COL John Fenzel
US Army-Green Beret
Cold War Europe, Southwest Asian Theater of Operations
1982-2012
US Army-Green Beret
Cold War Europe, Southwest Asian Theater of Operations
1982-2012
John Fenzel was born in 1962, and raised in Dundee, Illinois, and in the agricultural community of Hampshire, Illinois. John had two brothers and one sister, and his father and grandfather ran an auto dealership, Fenzel Motor Sales. That business lasted 75 years.
John recalled the big influences in his life were his family and a long history of military service. His Grandfather served in WW I and he can trace other ancestors back to the civil war fighting for the Illinois Regiments. John spent his weekends and his summers at the dealership pumping gas, cleaning up the shop and washing cars. There he listened to the stories of WW I and WW II veterans. These men were very influential in John’s formative years. His family would often invite these veterans up to his house for lunch. “They called it supper back then.” He remembers the stories of service and sacrifice and for John there was never any doubt he was going to join the Army. He watched the 1968 movie ‘The Green Berets’ with John Wayne, and decided then, “That’s what I want to do.”
John went to the same high school as his father and brothers—Marmion Military academy in Aurora, Illinois. It was run by Benedictine Monks and looking back, John believed that helped instill discipline, and kept him on the straight and narrow.
He started college at St. John’s University which is a Benedictine college in Collegeville, Minnesota. He later transferred to Tulane to attend a larger university, and to escape the cold. Although the temperatures rose, Johns’ grades dropped while he enjoyed the city of New Orleans a bit too much. John had the experience of the JROTC program in high school, and ROTC in college. He was commission as a 2nd Lieutenant at the age of 18. Initially, he wanted to join the Marines Corps as a pilot. Unfortunately, his flight physical found he was color-blind. According to John, he was told “rarely do we see anyone as color-blind as you are.” Lucky for John, the Army only required him be able to see vivid red and vivid green.
When he graduated from college, he was ready for active duty, but the Army told him he was going to the National Guard. John spent his summer writing letters and calling people get his assignment changed. Finally, he got his break and received orders to Ft. McClellan in Alabama. His assigned MOS was 74A; a Chemical Officer.
This was at the height of the Cold War and for the next two years John learned everything about nuclear, biological, and chemical analysis, both defensive and offensive. He learned the calculations to determine the fallout and the content of “the cloud”. There was a live agent testing facility where John was in full protective gear, and they placed drops of VX gas on his uniform which was a real incentive to get “everything buttoned up pretty tightly”. “If you took off your gas mask you knew well the risk you were taking.”
In 1985 John was assigned to the 4th Battalion, 27th Field Artillery in Wertheim, Germany. The Cold War was still running hot at time and tensions were high. John was the Chemical Officer for a Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) battalion. Their mission was to counter a Soviet invasion into Western Europe. His unit needed to be out of the base gate within two hours of notification and reach the German border within five hours. He was completely trained on the Nuclear Release Authentication (NRAS) System, and John remembers the pressure as intense. “You never were really sure if it was a drill or the real deal.” John recalled having great mentors and excellent leadership. John rose to the position of Assistant Operations Officer at the Brigade level.
John spent five years in Germany but all-the-while, his overarching goal was become a Special Forces Officer. He received permission to attend the Special Forces Assessment Selection (SFAS) course. This was the first step to becoming a Special Forces Officer and this was one of the first SFAS classes offered. Over a three-week period, the class was put through a series of individual and collective training and evaluation exercises to determine if you were a good fit for Special Forces.
John characterized the challenge SFAS conveyed, was always to be part of the solution and not part of the problem, not over evaluating situations and being part of a team—and importantly, “just not quitting.” John felt he was prepared for this because he was mentored well during his tour in Germany and growing up. A big part of the training involved sleep deprivation, psychological exercises, land navigation exercises, ruck marches with no known destination and no clear time requirements. The candidates would also be put through team exercises. Candidates were broken down into groups of 12 (a typical SF Team) and during the period of a week and a half you would be responsible for leading a team on a given mission. John recalled that a big part of the training was the lack of a “standard” or, knowing what would constitute a passing grade. “You were never able to slack off or rest.” Throughout this time, everyone took a turn at being the leader which carried a great amount of responsibility. Inevitably, many candidates would succumb to the pressure and quit, which only placed additional pressure on the remaining candidates. When other candidates would quit, the missions didn’t change, you simply had fewer men to complete it. The capstone mission was a 26-mile ruck march carrying a 50-pound ruck sack that needed to be completed within the “standard”. That “standard” was unknown. John completed the Special Forces Qualification Course seven months later, and graduated as a Green Beret.
