Speaker 1: Well we're going to be talking about today is where
Speaker 1: the green Beret came from. So picture Fort Bragg in
Speaker 1: North Carolina, sometime in nineteen fifty three. A young lieutenant
Speaker 1: named Roger Pazzell is standing in a field with his
Speaker 1: eighteen Operational Detachment FA thirty two, about to head out
Speaker 1: for a prolonged training exercise on his head as a
Speaker 1: Green Beret. It's not army issued, it isn't authorized. It
Speaker 1: is even technically legal for him to be wearing it,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't care. That small act of quiet defiance
Speaker 1: is where our story starts today. The origin of the
Speaker 1: Green Beret. Its lineage actually traces to World War Two
Speaker 1: American Special Forces predecessors teams under the Office of Strategic Services,
Speaker 1: but it used to be called before the CIA parachute
Speaker 1: into occupied France and Holland and three man teams to
Speaker 1: link up with resistance fighters and coordinate shabotage behind Nazi lines.
Speaker 1: These men lived in with partisans, spoke the language, ate
Speaker 1: the food, and fought to fight from the inside. That's
Speaker 1: the DNA of unconventional warfare, and it's the DNA of
Speaker 1: Special Forces. That's even an older thread too, one that
Speaker 1: doesn't get talked about nearly enough special Forces lineage. It
Speaker 1: runs back to the Black Seminole scouts, Black and Native
Speaker 1: American frontier fighters, many of them escaped slaves, who served
Speaker 1: the US Army in the nineteenth century as trackers and
Speaker 1: guerrilla specialists. They're crossed arrows insignias, the same crossed areos,
Speaker 1: crossed arrows and signia special Forces soldiers were on their
Speaker 1: branch insignia today. It's a strange and important lineage. Men
Speaker 1: who fought first for their own freedom then went on
Speaker 1: to fight for the freedom of others, and that thread
Speaker 1: runs directly into the modern Special Forces motto they were
Speaker 1: Oppresso liber to free the oppressed. Now back to the beret.
Speaker 1: When American troops served alongside European allies during and after
Speaker 1: World War Two, they got a good lie look of
Speaker 1: what French and Belgian soldiers wore into the field. Berets practical, packable,
Speaker 1: easy to wear into a helmet, but the green coloring specifically,
Speaker 1: while that's borrowed from the British commandos, who adopted a
Speaker 1: green beret as their official head gear back in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two. So when the tenth Special Forces Group was
Speaker 1: activated in nineteen fifty two under Colonel Aaron Bank, a
Speaker 1: former OSS officer himself. Soldiers who spent time around European
Speaker 1: airborne and commando units brought their beret tradition home with them.
Speaker 1: They're nineteen fifty three Major Bruckner or Brucker an other
Speaker 1: OS that's better as credit was formerly designating it as
Speaker 1: the Special Forces own. That's when Lieutenant Pezzel's team started
Speaker 1: wearing it in the field, where it spread. Other eight
Speaker 1: teams picked it up. Within a couple of years, it
Speaker 1: was everywhere across Special Forces, worn with pride and worn
Speaker 1: like a secret handshake. There was one small problem. The
Speaker 1: Army hated it officially. The bereat had zero authorization. Commanders
Speaker 1: saw it as an unnecessary flourish, a distraction from Army
Speaker 1: uniform standards, maybe even a little arrogant. For a year,
Speaker 1: Special Forces soldiers wore it anyway, and got scolded for it,
Speaker 1: and kept wearing it anyway. That's a pattern worth sitting
Speaker 1: with for a second, and elite culture defining itself before
Speaker 1: the institution around that was ready to admit that culture existed.
Speaker 1: Then October nineteen sixty one, John F. Kennedy scheduled to
Speaker 1: visit for Bragg. Kennedy had a personal fascination with unconventional
Speaker 1: warfare and irregular forces. He saw special forces as uniquely
Speaker 1: suited to the kind of Cold War conflicts. He thought
Speaker 1: the country was actually going to be fighting insurgencies, proxy wars,
Speaker 1: gorilla campaigns, not mass tank battles in Europe. Before his visit,
Speaker 1: he sent instructions to the Special Warfare Center. He said,
Speaker 1: have every Special Forces soldier wear the beret for the visit,
Speaker 1: and they did. Jfk was struck by it. He later
Speaker 1: put his feelings in writing to the Army Chief of Staff,
Speaker 1: calling the green beret a symbol of excellence and a
Speaker 1: badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight
Speaker 1: for freedom. That was the turning point. An institution that
Speaker 1: spent nearly a decade treating the beret as an active
Speaker 1: insubordination suddenly had a commander in chief calling it exactly
Speaker 1: the opposite. The Army fell in line, the beret was authorized,
Speaker 1: and Special Forces soldiers had almost by accident, gotten their
Speaker 1: most powerful advocate possible. Now, why did other militaries eventually
Speaker 1: adopt something similar? Because a beret, it turns out, does
Speaker 1: something A patch or a badge can't do. You can
Speaker 1: hide a patch under a jacket, you can't hide a beret.
Speaker 1: It sits right there on your head, visible from across
Speaker 1: a parade ground. Belgian pair of Commanders inherited a green
Speaker 1: beret directly from the World War II service alongside British Commando.
Speaker 1: The Dutch Corps Commando Tropen built their own beret traditions
Speaker 1: from the same wartime lineage. The French Foreign Legion wears
Speaker 1: a green independent of the British connection entirely, and plenty
Speaker 1: of nations that literally don't wear greens still borrow the
Speaker 1: concept wholesale a distinct beray color, reserved exclusively for whichever
Speaker 1: unit sits at the top of the country's military hierarchy.
Speaker 1: That's really the deeper lesson buried in a piece of
Speaker 1: woolf fabric. The uniform tells you what army someone belongs to.
Speaker 1: Every ray worn by the right soldier tells something about
Speaker 1: what that person survived to get there. Roger Pisell didn't
Speaker 1: know it in nineteen fifty three, standing in a brag field,
Speaker 1: defying regulation, but he was building a legend, one unauthorized
Speaker 1: beret at a time.