Posted on 12/07/2008 7:27:03 PM PST by infoguy
A December 7, 2008, wire article by the Associated Press' David Espo falsely claims, "[Former Army chief of staff Gen. Eric] Shinseki was forced into retirement by the Bush administration after he said the original invasion plan for Iraq did not include enough troops." (President-elect Obama recently announced Gen. Shinseki would head the Veterans Affairs Department.)
The truth? No such thing happened. FactCheck.org, among other sources, debunked this myth over four years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
Yes, it was Gen. Shinseki who had the beret fetish.
Just as the Stryker vehicle is another stupid decision of his.
In combat, the weapon systems of the Bradley IFV are more effective and capable of destroying the enemy, and have been proven in combat time and again. Shinseki's Stryker vehicle is a bullet magnet, and most Soldiers do not like it.
PS... Shinseki was a Clintonoid General Officer, just as Weasel Clark was. Not sure why people think highly of these guys.
For all you 31 Romeos out there: check your circuits, you are getting static on the line. For the others, you might want to read this, not a lot of tradition behind the black beret as just a Ranger headgear:
The Real History of the Beret
Whenever General Shinseki’s name comes up, a large contingent of sore heads pipe up with epithets and complaints about his role in the adoption of the black beret as standard Army headgear. Most of these comments are ill informed and display profound ignorance of the history of this uniform item in the U.S. Army. Since I have been around for many of the events surrounding the use of the beret in the U.S. Army, I thought it might be useful to tell the real story.
Other armies have worn berets since at least World War I. American Army interest in them seems to date from World War II when British elite units tended to wear them: maroon for airborne, green for commando, and black for tank units. The tankers claimed to be the first to wear them in the British Army when they adopted them in WWI for wear inside greasy and dirty tanks and the black color tended to hide the grime. Black became a semi-official color for tankers in most armies around the world, but was not exclusive to that arm of service. None of this mattered much to the U.S. Army because the beret was never officially adopted and despite rumors that it was worn by Rangers, little evidence exists to substantiate this. In any event, the US ended both World War II and Korea with no berets.
In about 1960, Major General William P. Yarborough commanded the still young Special Warfare Center at Ft. Bragg. He had been an airborne pioneer and was the designer of the airborne qualification badge (jump wings). He was a fan of the beret and of many other things British and thought that the beret would be a great item of distinction for Special Forces. Berets had been worn in Special Forces unofficially and secretly prior to that time, but it was Yarborough who brought it out of the closet. Special Forces had settled on green in part because that was the color of the Commando beret, but also because Rogers Rangers, an American Unit in British Service during the French and Indian Wars had worn green Tam O Shanters, a headgear that resembled a beret. At that time, Special Forces carried the lineage and traditions of American Ranger units.
Yarborough, who was known to have a set of brass balls, chose the occasion of President Kennedy’s visit to Ft. Bragg to publically unveil the Green Beret. Kennedy liked them and said so, saving Yarborough a large a$$ chewing and giving Special Forces their green beret. In those days, you didn’t earn your beret, except through assignment to a Special Forces unit, or a unit supporting the Special Warfare Center. Anyone so assigned wore the green beret: clerks, aviators, Psyops, etc. Those who were not SF qualified did not wear the full size unit flash, instead they wore a small bar in the colors of the unit flash. There was no beret ceremony, unless the supply sergeant took a special liking to you. The flash, not the beret was the thing.
In Vietnam, no one wore berets in the field, but around the base camp, in Nha Trang, Pleiku, and elsewhere they abounded. Special Forces wore their green berets. Advisors to Vietnamese units wore the same berets worn by their counterparts: red in the airborne division, black by the armor units and Vietnamese Rangers. Unlike the American and British practice where the beret was pulled over the head from left to right, the Vietnamese followed French practice and pulled in over from right to left. The advisors followed suit. When American LRRP and Ranger units started unofficially wearing berets, they adopted the black color of the Vietnamese Rangers, but wore them in American fashion. These were condoned but not authorized as were many other pieces of headgear that proved very popular on firebases and clubs especially when nurses or USO volunteers were about. Most units that did this claimed to be elite in one way or another.