At the rank of Captain, John’s first assignment was with 5th Special Forces Group at Ft. Campbell in Kentucky. He took command of his “A-Team,” ODA 582. A week after he arrived, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. John was called to the company commander’s office. He was advised his team would be the first to deploy as part of Operation Desert Shield, the precursor to Desert Storm. Within two weeks he and his team were on a transport plane headed into the Middle East and still not knowing their ultimate destination.
When the plane landed, and the door opened, John’s team of 12 were in Saudi Arabia. They were met by Colonel Jessie Johnson, commander of Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT). “The only thing between Saudi Arabia and Saddam Hussain is you” he told them. Part of their mission included going up to the Kuwaiti border where they sometimes drew enemy fire. To carry out their mission the team had to become very proficient at calling in close air support. When they reached the border, they saw thousands of refugees fleeing the fighting. John’s junior weapons sergeant suggested that they create a battalion of Kuwaiti’s and train them to fight and help liberate their country. John thought this was an excellent idea and was the type of unconventional warfare the Green Beret are trained to do. The idea made its way to the Pentagon and the White House, where the mission was ultimately approved. The Kuwaiti battalion would be a motorized infantry battalion with 50 caliber machine guns mounted on Toyota pickup trucks. Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Yatama was the commanding officer of the Kuwaiti troops and John’s counterpart. The Colonel was 6’8” and a former volleyball player for the Kuwaiti National team. John described him as a good friend of the US, and a great leader.
One of John’s men told him that there was a member of the Kuwaiti ruling family in the battalion. He wanted no recognition and had joined to help liberate his country when not many other Kuwaiti’s were not willing to fight for their country. His name was Jaber Al-Sabah. John and LTC Yatama met him, and both thought very highly of him.
The standard meal was goat. John remembers the goat as being quite good and the chefs as being excellent; but after a while, the US troops were ready for something else. Coincidentally Colonel Ahmed told John, “You are doing so much for us, what can we do for you? Tell us! Anything at all!” John replied, “Well sir, we’re getting’ kinda tired of goat.” “What would your men like to eat, John?” John thought and jokingly said, “Well, how about cheeseburgers?” to which the Colonel replied, “Yes, we will get cheeseburgers!” Ahmed sent his Sergeant Major to find cheeseburgers. Unknown to John, the Sergeant Major was the Kuwaiti version of Radar O’Reilly, and he returned with two pickup trucks filled with hamburgers and cheese. That day they had a big barbeque, and they ate hamburgers… for the next three weeks.
On another occasion John’s medic advised him if the unit went into combat, that they were not prepared to treat mass casualties due to a lack of bandages within the battalion. Finding bandages in the middle of the desert would not be easy but the medic said he had a “non-standard solution. “What’s that, Dave?” John asked SFC Dave Beireis, the team’s medic. “Maxipads,” Dave replied. John spoke to Colonel Ahmed who immediately sent “Radar” in search of maxipads. Hours later Radar returned with two pickup trucks full of maxipads.
John said that they covered a lot of ground in a short period of training, and they built a good camaraderie with the Kuwaiti’s. John’s unit felt the Kuwaiti’s were well trained and thought the Kuwaiti’s would be able to perform their mission, and do it well.
John’s team and the Kuwaiti battalion made it as far as Kuwait City, when orders came down from Washington that no Americans were to enter Kuwait City. The US unit had to stay behind while the Kuwaiti’s went ahead. John recalls while sitting in a 5 Ton truck in a cemetery just outside the city, they came under enemy fire. “In a firefight, if anyone tells you they know immediately the situation, it’s a lie. It’s total chaos and you try as quickly as possible to make sense of a chaotic situation, and then you do your best to control it”. That is what they did and were able to neutralize the threat. That was their first firefight.
