Bringing Language and Cultural Skills to the Battlefield.
Courtesy of 1st SFG (A)
Imagine a Soldier, cleaning his weapon in a team room, while in the background you can hear the news being reported in Korean on the TV. Picture another Soldier having a conversation in Thai or Tagalog, discussing a program of instruction for upcoming training. The First Special Forces Group (Airborne) emphasizes language and cultural training because they say these are critical skills used in rapport building and daily communication overseas.
The Green Berets of the 1st SFG (A) take the language and cultural skills they learn in the classroom as well as in their spare time, and utilize these skills in a field environment to make the mission a success. Building relationships with the local people of the country is vital to the success of many Special Forces operations, and one of the best ways to build these relationships is to speak the language and understand the culture of your host-state forces.
As an example, the 1st SFG (A) used the annual exercise, FOAL EAGLE, as an opportunity to further train, educate and evaluate their Green Berets’ practical language and cultural skills. Training exercises like FOAL EAGLE test what the written and listening tests cannot: effective inter-cultural communication in a field environment.
“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 Amis.
Sergeant First Class Amis, 1st SFG (A) NCOIC of 1st SFG (A) Language programs
It’s important to remember, often when Soldiers enter a village or neighborhood, their appearance can be frightening to some villagers, so it is important that Soldiers can immediately and effectively express their intent, and break down communication and cultural barriers with the host-state population.
The evaluation exercise used in exercise FOAL EAGLE was set up to mimic villages in Asia, using ethnic Korean-Americans and both Korean and Chinese speakers. In this scenario, the Green Berets were tested in their ability to go into an area, build rapport and establish local control, and to gather information from the local population that can be used against enemy forces. No English was allowed in the scenario, either from the Green Berets or the role players. How the Green Berets create the rapport that facilitates local control and information gathering has everything to do with cultural training and communication.
The A-Teams in Special Forces have a mixture of Soldiers talented in various languages. On one team, a fluent Chinese speaker--SFC Matt Carey-- used his language skills to build rapport by teaching the role playing villager –who couldn’t speak Korean, but could only speak Chinese, how to perform a medical procedure. All of the medical instruction given by SFC Carey was presented in Chinese Mandarin. The ability to communicate, form relationships and impart knowledge was affectively used, and was in turn, reciprocated with intelligence about enemy whereabouts, manpower and weapons.
During the exercise, the Green Berets conducted a mixture of missions, ranging from direct action raids to medical civic action projects (MEDCAPs). During the MEDCAP scenarios, role-playing children and adults received treatment from the A-teams for long-suffering ailments and routine vaccinations. As the Green Berets performed these actions, they spoke and joked in Korean, and built friendships with the role-players. The MEDCAPs allowed the Green Berets to demonstrate their caring for the local population, and several of the role players thanked the Soldiers for their efforts by disclosing information about the local enemy forces.
To conduct this training, several fluent linguists, both civilian and Soldiers alike, were either contracted or volunteered to role-play as villagers for the exercise. Unknown to the Green Beret A-teams when they parachuted into the exercise was just how much foreign language would be utilized in this event. Since the villagers spoke only in Korean or Chinese, the Green Berets relied heavily on the Soldiers on their A-Teams with Korean and Chinese language skills. Different exercises in the First Special Forces Group emphasize Tagalog for the Philippines, Indonesian, Thai and other Asian languages. This particular integrated field immersion language training lasted for several days, and the A-Teams were forced to adapt and overcome in this environment.
As they conducted the AAR following the exercise, the Green Berets noted their increased language and cultural capabilities, and increased abilities to communicate, build rapport and impart technical military knowledge in a realistic situation. The Green Berets re-affirmed their strengths, improved their weaknesses, and learned what actions or Korean and Chinese vocabulary may be offensive or misunderstood in their target-country language.
While voice response translators are sometimes used today on the battlefield, they are no where near the effectiveness of a Solider on the ground, speaking the language of the local population, understanding the local culture and building rapport.
“Rapport is one of the most important tools we have,” said Colonel Eric P. Wendt, commander of First Special Forces Group (Airborne). “You cannot hit what you cannot see. The local population knows who the local enemy are. The trick is getting the local populace to tell you who the bad guys are on the block, in the village, and in the neighborhood. One of several key tools we use to gather this actionable intelligence involves building rapport with the locals, and speaking the local language, as well as understanding the local culture are quite helpful as we establish this rapport.
Once we know who the enemy are, we can transition to direct action and either kill or capture the correct enemy, without inflicting needless collateral damage. At the end of the day, time spent training and preparing to speak the local language and understand the local culture is time well spent.
The type of integrated language immersion and cultural training you see here, set up by Special Forces NCOs, in this case by SFC Amis in particular, is time very well spent for our Green Berets.”
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