[Deathwatch] Aaron Bank, "the father of the Green Berets", 101

[Deathwatch Central]

Aaron Bank, 101, 'father of the Green Berets'
Made case for Special Forces unit

>From Wire Reports

LOS ANGELES -- Retired Army Col. Aaron Bank, who was known as "the
father of the Green Berets," died Thursday at 101.

Bank led a number of daring missions during World War II but was best
known for his postwar role in organizing and serving as the first
commander of the Army's elite Special Forces. He died of natural causes
in an assisted-living facility in Dana Point, Calif., said his
son-in-law, Bruce Ballantine.

During World War II, Bank was a special-operations officer for the
Office of Strategic Services, the top-secret government agency formed
to gather intelligence and organize resistance forces behind enemy
lines.

The OSS, forerunner of the CIA, was disbanded soon after the war. But
Bank and others were convinced that the Army should have a permanent
unit whose mission would be to conduct unconventional operations.

In 1951, the chief of the Army's Psychological Warfare staff, who had
been impressed by OSS special operations during the war, instructed
Bank to staff and obtain approval for the creation of an OSS-style
operational group.

In 1952, after Bank and other key staff members had made their case,
the Army approved 2,300 spaces for men in a Special Forces unit -- the
10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) -- at Fort Bragg.

"I wanted none but the best," Bank said in a 1968 interview with the
Los Angeles Times. "First, they had to be double volunteers; that is,
they had to volunteer for parachuting and behind-enemy-lines duties,
which takes a special flair, a special type of personality. We had to
work up all the manuals and training procedures for demolition,
sabotage, new and different ways of handling weapons."

But most important, Bank said, "We had to teach them the classic aim
and purpose of their service -- the organizing of civilian natives into
guerrilla forces in enemy-held territory."

Bank later wrote a memorandum suggesting that Special Forces soldiers
be allowed to wear berets as a mark of distinction. He listed three
possible colors for the berets: purple, wine-red or green. But the Army
didn't allow distinctive headgear at the time and the idea was turned
down.

It wasn't until 1962, four years after Bank retired from the military,
that President John F. Kennedy authorized Army Special Forces to wear
berets. Kennedy, Bank later said, "picked the green because he was an
Irishman."

Today there are about 7,700 soldiers in five active-duty and two
National Guard Special Forces groups.

At Fort Bragg, which is still the home of the Green Berets, Bank is
considered a military icon.

"Colonel Aaron Bank is a legend within the Special Forces community,"
Maj. Robert Gowan, spokesman for the U.S. Army Special Forces Command,
said Thursday. "His commitment and service to our country is
unsurpassed. He was a man far ahead of his time. ... His vision and
initiative allowed the Army to create Special Forces as we know them
today."

Born in New York City, Bank began working summers in his teens as a
lifeguard and swimming teacher. He liked the work so much, he later
said, that by the late 1920s it had become something of a career.

"I'd go to Nassau in the Bahamas to work during the winter and then to
Biarritz in southern France during the summer," he recalled in the 1968
interview. "It was a plush life."

He was in and out of Europe over the next decade and learned to speak
French and German fluently. In the late 1930s, sensing the
inevitability of war, he returned home and joined the Army. By the time
the United States entered the war, Bank had been commissioned a second
lieutenant.

In 1943, the 40-year-old Bank was serving as a tactical training
officer to a railroad battalion stationed at Camp Polk, La., when he
saw a bulletin announcing that volunteers with foreign-language
capabilities would be interviewed for "special assignments."

Bank is survived by his wife, Catherine; their two daughters, Linda
Ballantine of Dana Point, and Alexandra Elliott of Anaheim, Calif.; and
a granddaughter.