After much discussion up the chain of command and pointing out that without the Green Beret unit, there was no way to know exactly what this Kuwaiti battalion was doing, John was given permission for his team to enter the city. The Americans caught up with their Kuwaiti battalion and Colonel Ahmed was very happy to see them. He gave John a big bear hug and asked him to sit to have tea. The Colonel spoke to his soldiers in Arabic and they disappeared, returning a short while later with many grocery bags of Iraqi Dinar. “John, this is all for you. You are rich!” John told the Colonel, “Thank you, Sir, but we can’t take this. How about each of my men take one note as a souvenir?” The colonel smiled and said, “Well, you could have been rich.”
The Colonel left the room and while John was finishing his tea, his medic arrived and asked John to come with him immediately to the courtyard because Colonel was about to execute a prisoner. John went out to talk to Colonel Ahmed. John recalled part of his Special Forces training was to talk someone out of executing a prisoner. At that time, he thought this was an unrealistic exercise, but had nonetheless gone through the paces and completed it successfully. That training came in handy as John talked to Colonel Ahmed, convincing him not to execute the prisoner. Eventually the Colonel relented and put the gun down.
After his tour was completed in Kuwait John led the first deployment of US military forces to Pakistan since 1954. This was a mission to train the Pakistani Special Services Group (SSG). The training was done at Cherat, a former British military compound in a small mountainous village near Peshawar and the Khyber Pass. His group deployed to Pakistan on two occasions and not only trained the SSG but formed close relationships with the Pakistani’s which paid dividends after 9/11 when the US fought alongside them.
After the Pakistan mission, John attended the Naval War College and upon completion joined the 10th Special Forces Group in 1997. John was deployed to Bosnia to help enforce the Dayton Peace Accords. John and his men lived among the locals and served as the eyes and ears for General Shinseki, Commander of NATO Forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Part of their mission was to guard the mass graves containing bodies from the atrocities committed by the Serbs. They guarded the graves so The International Criminal Tribunal of Yugoslavia (ICTY) could exhume the bodies and investigate possible war crimes.
John did not know much about Bosnia, and he read as many books as he could to understand the dynamics of his new assignment. In his reading, he kept coming upon the name of Nasir Oric and he wanted to meet him. Oric was a former commander of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina resistance forces, and he defended the town of Srebrenica. This was a town with great strategic importance for both the Bosnians and the Serbs and was the site of intense fighting. Later, it would be the site of genocide.
John hired a local Bosniak, Damir “Chuck” Mescic, as his interpreter who was very happy to have a job and told John he was happy to help with anything. John told Chuck his first assignment was to find Nasir Oric. Although all the color drained from his face after his first assignment sunk in, a week later he found Oric and told John that Oric agreed to meet with him. John and Oric met at a café in Tuzla and started to build a relationship through Chuck, his interpreter. At the end of the meeting Oric told John that he should tell everyone that he knew they were looking to talk to him about his role in the war. Through the interpreter Oric said, “I know everyone wants to arrest me and take me to the Hague. All they need to do is knock on my door and I will go. I have nothing to hide.” John continued to build the relationship by taking Oric to the shooting range and dinners. At one meeting John asked if Oric had ever returned to his home village of Srebrenica. He said he had not, and that he could never go back--he would be killed. John told him that he would personally take him back for brief visit, but it would have to be early-- at 4am, and they would need to return no later than 6am.
John and his men picked up Oric at 4am and along the way he recounted his activities during the war. They took him to the top of a castle, where he was able to look down on the village of Srebrenica. When it was time to depart, they drove past his old home and to the grave of his grandmother. They left the village as the sun rose and agreed to meet for dinner that evening. At dinner, Oric told John that no one had ever been that kind to him, and he would do anything for John and his team. Oric agreed to tell everything that he knew about what was going in terms of demonstrations and riots being planned and threats targeting US Special Forces teams deployed throughout Bosnia. John’s team knew weeks in advance of what was going to happen and who was planning it. The intelligence Oric provided was so accurate and timely that it prompted a call from General Shinseki. The General wanted to know how John was getting information that was so much better than anything he was getting from any other source. John requested that he provide that information “on the way out”. The General agreed.
John left Bosnia and became the Battalion Commander of the Special Forces Training Battalion at Camp MacKall—a small training outpost outside Fort Bragg. Shortly after settling in, John received a phone call from Chuck Mescic, his interpreter, alerting him that Nasir Oric had been arrested. John told Chuck that he would be happy to testify on behalf of Oric. His defense team called John almost immediately and told him Oric was being tried for crimes committed by his men. During the trial at The Hague, John was requested to testify on behalf of Oric. John testified for four hours. While John could not testify to what Oric did during the war, he was able to describe what Oric had done to provide information that helped keep peace and stability during John’s tenure In Bosnia. At the conclusion of his testimony John made eye contact with Oric, who bowed in his seat. “At that moment, I knew I had done the right thing,” John recalled. Oric was eventually acquitted on all but a minor charge and released for time already served.
