Name: How US Army Special Forces (Green Berets) Actually Work | Authorized Account | Insider
Uploaded: 2025-09-07T14:53:18.000Z
Duration: 43 min 29 s
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I was a captain in the Green Berets for six years.

In 2012, I lost both my legs above the knees when an IED exploded.

And this is everything I'm authorized to tell you.

There is no other unit in the world that does what the Green Berets do because Green Berets look at problem sets a little bit differently.

I can kill person X, but what sort of second and third order effects does that cause?

Maybe we should approach them and bring them in and have them work for us.

Nation building is going in and supporting country X.

The Green Berets are sent to that country to help become a force multiplier and train up an army, train up a police force, and ensure security in that country.

Because from security, there's a lot of trickle-down effects from that.

I'd say one of my biggest personal professional successes, and I'd say my team as well, was our deployment in 2010 to Ruzgan to the Chutu Valley.

If you look on the map, it's right in between the Helmand and Kandahar province.

I was kind of the heartbeat of the Taliban.

The third group team was in the middle of a big clearing operation, and they kind of hit a point of no man's land, and they couldn't break up into that valley any further.

We picked up from that third group team, and at first we tried to push into the valley.

We as a team did some thinking, and we realized that to be truly successful in Afghanistan at this juncture, we needed to do something different.

And we knew that for us to do that properly, we had to be living and engage with the villagers every day.

So the next go around, instead of us trying to do this big clearing operation over a course of three days and just clearing compounds and trying to kill or capture whoever was there and then leaving, what we did was we actually skipped a whole area that we deemed as dangerous, air inserted into one area of a very Northern portion of that village, did a river crossing, and then worked with the villagers beforehand that wanted us there.

So we actually picked a compound that was like a goat pen and nobody wanted, and said, hey, we're here, and we're not going anywhere.

We actually picked the compound because we didn't want to look as like we were just taking the nicest compound.

And so more locals were willing to work with us.

We were able to start to slowly build up a true local security force.

The Taliban didn't know what to do because we just totally planted our flag in the middle of a major logistical chain of theirs, and our villagers that were happy to have us there were supporting them and literally fighting shoulder to shoulder with them right next to them, doing long range foot patrols up into the mountains to go conduct ambushes on the Taliban, setting up checkpoints and sitting up on the checkpoints with them for days at a time, which they hadn't experienced before of, hey, these Americans are actually here living with us and eating our food and part of the tribe.

It gained their support and that huge rapport, the rapport building, which is so critical for us as SF guys.

Every night you're eating Afghan chicken or Afghan goat or Afghan sheep and rice.

And if you're lucky, maybe there was okra or some like stewed tomatoes and a giant piece of flatbread.

We were able to start to slowly recruit Afghans that were like, holy, the Americans with beards, they're here.

They're not going back to their fire base.

We went in there with maybe the promise of five Afghans.

By the end of that trip, we had a 90 plus man fighting force.

Well, we hired about 300 villagers to build up their road, leveraging different government agencies,

USAID and state and whoever else, and repave this road.

And once we had security and we repaved the road, well now comes in commerce.

And all of a sudden we see the bazaar open up again in this village where there was nothing.

So it was just interesting to see all the trickle down effects of once you're able to do the kinetic piece of the operation and, you know, kill, capture, and remove whoever off the battlefield that's a bad actor.

And the bigger piece is that that nation building piece, or for us at the time, you know, is that kind of the village building piece or the province building piece, but it's the same thing.

Usually when I'm explaining to people what the Green Berets do and who we are, they have no idea of what we really do, right?

And to be honest, that's kind of the allure of it.

You don't necessarily want your adversaries knowing who you are and what you do.

The motto of the Green Berets is De Oppresso Libere.

And it's Latin for to free the oppressed.

It's we're there to help people and you're there to do good for others and the selfless service piece, which I love that aspect of it.

The Green Berets are known as one of the most elite units in the US military.

Office of Strategic Services, which was formed during World War II.

I believe in 1952, the OSS split, and it was the CIA and special forces.

