May 01, 2006
Lost in the shuffle
Det 1’s combat record showed it could stand out among spec ops, but the Corps cut short this unit’s stellar story

By Gidget Fuentes
Times staff writer

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Tensions were flaring in the Iraqi town of Kut as insurgents took over key buildings in the city along the Tigris River south of Baghdad.

An Army Special Forces “A” team, supported by a small detachment of Marine air-naval gunfire liaisons, had been working with the Ukrainian military, which was holed up in its base when insurgents overran the local police station.

Over five days in August 2004, the “A” team fought from its safe house, taking casualties before it requested support from headquarters.


That call for help went to a highly trained team of leathernecks who, at the time, represented an experimental unit that marked the Marine Corps’ official foray into the world of special operations forces.

Enemy fighters had taken over key parts of the city, “and we had to get it back. So we just helped the SF guys out doing that,” said Master Gunnery Sgt. Charles Padilla, the senior man and recon team leader.

“We got there just in the right time.”

Within hours and under cover of night, a 16-member team from Marine Corps Special Operations Command Detachment 1 — including reconnaissance scouts, snipers, fire-support coordinators, communicators and radio recon operators — flew from its base near Baghdad to a nearby strip and worked its way into the city. The Marines arrived around 1 a.m. and linked up with Special Forces.

For one week, Det 1 and the Special Forces “A” team operated together, pulling security for local officials, taking the high ground around the city and river to provide cover and directing aircraft to strike buildings housing insurgent fighters.

When an Army Stryker brigade combat team arrived days later, Det 1 stayed to help quell the insurgents and plan the eventual retaking of the city before heading to Najaf, which was teeming with insurgents.

The men said it was a seamless blend of skills and high-tech capabilities that the Army units, including one battalion commanded by a Ranger-trained officer, welcomed with open arms.

“They just used us as if we were another one of their teams,” Padilla said, adding that without the Det’s capability to control and synchronize fires, and do command and control, “the Stryker battalions would have went in blind.”

The Det team’s accomplishment, repeated in similar fashion during the intense battle for Najaf later that month, is among the highlights of a combat deployment by an experimental unit that has stayed off the public’s radar.

Det 1 broke ground June 20, 2003, as a “proof of concept” designed to see whether Marines should become part of U.S. Special Operations Command. The Marines, who numbered 102 when they deployed, jumped into intense training before leaving on schedule in April 2004 for Iraq to a six-month deployment that, by most accounts, was successful in proving the Corps should have a seat at SOCom’s table of Army, Navy and Air Force commandos.

But a year after they returned home, after capturing or killing nine insurgent cell leaders and conducting 23 successful direct-action raids, Det 1’s men still hadn’t received new deployment orders. They got only slight attention from Corps leaders and had no idea what was next for them.

The official word arrived before Christmas like an unwelcome relative: The Det would be axed.

The deactivation ceremony, held March 10 at Camp Pendleton, was a low-key affair compared with the activation ceremony of Marine Corps Special Operations Command, known as MarSOC, two weeks earlier.

Despite the difference in fanfare, MarSOC wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Det 1, said Lt. Gen. Jan Huly, the Corps’ director for plans, policies and operations.

“They broke trail for the rest of the Marine Corps to show that we could stand up and play with those guys in a new type of warfare to a degree and to a magnitude that we hadn’t considered before,” Huly said in a telephone interview.

“There’s no doubt they did great things. Would we like to have 10 or 15 of those [detachments]? Sure,” he said, adding that analyses and evaluations showed “we just couldn’t afford” duplicating the unit.

As a result, Det 1 wasn’t made part of the new command. It got lost amid delays in standing up MarSOC, which came a year after officials’ initial plans.

Time wasn’t on Det 1’s side. It made less sense to place Det 1 into the new command because many of its members were due for new orders, Huly said.

“We didn’t know exactly what the final format of MarSOC was going to take until the very end when it was finally approved,” Huly said, adding that he expects some Det 1 members will move into the new command.

So far, a half-dozen Det 1 members are joining MarSOC. It’s unclear how many more will be able to follow them. Some remain baffled why their group was left out.

They knew they did well and accomplished the missions given to them. They knew that post-deployment studies recommended the Det’s inclusion in MarSOC.

So they kept training as they awaited a call that never came.

What studies said

Dissolving Det 1 flies in the face of two studies of the group.

Among other recommendations, both supported the group’s retention and its incorporation into a Corps contribution to SOCom.

“After multiple repetitions of successful [direct-action] missions, it was apparent that the MCSOCOM Det epitomized SOF planning and missions,” stated a report by Joint Special Operations University, an evaluation ordered by SOCom.