As a company commander in 10th Special Forces Group, John led the first US ground forces to enter the Baltic states since the Soviets had pulled out. Again, the Special Forces helped train the local forces and built relationships. “I know we made an enduring difference, and the effects are still being felt today. Particularly now, as Russia is again threatening the Baltic states.”
After serving as the Operations Officer for 10th Special Forces Group, John applied to the White House Fellowship program. Unknown to him, his brother was also applying for the fellowship. As luck would have it both brothers were chosen. John was assigned to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) at the end of the Clinton Administration in late 2000. When George Bush won the 2000 election John found himself as the only remaining semi-political appointee in the OPM. He served there to help in OPM’s transition of administrations. As this concluded, he was told that because another Director’s appointment would be lengthy, he should probably find another job within the White House. John found a position on the personal staff of the Vice President and placed as the Director of Operations for the National Energy Policy Development Group (aka, “Energy Task Force”), and despite having little background in energy, he helped develop the first U. S. Energy Policy.
From there he was assigned to the newly created Homeland Defense Task Force to develop Homeland Defense Policies. This was in early 2000 before 9/11 and before the formation of the Department of Homeland Security. Governor Ridge from Pennsylvania was brought in to run the Task Force. John recalls there being numerous threats against the United States during this time. Many were credible and spanned nuclear, chemical and biological threats. John was involved in the development of a framework for a Terrorist Alert System which ultimately became the color-coded alert system.
From the White House, John returned to command to the Special Forces Training Program at Fort Bragg. John talked about being proud of maintaining the standards for selecting and training special forces groups. John went on to serve in other positions in the Pentagon and commanding a brigade at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
In 2012, John retired from the Army, and has held several corporate positions. Currently, John is a keynote speaker and has authored 3 novels. John enjoys US History and uses his knowledge to give guided applied leadership experiences at Arlington National Cemetery and various battlefields around the world.
Thank you, John, for all the sacrifices and years of service in harm’s way and working to build relationships around the world. We are also grateful for all the goat you and you men ate on our behalf.
John recalled the big influences in his life were his family and a long history of military service. His Grandfather served in WW I and he can trace other ancestors back to the civil war fighting for the Illinois Regiments. John spent his weekends and his summers at the dealership pumping gas, cleaning up the shop and washing cars. There he listened to the stories of WW I and WW II veterans. These men were very influential in John’s formative years. His family would often invite these veterans up to his house for lunch. “They called it supper back then.” He remembers the stories of service and sacrifice and for John there was never any doubt he was going to join the Army. He watched the 1968 movie ‘The Green Berets’ with John Wayne, and decided then, “That’s what I want to do.”
John went to the same high school as his father and brothers—Marmion Military academy in Aurora, Illinois. It was run by Benedictine Monks and looking back, John believed that helped instill discipline, and kept him on the straight and narrow.
He started college at St. John’s University which is a Benedictine college in Collegeville, Minnesota. He later transferred to Tulane to attend a larger university, and to escape the cold. Although the temperatures rose, Johns’ grades dropped while he enjoyed the city of New Orleans a bit too much. John had the experience of the JROTC program in high school, and ROTC in college. He was commission as a 2nd Lieutenant at the age of 18. Initially, he wanted to join the Marines Corps as a pilot. Unfortunately, his flight physical found he was color-blind. According to John, he was told “rarely do we see anyone as color-blind as you are.” Lucky for John, the Army only required him be able to see vivid red and vivid green.
When he graduated from college, he was ready for active duty, but the Army told him he was going to the National Guard. John spent his summer writing letters and calling people get his assignment changed. Finally, he got his break and received orders to Ft. McClellan in Alabama. His assigned MOS was 74A; a Chemical Officer.
This was at the height of the Cold War and for the next two years John learned everything about nuclear, biological, and chemical analysis, both defensive and offensive. He learned the calculations to determine the fallout and the content of “the cloud”. There was a live agent testing facility where John was in full protective gear, and they placed drops of VX gas on his uniform which was a real incentive to get “everything buttoned up pretty tightly”. “If you took off your gas mask you knew well the risk you were taking.”
