I should leave.” He said, “I think you should, too.”
    I marched out of A Company about five minutes after I’d arrived. I suspect at that moment Lieutenant Colonel Kelty called up Lieutenant Colonel Mattice and the two of them tried to figure a nice way, without embarrassing themselves, of drumming old Beckwith out of the 7th Special Forces Group.
    I went back to Group Headquarters and said to the adjutant, “I would like to have permission to look around and find a home somewhere out of the Special Forces community. I’m disgusted.” All this happened within half a day. I was disillusioned and frightened. After lunch I sat back and thought that this was the most ludicrous thing in the world to have happen. I said, “Hey, boy, you’re too smart for this.”
    I remembered that Col. Clyde Russell, who had commanded the 7th Special Forces Group for about nine months while I was in England, had just been reassigned to the XVIII Airborne Corps as the operations officer. I’d known Colonel Russelland always gave him high marks. I determined I’d go see him to get some guidance. I couldn’t see him that afternoon, but made an appointment for the next day. The rest of the first day I spent going around visiting some of my