The report recommended Det 1 expand and additional units be organized to have a detachment continuously available “at the soonest time practical” to conduct or support direct-action, special reconnaissance, foreign internal defense, counterterrorism, special activities and other missions.

A February 2005 Center for Naval Analyses study said Det 1 “proved itself as a highly trained and flexible force that made significant contributions in Iraq.”

“It’s clear that the Det can perform specific SOF missions. SOF personnel who worked alongside the Det acknowledge its capability and the fact that it operated at a level on par with and, in some cases, above comparable-sized SOF units. Its success was based on its combination of a highly experienced assault element, a robust intelligence element, fire-support personnel and logistics capabilities enabling independent operations,” the study states.

But for all the plaudits, Det 1 went away. And for many, it was never there.

For most of its 33 months of existence, the group remained largely out of view, out of the news pages and off the radar of Corps leadership. Some veterans wonder if the “out of sight, out of mind” status kept Det 1’s members at home when the rest of I Marine Expeditionary Force re-deployed to Iraq this year and took them off the table when it came to developing MarSOC.

“We could have been deployed already,” a frustrated gunnery sergeant said in January, just as I MEF was heading overseas. Det 1, with its collection of high-speed, state-of-the-art equipment — perhaps 10 years ahead of the Corps’ — and its lightweight body armor “is just sitting, collecting dust. In a time of war, it’s wrong.”

Few Marines knew anything about Det 1, and fewer people outside the Corps know its story.

“Some of the more interesting and some of the more appealing stories have to do with the intelligence element,” much of it still classified, said Maj. John Piedmont, a reservist and historian in Quantico, Va., who’s penning an official publication about the group. “Interesting doesn’t even come close.

“The whole unit’s story is going to be a catalyst” for the new MarSOC, Piedmont said.

Organizing the unit

Det 1’s strength, said its commander, came from the unique way the group organized itself around battlefield functions: maneuver, communications and control, fires, force protection, intelligence and logistics.

Along with the headquarters element, the Det comprised a reconnaissance element, which included four five-man recon teams; a fires liaison element, which included two fire liaison teams and air controllers; and a 30-member intelligence element, which included radio reconnaissance, human exploitation teams and fusion cells.

“All functions can be executed in one grid square. We can do everything — all the intel process, high-end communications and everything,” said Col. Robert Coates, the Det’s commander. “We were fielded with emerging technologies that allowed us to do that. And you combine that with hard feet and strong backs, which made us very versatile and a force of choice on the battlefield.”

For its rapid standup and combat readiness, the Det earned a Meritorious Unit Commendation, signed by commandant Gen. Mike Hagee for the period from standup until the Det arrived in Iraq in April 2004.

“Everybody was excited because we knew we were doing something that hadn’t been done before,” said Maj. Wade Priddy, the Det’s operations officer. “All the way, from the beginning, we knew we were under the microscope.”

Pushing the limits

Despite the lack of written guidance and standards, the Det developed training plans focused on the basics — every man is a rifleman — so everyone was cross-trained in each of the core skills.

“It was very fast-paced,” said Gunnery Sgt. William Johnston, a counterintelligence specialist. “Coming in here exceeded every expectation I had even coming through the door.” The workup cycle, he said, “just blew me away.”

Training wasn’t for the faint of heart. Consider this: Strap an 80-pound pack on your back for a 25-mile hike and walk in the mountains at elevations of 12,000 feet, just past the point where oxygen in the air begins to thin out.

Some of the Det’s men had a name for that exercise and other training like it: The Man Test.

“Everything was a man test. Everything we did,” said Padilla, who’d done an exchange tour with British Royal Marine commandos. “I’d never seen anything like it. It brought us together, fast.”

But he wasn’t complaining. He referred to the Det’s training workups as “our selection,” like cutting the fat from the meat.

Such training wasn’t something the intel guys were used to. But in the Det, surrounded by strong, Type A personalities, “it becomes a challenge to be better within our own group,” said Gunnery Sgt. Ken Pinckard, the Det’s all-source fusion chief.

That hike was a wake-up call, and a challenge for some.

“There was no acclimation period for us,” Johnston said.

Still, they knew there was reason to it. They trusted their commanding officer.

“It was something that was progressively prepared for,” said Coates, “so they were set up for success.”

By the time they got to Iraq, the Det’s men were ready to take on whatever missions they got. Still, many other commands initially didn’t know what to expect of them.

“They couldn’t figure us out,” Priddy said. “A lot of them thought we were regular Marines … who somehow ended up in the wrong spot. Other people looked at us kind of suspiciously.”

Once they saw them operate, the doubts dissipated. The mission in Najaf proved that.