In 1985 John was assigned to the 4th Battalion, 27th Field Artillery in Wertheim, Germany. The Cold War was still running hot at time and tensions were high. John was the Chemical Officer for a Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) battalion. Their mission was to counter a Soviet invasion into Western Europe. His unit needed to be out of the base gate within two hours of notification and reach the German border within five hours. He was completely trained on the Nuclear Release Authentication (NRAS) System, and John remembers the pressure as intense. “You never were really sure if it was a drill or the real deal.” John recalled having great mentors and excellent leadership. John rose to the position of Assistant Operations Officer at the Brigade level.
John spent five years in Germany but all-the-while, his overarching goal was become a Special Forces Officer. He received permission to attend the Special Forces Assessment Selection (SFAS) course. This was the first step to becoming a Special Forces Officer and this was one of the first SFAS classes offered. Over a three-week period, the class was put through a series of individual and collective training and evaluation exercises to determine if you were a good fit for Special Forces.
John characterized the challenge SFAS conveyed, was always to be part of the solution and not part of the problem, not over evaluating situations and being part of a team—and importantly, “just not quitting.” John felt he was prepared for this because he was mentored well during his tour in Germany and growing up. A big part of the training involved sleep deprivation, psychological exercises, land navigation exercises, ruck marches with no known destination and no clear time requirements. The candidates would also be put through team exercises. Candidates were broken down into groups of 12 (a typical SF Team) and during the period of a week and a half you would be responsible for leading a team on a given mission. John recalled that a big part of the training was the lack of a “standard” or, knowing what would constitute a passing grade. “You were never able to slack off or rest.” Throughout this time, everyone took a turn at being the leader which carried a great amount of responsibility. Inevitably, many candidates would succumb to the pressure and quit, which only placed additional pressure on the remaining candidates. When other candidates would quit, the missions didn’t change, you simply had fewer men to complete it. The capstone mission was a 26-mile ruck march carrying a 50-pound ruck sack that needed to be completed within the “standard”. That “standard” was unknown. John completed the Special Forces Qualification Course seven months later, and graduated as a Green Beret.
At the rank of Captain, John’s first assignment was with 5th Special Forces Group at Ft. Campbell in Kentucky. He took command of his “A-Team,” ODA 582. A week after he arrived, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. John was called to the company commander’s office. He was advised his team would be the first to deploy as part of Operation Desert Shield, the precursor to Desert Storm. Within two weeks he and his team were on a transport plane headed into the Middle East and still not knowing their ultimate destination.
When the plane landed, and the door opened, John’s team of 12 were in Saudi Arabia. They were met by Colonel Jessie Johnson, commander of Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT). “The only thing between Saudi Arabia and Saddam Hussain is you” he told them. Part of their mission included going up to the Kuwaiti border where they sometimes drew enemy fire. To carry out their mission the team had to become very proficient at calling in close air support. When they reached the border, they saw thousands of refugees fleeing the fighting. John’s junior weapons sergeant suggested that they create a battalion of Kuwaiti’s and train them to fight and help liberate their country. John thought this was an excellent idea and was the type of unconventional warfare the Green Beret are trained to do. The idea made its way to the Pentagon and the White House, where the mission was ultimately approved. The Kuwaiti battalion would be a motorized infantry battalion with 50 caliber machine guns mounted on Toyota pickup trucks. Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Yatama was the commanding officer of the Kuwaiti troops and John’s counterpart. The Colonel was 6’8” and a former volleyball player for the Kuwaiti National team. John described him as a good friend of the US, and a great leader.
One of John’s men told him that there was a member of the Kuwaiti ruling family in the battalion. He wanted no recognition and had joined to help liberate his country when not many other Kuwaiti’s were not willing to fight for their country. His name was Jaber Al-Sabah. John and LTC Yatama met him, and both thought very highly of him.