After Vietnam, most of this stuff disappeared until the advent of the Volunteer Army when, in the interests of attracting America’s youth to a new volunteer Army, an era of any goes was born. Headgear was no exception and berets of all shape and color blossomed along with multicolor baseball caps, cowboy hats, and probably beenies with propellers on top though I don’t remember seeing any of these. This was when the maroon beret came to the airborne forces and tankers at Ft. Hood and the two armored cavalry regiments went with the traditional tanker black beret. This was also the time when the Army reactivated Ranger units, forming battalion sized organizations for the first time since WWII. They wore the black beret as worn unofficially by the Ranger companies in Vietnam. When the Army finally came to its senses and banished these abominations, Special Forces, Airborne troops, and the Rangers were the only ones left with sanctioned berets. The tankers lost theirs despite some very intense lobbying and behind the scenes arguments by the tanker community led by GEN Don Starry.
When the Army stood up a permanent opposing force at Fort Irwin, the tankers were able to sneak through their black beret as the uniform of the opposing force. Starry and many in the armor community continued to lobby for the black beret for tankers, arguing its history and noting that they had no EIB, no CIB and no qualification badges and/or tabs. Shinseki was a part of the armor community, but he was a Major and Lieutenant Colonel during this time frame and was not a leader in this effort – that was GEN Don Starry.
Starry, and others, tried a number of times to get the Army to adopt the beret as the standard headgear. The efforts failed time and time again for various reasons, but never because they were the exclusive right of SF, Abn, and Rangers. Once, GEN Gordon Sullivan, a tanker and Army Chief of Staff was prepared to authorize the beret for the entire army until he looked at himself in the mirror wearing one. That initiative ended then and there.
Shinseki gets the blame because he was the guy who finally made a decision years in the making and because of his hamfisted approach to choosing the color and finessing his decision with the Ranger Regiment. Black was chosen simply because it was the standard color for uniform accessories: raincoats, sweaters, shoes, ties, etc. Had he gotten the Ranger Regimental Commander to request a change of color to Ranger OD, or Commando tan before he made the announcement, there would have been less fuss, except that the beret is just not a very good choice of headgear. This is especially true today since GEN George Casey, the current Army Chief of Staff has decided to combine jump boots with dress blue trousers, security guard white shirts, and a beret into something called an Army uniform, but looks more like the drill team of the Gay Caballeros Marching Band.
So Shinseki gets a bad rap on this one in my opinion. Likewise the Stryker issue, at least in the opinion of most Stryker veterans of Iraq. He’s fair game on his political inclinations, but he played that pretty close to the chest until he was out of uniform, as he should have done.
Disclaimer: I know and served with Rick Shinseki and found him to be a professional and competent soldier. I didn’t know his politics then and certainly don’t agree with whom he’s decided to encamp. Of course, in Hawaii, where he’s from there is no Republican party much like my native Arkansas when I was young and a Democrat. He is an Armor officer, hence no CIB or EIB. All Regular Army officers in his era were required to go to Ranger School. He saw considerable combat service in Vietnam and lost part of a foot in addition to other wounds.
I much prefer the Ranger Tan beret to the black one – much more distinctive and no danger of being mistaken for a tanker and have long thought that the Ranger s are too good to be still sniveling over this one.
He shut his mouth after he left the Army.
He disagreed with the Sec Def on some TTP’s about war. That's not a bad thing. Perhaps if we had a larger footprint on the ground in Iraq the GOP wouldn't have lost in 06.
But that is the way or war. There is no perfect scenario.
I'm glad obama didn't pick a commie to lead the VA. It could have been worse.
RLTW.
I think that you’ve got it about right.
You didn’t mention that the Rangers were the first to unofficially wear berets and that they wore black berets unofficially as early as the 1950s.
I wasn’t implying anything about the history of the beret. For me ,the biggest problem with the beret as everyday headgear was its lack of functionality. I was stationed at Ft. Stewart at the time (i am a civilian now) and a wool blanket with no visor was not useful in garrison. If you were the type who actually worked it just became a smelly, hot mess. I would have had no problem with it if it would have been part of the class A uniform and not the BDU. In fact, it was almost a relief to go to Kuwait/Iraq just to get out of that ridiculous piece headgear.
I didn’t mention that because I don’t know it to be true. Certainly, I have heard the story, but not from anyone who was actually in a Ranger company in Korea. Remember, the Rangers were short lived in the fifties - they were used as separte companies in Korea and disbanded afterwards not to be seen until the LRRP companies in Vietnam were designated Rangers.