Najaf battles

In August 2004, the Det got a tasking order to support conventional forces fighting in Najaf. It would use its enabling capabilities to support the Army battalions, Marines and Navy SEALs poised to fight in the holy city.

“What they got was a full spectrum of battle-space capabilities,” Coates said.

Army and Marine forces battled militia forces loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, fighting amid the tight urban confines of the Old City and through expansive cemeteries.

U.S. forces fought their way in to encircle the gold-domed Imam Ali Mosque, a sacred Shiite shrine. It was the first major battle for the then-fledgling Iraqi government, which had assumed control two months earlier.

Padilla and the Det’s sniper team coordinated fire support, which included AC-130 and helicopter gunships, working closely with 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment, of the Army’s 1st Calvary Division. Organized teams with snipers went several blocks forward of the friendly lines for observation, and the team integrated fires, air support and strikes and communications while heavily engaged, supporting the conventional forces.

“The snipers kept them down in the day, and fires kept them down at night,” Coates said. Some logged “kills” as far as 1,300 to 1,400 meters away.

With a communications architecture that provided “unheard of” amounts of bandwidth, the Det was able to reach back to its intelligence cell, which provided advanced imagery, data, signals intelligence and other products that the Marines were able to hand to the conventional forces to fight the fight.

“They got intelligence products ... that they had never, ever seen before,” Coates said.

“When we showed up, the maps they had were like the maps you buy at a gas station,” said Master Sgt. Ryan Keeler, the communications chief. “We sent back requests, and a day later ... we were able to print them off and take them to the field and also take them to the conventional units we were supporting.

“They couldn’t believe the photo imagery that we were able to get, one block over.”

For more than a week, “Kilo,” Keeler’s radio call sign, became a known voice among the air controllers and pilots hanging over the besieged city.

Keeler recalled that one day, as he caught a few precious hours of sleep after an intense night directing fires, an Army colonel he didn’t know went up to him and kicked him awake.

“So you’re Kilo,” the colonel said to him.

It seemed the colonel just wanted to pass along his thanks. “We put a lot of rounds downrange and put a lot of people out,” he recalled.

The Det left the city several days after a cease-fire was called. It was surreal, seeing insurgents they had been fighting now walking the streets. “It was like the rats coming out,” Padilla said.

A final farewell

Det 1’s men came home to the West Coast, watched and waited, only to see the advent of a new special operations command rising on the East Coast.

The irony isn’t lost on them, although one would be strained to get an on-the-record comment.

They were in the dark. They thought they’d be absorbed as MarSOC’s first unit, since they already had the men, the gear and the equipment. They crafted recommendations about where the Corps should go with a Det but felt largely ignored. Few decision-makers, if any, officially asked for their ideas.

They continued to train, some until the deactivation. A few have gone east with new orders in hand, some have retired or left service, and others have shifted to other units.

The Det’s men amassed at least 11 Bronze Stars for combat valor during the unit’s sole deployment. Keeler and Padilla were among the recipients.

At least seven Det members received the Bronze Star without a combat distinguishing device for meritorious achievement.

And at least a dozen members netted Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with “V” for valor.

The deactivation ceremony, held under mixed clouds on a Friday afternoon, lasted barely 25 minutes.

The weather echoed the mood.

If it wasn’t for the sounds of the small Marine band playing, the only noise during the ceremony would have come from the flapping of the Det’s colors, with its four streamers marking awarded honors.

Families, a few former members and several Marine Raiders sat with four general officers under two tents as about 40 men gathered in formation.

Coates presented a Det paddle to Lt. Gen. John Goodman, commander of Marine Corps Forces Pacific, who lauded their historic assignment and praised their accomplishments.

“All Marines who are associated with this need to hold their heads up high,” Goodman told them. Noticeably absent, though, were officials from Marine Corps headquarters.

A week later, gathered around a conference table, some of the men looked on the bright side.

“There’s no downside to this. There really isn’t. There’s no downside to this detachment,” said Gunnery Sgt. T.M. Hammel, an imagery specialist. “It was a very positive thing for the Marine Corps, and it continues to be.”

They know Marines are actively engaged, fighting overseas. Some are angry they’re not with them.

From their Del Mar camp, it wasn’t easy seeing thousands of local Marines return to war. “That was the worst part. I thought, that could have been us,” Padilla said. “We’re good.”

“We felt we could do a lot more. We were busy, but we could have been a lot busier,” he said.

“Especially with the tools that we have,” added Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Tim Bryan, one of the Det’s special amphibious recon corpsmen. “You just wonder how you could have helped there.”

They know they accomplished their missions. Everyone came home alive and in one piece. “But you always feel like you could do more,” Bryan said.

Ellie