The standard meal was goat. John remembers the goat as being quite good and the chefs as being excellent; but after a while, the US troops were ready for something else. Coincidentally Colonel Ahmed told John, “You are doing so much for us, what can we do for you? Tell us! Anything at all!” John replied, “Well sir, we’re getting’ kinda tired of goat.” “What would your men like to eat, John?” John thought and jokingly said, “Well, how about cheeseburgers?” to which the Colonel replied, “Yes, we will get cheeseburgers!” Ahmed sent his Sergeant Major to find cheeseburgers. Unknown to John, the Sergeant Major was the Kuwaiti version of Radar O’Reilly, and he returned with two pickup trucks filled with hamburgers and cheese. That day they had a big barbeque, and they ate hamburgers… for the next three weeks.
On another occasion John’s medic advised him if the unit went into combat, that they were not prepared to treat mass casualties due to a lack of bandages within the battalion. Finding bandages in the middle of the desert would not be easy but the medic said he had a “non-standard solution. “What’s that, Dave?” John asked SFC Dave Beireis, the team’s medic. “Maxipads,” Dave replied. John spoke to Colonel Ahmed who immediately sent “Radar” in search of maxipads. Hours later Radar returned with two pickup trucks full of maxipads.
John said that they covered a lot of ground in a short period of training, and they built a good camaraderie with the Kuwaiti’s. John’s unit felt the Kuwaiti’s were well trained and thought the Kuwaiti’s would be able to perform their mission, and do it well.
John’s team and the Kuwaiti battalion made it as far as Kuwait City, when orders came down from Washington that no Americans were to enter Kuwait City. The US unit had to stay behind while the Kuwaiti’s went ahead. John recalls while sitting in a 5 Ton truck in a cemetery just outside the city, they came under enemy fire. “In a firefight, if anyone tells you they know immediately the situation, it’s a lie. It’s total chaos and you try as quickly as possible to make sense of a chaotic situation, and then you do your best to control it”. That is what they did and were able to neutralize the threat. That was their first firefight.
After much discussion up the chain of command and pointing out that without the Green Beret unit, there was no way to know exactly what this Kuwaiti battalion was doing, John was given permission for his team to enter the city. The Americans caught up with their Kuwaiti battalion and Colonel Ahmed was very happy to see them. He gave John a big bear hug and asked him to sit to have tea. The Colonel spoke to his soldiers in Arabic and they disappeared, returning a short while later with many grocery bags of Iraqi Dinar. “John, this is all for you. You are rich!” John told the Colonel, “Thank you, Sir, but we can’t take this. How about each of my men take one note as a souvenir?” The colonel smiled and said, “Well, you could have been rich.”
The Colonel left the room and while John was finishing his tea, his medic arrived and asked John to come with him immediately to the courtyard because Colonel was about to execute a prisoner. John went out to talk to Colonel Ahmed. John recalled part of his Special Forces training was to talk someone out of executing a prisoner. At that time, he thought this was an unrealistic exercise, but had nonetheless gone through the paces and completed it successfully. That training came in handy as John talked to Colonel Ahmed, convincing him not to execute the prisoner. Eventually the Colonel relented and put the gun down.
After his tour was completed in Kuwait John led the first deployment of US military forces to Pakistan since 1954. This was a mission to train the Pakistani Special Services Group (SSG). The training was done at Cherat, a former British military compound in a small mountainous village near Peshawar and the Khyber Pass. His group deployed to Pakistan on two occasions and not only trained the SSG but formed close relationships with the Pakistani’s which paid dividends after 9/11 when the US fought alongside them.
After the Pakistan mission, John attended the Naval War College and upon completion joined the 10th Special Forces Group in 1997. John was deployed to Bosnia to help enforce the Dayton Peace Accords. John and his men lived among the locals and served as the eyes and ears for General Shinseki, Commander of NATO Forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Part of their mission was to guard the mass graves containing bodies from the atrocities committed by the Serbs. They guarded the graves so The International Criminal Tribunal of Yugoslavia (ICTY) could exhume the bodies and investigate possible war crimes.
John did not know much about Bosnia, and he read as many books as he could to understand the dynamics of his new assignment. In his reading, he kept coming upon the name of Nasir Oric and he wanted to meet him. Oric was a former commander of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina resistance forces, and he defended the town of Srebrenica. This was a town with great strategic importance for both the Bosnians and the Serbs and was the site of intense fighting. Later, it would be the site of genocide.
