VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)
VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)
VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)
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01.Masters of Chaos Pages 8/17/04 12:00 PM Page 300<br />
300<br />
M asters of C haos<br />
would normally command a force of the size that the sandy-haired<br />
colonel was leading. In another historic first, a Special Forces colonel<br />
was given tactical control of conventional brigades—a precedent that<br />
would surely reverberate through the halls of the infantry schools. In<br />
Vietnam, Special Forces had occasionally taken command of smaller<br />
battalion-size elements of regular army troops. Cleveland would direct<br />
the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit and<br />
the two colonels who commanded them once they all arrived in the<br />
country. Those units were to help secure the oilfields, Kirkuk, and<br />
Mosul. Cleveland jokingly called Task Force Viking a “kluge,” which<br />
sent his staff members scrambling for a dictionary. The third one they<br />
consulted defined it as a cobbled-together collection of unrelated<br />
objects, but the staff still wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.<br />
Cleveland divided the territory and put each half under the command<br />
of his two subordinates, 10th Group’s 2nd and 3rd battalion commanders,<br />
Lt. Col. Bob Waltemeyer and Lt. Col. Ken Tovo. The battalion<br />
and company commanders would need maximum autonomy and agility<br />
in this dispersed battlefield, and, in any case, it was Cleveland’s style to<br />
give subordinates room to operate. He was a West Point grad and the<br />
son of an NCO, and he knew the value of both perspectives. Moreover,<br />
he trusted these two men implicitly.<br />
An outsider probably would not realize how close the three were,<br />
given the Special Forces’ penchant for understatement and reticence.<br />
Cleveland was particularly low key, except when it came to the Red Sox.<br />
Waltemeyer was volatile, quick and sharp, and stood out in a crowd with<br />
his smooth-shaven head. Tovo, with his Italian dark-eyed and dark-haired<br />
looks, could pass for a Kurd at a distance after he grew a mustache.<br />
“I like to think they know what makes me tick,” Cleveland said. Since<br />
1997, the two men had served as his company commanders, his executive<br />
officer, and under him in the Balkans. There, Tovo had learned how<br />
to interpret the tone of Cleveland’s voice and even his silences. In<br />
wartime, such intuition can make all the difference when communications<br />
are long-distance, via written sitreps (situation reports) or nighttime<br />
radio calls.