Jake Lindsey, WWII MOH receipient who served in a Ranger company in Korea and in 5th SFG in Vietnam told me that he never wore a beret until he joined SF in the late fifties and that as far as he knew, they were never worn in Korea.
I’d love to find a good source that could document it and a picture would be great - but I haven’t found either. If you come across something, let me know.
“I didn’t mention that because I don’t know it to be true. Certainly, I have heard the story, but not from anyone who was actually in a Ranger company in Korea.”
I was in a Ranger LRRP later LRS NG unit during the 1980s and I remember a lot of discussion over the berets and about which lineage was going to be assigned to the SF and the Rangers, nobody was happy with the first results but I thought that eventually the SF were given OSS, but I don’t really remember for sure. Buried too deep to find, I still have a copy of Col. Aaron Banks article that he wrote about SF and it’s lineage for ‘Gung-Ho’ magazine in Dec. 1983.
Because of the SF / Ranger focus of the time there were a few histories of the units that hit the popular soldier magazines of the time and a number of historians traced the first berets to the Rangers, yesterday I didn’t do any research to refresh my 24 year old memories, but I did take a quick glance to see that yes at least some historians do trace that Ranger first use.
I just looked this up by Ranger Robert Black, Ranger author and historian.
Ranger Black Beret
By Ranger Robert Black
“In the spring of 1951 while lower numbered companies were fighting in Korea, in Germany, or training replacements at Benning, the third training cycle consisting of the 10th, 11th and 12th Airborne Ranger Companies was training at then “Camp” Carson Colorado. To be a paratrooper was just part of the training to be an Airborne Ranger, and the men wanted a headgear that was distinctive from the “overseas cap” with its red, white and blue parachute hat patch and sky blue piping designating infantry. The Rangers wanted something “Ranger”. At least, fifty percent of Ranger training was conducted at night. Thus Captain Charles Spragins Commander of 10th, and Captain Rudolph M Jones, commanding the 11th Ranger Company, gave their approval to the purchase of black berets, the black signifying the color of the primary operational time of the Rangers. These berets were worn when the company photographs of both 10th and 11th companies were taken. Passes were issued, permitting men to wear the black beret and stating that it was part of the Ranger uniform. Though other companies appear not to have worn berets in formation, men from all the later companies have testified that they as individuals wore the Ranger black beret when they could do so. It was not authorized by the army, but it was beloved by the troops.
There is no headgear that so clearly says “Airborne Ranger” as the 1951 Ranger Black Beret. The flash consists of a gold and black Ranger tab sewn above a black oval background with gold edging surmounted by a parachute badge. The blending of Airborne and Ranger are thus clearly displayed.
Companies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 8 were fighting in Korea and few of them had knowledge of the black beret concept. At Fort Benning, Colonel John Van Houton, Commanding Office of the Ranger Training Command, supported the black beret movement. He assigned Lt.Col. Wilbur “Coal-bin Willie” Wilson as Project Officer. Wilson outfitted Sgt John Roy of the 7th Rangers, not only in Black Beret, but in black boots (in a brown shoe army). Carrying a paper of authority from his commanders, Sgt Roy traveled about Fort Benning conducting the test Colonel Van Houten wanted. Again the troops were delighted, but those in authority outside the Rangers were not.
With the disbandment of the Rangers in 1951, the concept did not reach Department of the Army level.”
http://www.ricarangers.org/docs/BlackBeret.htm
Here are some links on who Robert Black is.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_en&q=Ranger+Robert+Black+bio
Thanks, great reading. It explains why I’ve never found anything - I’ve been looking just at Korea.
As for the lineage, as you know already, when Special Forces were first established, they were given the lineage and honors of the Special Service Force and the WWII Ranger Battalions and Korean era separate Ranger companies.
When the 75th Ranger Regiment was established, it was given the lineage and honors of the 5077th Composite Group (Merrill Mauraders). They were later designated as the 475th Infantry Regiment, hence the number 75. They did not have any historical connection to the old Ranger battalions and Ranger companies.
This changed in 1986, when the Ranger lineage was removed from the Special Forces Groups and realigned with the 75th Ranger Regiment. Special Forces now descend from just the Special Service Force. OSS was not included in this.
Throw in the mix that women stationed[Support] at 4th-5th-6th Bat ‘can’ wear berets as the same as ‘men’ at Regiment.
No one gets upset about that one. The ladies usually ‘decide’ not to wear them.
RLTW
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