General Donovan, the original commander for the OSS, when people were asking what type of candidate that he was looking for, to fill the role that the OSS was set up to conduct during World War II, he said, I'm looking for Princeton graduates that can win bar fights.

They just don't fly around in helicopters at night doing cool guy stuff.

I see him in the next morning in meetings, meeting with the mayor, meeting with the police chief.

At the same time, half the team's out back training up, you know, the national SWAT team that they work with to go do missions.

Their intelligence sergeant is constantly walking around and doing meetings with Iraqi soldiers.

Constantly walking around and doing meetings with Iraqis and sync meetings with the rest of the conventional forces.

So just seeing that they were kind of their own standalone group, and they were very effective what they did,

I saw that and I was like, I wanna go do that.

We're sent into regions and parts of the world to either help bring up a country or take down a country.

And whenever I'm asked about, you know, what is it that Green Berets do,

Army Rangers and Navy SEALs, they're kind of like checkers masters because they're the best at what they do.

Green Berets are, I think, more of chess masters, and that's not to put one down and say one game is better than the other.

There's similarities between the two games.

It's just that for us, there's a lot more moves on the board that we're able to do because we work a lot more with government agencies, other nations' governments, other nations' military more closely and combined with them than the other units do.

As an officer, there's a lot of gates that you have to pass even before attending selection that enlisted guys don't, one of those being just an on-paper selection process, and I know some of my West Point classmates that applied on paper and then didn't even get invited to attend SFAS, Special Forces Assessment and Selection.

SFAS had always been anywhere from 24 to 29 days, and I think they did that just to keep people guessing, so that way you couldn't game selection.

If you went to selection and I went the next month, you couldn't be able to tell me, hey, the first day you're gonna do this, the second day you're gonna do this to prep for it.

It's not the same course every time, but you're gonna do the same stuff every time.

When I went, because the Global War on Terror was hopping at the time, right, in 2008,

Afghanistan was heavy, they condensed everything to 14 days to try and produce more Green Berets.

When I was starting to train up for SFAS,

We'd spend like an hour walking with your rucksack on of like 70 pounds, but you'd also have maybe a telephone pole on top of that, and you're lined up with somebody else that has that same telephone pole, and you just, you walk miles and miles and miles with this telephone pole on your back, or you guys would take turns carrying a telephone pole and with your rucksack on your back, or maybe you'd show up one day and it would be like a 10-mile run.

Selection is just a mental and physical kick in the nuts.

I was probably the most in shape I was ready to go to selection, and by the time I finished selection,

I remember after finishing the last, the very last portion of selection, which is called the trek, which after everything that you do, you do this anywhere from like 25 to 30-mile road march.

You really don't know the exact distance.

You can't have any way to keep track of it with like pace counting, and they just tell you, line up on the cones with the prescribed packing list, which is always around like 80 pounds dry, so then you put the water in there too, so you're probably at like 90 pounds, and then they tell you launch, and they just tell you to keep following the chem lights, and so you're just walking and walking and walking and walking.

You're so broken physically, so you get like a glimpse at a person's true soul and personality, but I ended up walking eight hours and 20 minutes nonstop basically.

I think my friend and I said that we stopped for like five minutes to grab some food, but we knew that you couldn't stop too long because you get too comfortable.

You cross the finish line, and you're on this gravel, and you drop your rucksack, and you're in formation.

It felt like the bottom of my feet were hit with a baseball bat just over and over and over again because you can't just stand there.

You have to like kind of shift and change feet because your feet are so bruised, and they're so blistered up.

I remember walking to the showers afterwards, and it was just, it was so painful trying to walk around on your feet after walking for almost nine hours.

It's still, you know, even after losing my legs, it's still one of those like fond memories

I have of my feet and just how painful it was on my feet.

Selection is a huge mind-f**k, and I went through a reverse cycle.

Sometimes they just keep you up because they don't want you to allow to get so much sleep for whatever reason.

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How US Army Special Forces (Green Berets) Actually Work | Authorized Account | Insider

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