John hired a local Bosniak, Damir “Chuck” Mescic, as his interpreter who was very happy to have a job and told John he was happy to help with anything. John told Chuck his first assignment was to find Nasir Oric. Although all the color drained from his face after his first assignment sunk in, a week later he found Oric and told John that Oric agreed to meet with him. John and Oric met at a café in Tuzla and started to build a relationship through Chuck, his interpreter. At the end of the meeting Oric told John that he should tell everyone that he knew they were looking to talk to him about his role in the war. Through the interpreter Oric said, “I know everyone wants to arrest me and take me to the Hague. All they need to do is knock on my door and I will go. I have nothing to hide.” John continued to build the relationship by taking Oric to the shooting range and dinners. At one meeting John asked if Oric had ever returned to his home village of Srebrenica. He said he had not, and that he could never go back--he would be killed. John told him that he would personally take him back for brief visit, but it would have to be early-- at 4am, and they would need to return no later than 6am.
John and his men picked up Oric at 4am and along the way he recounted his activities during the war. They took him to the top of a castle, where he was able to look down on the village of Srebrenica. When it was time to depart, they drove past his old home and to the grave of his grandmother. They left the village as the sun rose and agreed to meet for dinner that evening. At dinner, Oric told John that no one had ever been that kind to him, and he would do anything for John and his team. Oric agreed to tell everything that he knew about what was going in terms of demonstrations and riots being planned and threats targeting US Special Forces teams deployed throughout Bosnia. John’s team knew weeks in advance of what was going to happen and who was planning it. The intelligence Oric provided was so accurate and timely that it prompted a call from General Shinseki. The General wanted to know how John was getting information that was so much better than anything he was getting from any other source. John requested that he provide that information “on the way out”. The General agreed.
John left Bosnia and became the Battalion Commander of the Special Forces Training Battalion at Camp MacKall—a small training outpost outside Fort Bragg. Shortly after settling in, John received a phone call from Chuck Mescic, his interpreter, alerting him that Nasir Oric had been arrested. John told Chuck that he would be happy to testify on behalf of Oric. His defense team called John almost immediately and told him Oric was being tried for crimes committed by his men. During the trial at The Hague, John was requested to testify on behalf of Oric. John testified for four hours. While John could not testify to what Oric did during the war, he was able to describe what Oric had done to provide information that helped keep peace and stability during John’s tenure In Bosnia. At the conclusion of his testimony John made eye contact with Oric, who bowed in his seat. “At that moment, I knew I had done the right thing,” John recalled. Oric was eventually acquitted on all but a minor charge and released for time already served.
As a company commander in 10th Special Forces Group, John led the first US ground forces to enter the Baltic states since the Soviets had pulled out. Again, the Special Forces helped train the local forces and built relationships. “I know we made an enduring difference, and the effects are still being felt today. Particularly now, as Russia is again threatening the Baltic states.”
After serving as the Operations Officer for 10th Special Forces Group, John applied to the White House Fellowship program. Unknown to him, his brother was also applying for the fellowship. As luck would have it both brothers were chosen. John was assigned to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) at the end of the Clinton Administration in late 2000. When George Bush won the 2000 election John found himself as the only remaining semi-political appointee in the OPM. He served there to help in OPM’s transition of administrations. As this concluded, he was told that because another Director’s appointment would be lengthy, he should probably find another job within the White House. John found a position on the personal staff of the Vice President and placed as the Director of Operations for the National Energy Policy Development Group (aka, “Energy Task Force”), and despite having little background in energy, he helped develop the first U. S. Energy Policy.
From there he was assigned to the newly created Homeland Defense Task Force to develop Homeland Defense Policies. This was in early 2000 before 9/11 and before the formation of the Department of Homeland Security. Governor Ridge from Pennsylvania was brought in to run the Task Force. John recalls there being numerous threats against the United States during this time. Many were credible and spanned nuclear, chemical and biological threats. John was involved in the development of a framework for a Terrorist Alert System which ultimately became the color-coded alert system.
From the White House, John returned to command to the Special Forces Training Program at Fort Bragg. John talked about being proud of maintaining the standards for selecting and training special forces groups. John went on to serve in other positions in the Pentagon and commanding a brigade at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
In 2012, John retired from the Army, and has held several corporate positions. Currently, John is a keynote speaker and has authored 3 novels. John enjoys US History and uses his knowledge to give guided applied leadership experiences at Arlington National Cemetery and various battlefields around the world.
Thank you, John, for all the sacrifices and years of service in harm’s way and working to build relationships around the world. We are also grateful for all the goat you and you men ate on our behalf.