how to become a green beret

Army recruits who want to become Green Berets must endure a three-week test of endurance, pain and intelligence — just to qualify for equally brutal training.

There are usually only 4,000 active-duty Green Berets. (
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Tony Schwalm is a retired lieutenant colonel with the US Special Forces, which are more commonly known as the Green Berets. In "The Guerrilla Factory," Schwalm takes us through every step of the grueling assessment and training process required to become an elite Special Forces soldier by recounting his own hard-fought experience.

To even get to the test, you must already have done very well in Army training and qualified for Airborne training. You also need to be male (no women are allowed) and have a high-school diploma; at least a year of college is preferred.

Becoming a Green Beret involves two stages, the first being a three-week assessment period known as the Special Forces Assessment and Selection course, which is designed to "weed people out." Schwalm calls the SFAS "a three-week gut check to see if one had the physical and mental capacities required," and also, "a crucible of contrived hardship that mixed physical exhaustion and mind numbing tasks in a slurry of ambiguity."

If you've ever wondered whether you have what it takes to become a Green Beret, here's just some of what's required to make it through the SFAS as laid out by Schwalm, who passed the test in 1988. (The Navy's version of Special Forces, SEALs, have their own, different test).

Soldiers — there were about 300-350 who started the test with Schwalm — endured on anywhere from three to five hours of sleep per night, and many of the tasks were measured against criteria they were kept unaware of. In between the physical tests listed here, participants also took numerous written psychological tests, as well as tests in math and reasoning.

PART 1

1 Swim 50 meters while wearing uniform and boots. Simple, right? "At the end of the swim test," writes Schwalm, "about 60 men were told to pack their gear."

2 Push-ups, sit-ups, and a two-mile run. Around 40 students failed this. "I remember thinking their failure was borderline immoral," Schwalm writes. "Later, I found out that some of the candidates had come from assignments in Turkey and Korea; they were running on less than four hours of sleep in the last two days."

3 The candidates were required to run "until you're told to stop." Schwalm estimates he ran for about an hour, covering more than seven miles.

4 Calisthenics. "We performed every manner of calisthenics known," he writes. "By the end, my arms and legs were involuntarily twitching like a horse's after a race."

5 An obstacle course that included getting over a 7-foot wall and rope climbing. "The secret [for climbing] is to use the legs," writes Schwalm, who learned this lesson later than he would have liked.

6 Land navigation. In the days before GPS, the candidates were made to "navigate with map and compass through the pines and scrub oaks for five to six days," carrying their rucksacks on their backs the whole way.

"Members of a previous class," Schwalm writes, "estimated they had walked over 250 miles during the 18 days of SFAS, most of it during [this] phase."

On day one, he navigated about six miles along a route "defined by three points on a map through palmettos, bushes and swamps." The distances got longer each day, and by the end of day three, "We knew we had walked close to a hundred miles by this time."

Day five saw him up at 2 a.m. on four hours sleep, and outside by 3.

"By 0330 [3:30 a.m.], I had my first mile behind me. I walked up to the endpoint over seven hours later," he writes. "As with every other event at SFAS, I discovered I was finished only when someone told me I was, not because I knew the end was near."

As this phase ended, those remaining "took stock of who was left. Our number appeared to be around 150; another 70 had quit over the last four days."

After a two-day reprieve, it was then time for the team phase (the first portion had been the individual phase), and the remaining men were divided into squads of nine.

"While the individual phase had been an emotional, physical endurance test built on the premise of isolating each of us while he moved under a heavy load," Schwalm writes, "team week was described by those who had preceded me as intensely psychological and with a greater emphasis on strength, like trying to watch and provide an analysis of 'A Clockwork Orange' while attempting a personal best in every weightlifting event there is."

PART 2

The events for team week (candidates did two events per day, one in the morning, one in the afternoon) included:

7 The rescue. The soldiers walked to a spot where they found "what first appeared to be two men sleeping near a trash pile," Schwalm writes. "There were eight steel pipes 10 feet long, each about 4 inches in diameter, lengths of nylon rope, a pair of mannequins dressed in olive green coveralls . . . and two cloth litters, obviously intended to be slid over the poles somehow to be used as a stretcher."

The mannequins were meant to represent guerrilla fighters who had been injured and needed to be evacuated to a medical facility. The team of nine needed to use every bit of equipment there to transport the "men" — who weighed 150 pounds each — six miles by foot in three hours. If the team failed, the men were dead.

And, this was to be done while at all times remaining 10 meters away from the men's "guerrilla leader," who screamed at the team at they constructed the stretchers.

"If they die, we will know that you do not care for our cause," screamed the man, "that America has sent us the weak and stupid."

Schwalm's team took 20 minutes to build two stretchers and divided itself into two teams of four with an extra man helping each to carry them.

They arrived an hour late, with the simulated guerrilla leader screaming, "You are indeed very weak and stupid. You do not care about our noble struggle. They are dead, thanks to you."

8 Four ammunition crates needed to be carried five miles in three hours. With rotating two-man groups, Schwalm's team did it in 2 1/2.

9 Moving vehicles. They were presented with a Jeep without any wheels attached. Three wheels sat off to the side, as did some lug nuts, ropes and pipes. There was no fourth wheel. The team (now eight, as one man had quit), had to move the Jeep to a designated location.

10 Log carrying. They were brought to two logs that weighed 450 pounds each and told they needed to carry them six miles within three hours. They put four men on each log, with "two carrying and two resting," and switched positions every minute, which still required them to put the log down every 10 minutes or so. They made it in time, and Schwalm writes that he was "sure I was an inch shorter after this event."

11 The ice crossing. Schwalm calls this "the most significant psychological challenge we had yet encountered."

The soldiers were brought to a lake "about two football fields across" that was covered by a very thin sheet of December ice (which was about to be broken), and charged with constructing several rafts using rucksacks and ponchos. Then, they needed to swim an injured soldier across the lake on the raft. The injured soldier was required to remain dry, while those swimming him across, in order not to wet their clothes, had to do so naked in the freezing water.

The crossing took 20 agonizing minutes. "As our bodies became submerged in the water, my stomach muscles went into spasm and began contracting uncontrollably," he writes. "I clenched my jaw and tried to stop shaking."

12Finally, a road march. Carrying their rucksacks on their backs with instructions to make sure they weighed "no less than 55 pounds," they were simply told to march on their own until they were told to stop. Schwalm walked for six hours and 45 minutes.

AND IF YOU SURVIVE ALL THAT — THE 'Q-COURSE'

If you made it safely through all this and were found to have passed, you were then allowed to move on to the actual Special Forces qualification training.

The "Q-course," as it's known, is a six-month course partially consisting of "survival, evasion, resistance and escape training." This included a simulated, days-long capture experience during which Schwalm was beaten, imprisoned in a 4-foot-cubed box, forced to burn an American flag to save another soldier's life and subjected to round-the-clock propaganda recordings that included children "begging for Daddy to help Mommy."

Schwalm earned his green beret in 1993 and eventually became the commander responsible for training officers on the Q-course. He hopes that this book brings across the dedication and sacrifice made by the soldiers who earn the right to wear the green beret.

"Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we fail," he writes. "But we will die trying."