Bringing Language Skills to the Battlefield.

Imagine a Soldier, cleaning his weapon and in the background you can hear the TV reporting news in Korean.  Picture another Soldier having a conversation in Thai or Tagalog, discussing a plan for training.  The language training experiences for 1^st Special Forces Group (Airborne) are shaping the way the battles, hearts and minds are won in wartime.

The Green Berets take what they learn in the classroom, and in their spare time, and apply the teaching in a field environment to make any mission a success.  Building relationships with the local people of the country is vital to the success of any operation, regardless of what the desired end-state may be.  Wars are not won through strong-arm tactics alone, but through interactions and relations made along the way.

1SFG (A) used the annual exercise, Foal Eagle, as an opportunity to further educate and also evaluate the Green Berets on their practical language and cultural skills.  The Defense Language Proficiency Test is used to test the knowledge of Soldiers on their ability to read, listen and understand a language.  The DLPT is designed with the Military Intelligence Soldier in mind and is a poor measure of skills that are vital to the Special Forces missions.  The training exercises like Foal Eagle tests what the written and listening tests cannot: effective inter-cultural communication.  This exercise is a pre-cursor to future missions and is a great tool for not only the Green Berets, but for their commanders as well.

“The commanders and language program administrators receive the true-measure of their Soldiers’ abilities through these exercises.  And the Soldiers confidence is bolstered through their abilities to communicate and improve on their speaking skills,” said Sergeant First Class Todd Amis.

It’s important to remember, when any Soldier enters a village, they aren’t dressed as the local populace, but rather as warriors.  Their appearance can be quite frightening to any villager who has never seen a TV, computer or American Soldiers either; so it is very important that Soldiers can immediately express intent and break down barriers with communication and cultural understating with the host-nation peoples.

The evaluation exercise was set up to mimic villages, with Korean and Chinese speakers.  The Green Berets are trained to go into an area, build rapport, and have the host-nation peoples provide them with the information needed to complete missions.  How the Green Berets create that rapport has everything to do with cultural training and communication.

One of the teams had a very well-versed Chinese speaker.  SFC Matt Carey used his language skills to build rapport and taught the “villager” how to perform a medical procedure, and the entire instruction was conducted speaking only Chinese Mandarin.  The ability to communicate, form relationships and impart knowledge was affectively used, and was in turn, reciprocated with intelligence on enemy whereabouts, manpower and weapons.

Through medical civic action projects (MEDCAPs), children and adults were receiving treatment for long-suffering ailments and routine vaccinations, which would be routine for American treatment.  These actions showed the legitimacy of the United States.  Actions speak louder than words and projects such as MEDCAPs show commitment to follow through with aide to foreign countries. 

Several fluent linguists, both civilian and Soldiers alike, were either contracted or volunteered to participate as villagers for the exercise.  Unknown to the Green Berets was just how much foreign language would be utilized in this event.  The “villagers” spoke only in their foreign language, never breaking character by using English.  This complete language immersion came as a shock to many of the Special Forces Soldiers.

Green Berets who were the most proficient in Korean and Chinese were now heavily used as interpreters between teams.  They were quite literally forced to use language and act as interpreters and translators, rather than performing their regular duty job.  But their goals remained the same: build rapport, collect intelligence and complete the mission.

Throughout the exercise, Green Berets experienced great self-efficacy and were more confident in their abilities to communicate and impart knowledge in realistic situations, which required Soldiers to teach host-nation people in warfare.  The Green Berets re-affirmed their strengths, weaknesses and learned what actions or language may be offensive or misunderstood in their target-country language.  Voice Response Translators were used in some instances to convert English to either Korean or Chinese and was affective in certain situations, however it could not replace having a person on the ground, speaking the language and understanding the cultural complexities.

“Rapport builds success,” said Colonel Eric P. Wendt, commander of first Special Forces group.  “In order to be successful, you need to build control through rapport first, and then you build legitimacy.”

Exercises like Foal Eagle not only test the Soldiering duties of the Green Berets, they push the language and cultural importance of war to the forefront.  Having real scenarios like these, only improve upon what Green Berets are taught at 1SFG (A).