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Godspeed General Wayne Downing
Sad news today. General Wayne Downing, Special Operations Soldier and legend ("the most famous terrorism fighter you never heard of"), died yesterday from complications from meningitis.
LongTabSigO sends the link to a fitting page from Small Wars Journal that has his biography and words from some who knew him. He continued to serve after retirement in 1996.
...The national emergency that began on September 11, 2001, drew him from retirement yet again; he accepted appointment by the President as the National Director and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism. In this position his responsibilities involved coordinating the diplomatic, law enforcement, intelligence, financial, and military facets of the global war on terrorism...
He was the thoughtful warrior who brought SOF from a seldom used/considered/regarded force to the force of quiet professionals it is today. From a WashPo article in 2001 that does an excellent job of describing the General:
...As a young Ranger, Downing, now 61, learned to stalk the enemy at night and capture rattlesnakes for food. In 34 years he rose through the ranks to command all special operations troops, including the clandestine Delta Force commandos whose close-quarter tactics are vital in places like Afghanistan. Battle-tested in Vietnam, Panama and the Persian Gulf, Downing is revered among the elite soldiers who call themselves "the quiet professionals."...
Revered because he was the mold for the rest of them. There will be more in the coming days.
More about the General after the Jump:
...As a boy in Peoria, Ill., Downing was steeped in tales of military heroism. His mother would read to him from the newspaper about the progress of the war against Germany and Japan. He listened to radio reports. "He knew where everybody was and who commanded them. He was totally fascinated by the military stuff," recalls Eileen Downing, now 80.
Though very young, Wayne had a compelling reason to pay attention: His father was fighting his way across Europe. Pfc. Francis Wayne "Bud" Downing served in the storied 9th Armored Division, which on March 7, 1945, crossed the Rhine via a railroad bridge at Remagen, ushering the American juggernaut into the heart of the German Reich.
In Peoria and elsewhere, the headlines surged with optimism: Hitler would soon be finished. "The war is over, I tell you," one general assured his colleagues. "The war is over."
On March 27, Wayne's father participated in a night attack to liberate a camp full of starving POWs near Limburg. The unit suffered heavy casualties -- including 25-year-old Pfc. Downing -- in what was its last major engagement of World War II.
He was buried in the Netherlands. His son was not yet 5.
Raising Wayne and his two younger sisters, Eileen Downing insisted on discipline and structure -- regular churchgoing and mealtimes. "We did all the same things just like when a father came home in the evening," she recalls. "Except there was no father."
Survivor benefits barely kept the family fed. "You had pennies in your hand at the end of the month," she says.
Across the street lived Joe Powers, sent home after being wounded in the 101st Airborne. "He'd be sitting on his swing on his porch, looking forlorn because there weren't any other young men around," says Eileen Downing. She sent her boy over to talk with Joe.
"They became best friends. He was Wayne's hero. He came home one day and said, 'I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to jump out of airplanes, just like Joe.' "
At 17, Wayne won automatic nomination to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as the son of a deceased veteran. He still had to meet the academic and physical qualifications for appointment, which he did.
As a young company commander in Vietnam, Downing distinguished himself in combat and was awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. "The word is hero. Sure he's a hero," says a friend who asked that his name not be used. "That was a bloody, bloody time frame. He basically could have won a lot of Purple Hearts -- he got shot at a lot."
But Downing never talked about his wounds. He'd rather tell jokes and remember the esprit de corps, and whatever passed for good times. Friends say he took his work very seriously but he never took himself too seriously.
"We were all immediately captivated by him," recalls Gen. William "Buck" Kernan, a company commander when Downing headed the 2nd Ranger Battalion at Fort Lewis, Wash., in the late 1970s. "He came in very young-looking, probably one of the youngest lieutenant colonels in the Army at the time."
But Bill Lind, a defense specialist on the staff of then-Sen. Gary Hart, wasn't impressed when he went to Fort Lewis to observe the Rangers. He told Downing the training was too rigid, as if combat unfolded according to a script. "That's training for an opera company, not for war," Lind declared.
He expected a fistfight. "Everybody who goes to visit the Rangers always says they're great. Here's a civilian who tells them they're full of crap," Lind says. But Downing was open-minded. "He says, 'Tell me more. What do you think we should be doing?' "
Downing was known for dispensing with formula. "Think like a bank robber" was his oft-quoted admonition.
"He recognized you had to harden yourself mentally and physically and use guile and cunning," says Buck Kernan. "You had to always be ahead of your adversary, you had to anticipate."
Rangers learn to endure hunger and sleep deprivation, to improvise and surprise their enemies. Even today they hew to the standing orders laid down by Maj. Robert Rogers in 1759, not long after he'd organized ragtag colonials to fight in the French and Indian War. Including this one:
"Let the enemy come till he's almost close enough to touch, then let him have it and jump out and finish him up with your hatchet."...
There's no shortage of PowerPoint soldiers at the Pentagon, but Downing preferred a hands-on approach. That, along with devotion to the troops, made him a legendary leader. He was based at Fort Bragg, N.C., and then at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, where he gained the coveted job of commander in chief of the Special Operations Command.
In the Panama invasion just before Christmas 1989, Downing oversaw the toppling of Manuel Noriega. The dictator, wanted in this country on drug charges, had holed up in the Papal Nunciature in Panama City for 11 days, then sent out a request: He wanted to surrender wearing his general's uniform. The Americans retrieved one, and Noriega surrendered in the middle of the street -- to Downing himself.
During the Gulf War, hundreds of commandos working for Downing infiltrated Iraq to find the Scud missiles that Saddam Hussein was lobbing at Israel. Rick Atkinson's book "Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War," reports that Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf had to warn Downing not to get carried away and go behind enemy lines himself.
"You work for me, you son of a bitch," Schwarzkopf told Downing. "If you personally go into Iraq, I'm going to relieve you."
"You don't have to tell me that," Downing shot back.
"I know you," said Schwarzkopf. "I don't want you going across that border and getting yourself captured or killed. One, because it's an embarrassment, and two, because you know too much."
How effective were Downing's secret Scud hunters? The CIA has never confirmed that any of the weapons were destroyed. But retired Gen. Carl Stiner credits the commandos with demobilizing the missiles, calling Downing the man who "shut down the Scuds. . . . He contributed immeasurably to the success of that war."
In October 1993, Downing was running the Special Operations Command in Tampa when 18 American soldiers died during the disastrous effort to capture warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed in Mogadishu, Somalia. The four-star general, as chronicled in Mark Bowden's book "Black Hawk Down," briefly spoke with the on-the-ground commander, Maj. Gen. William Garrison, but backed off, believing "the last thing his friend needed at that moment was some desk jockey 13,000 miles away looking over his shoulder."
Garrison took full responsibility for the outcome of the battle and it destroyed his career. Within days, Downing arrived in Mogadishu to check on the troops, "as any good commander would," says a friend. A Somali militia was still shelling. A mortar round hit the Rangers' airfield encampment, killing one soldier and seriously wounding a dozen others.
That mortar almost killed Downing. "It was really close," the friend says.
July 18, 2007 • Permalink
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Fallen But Never Forgotten
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» American Hero: Gen. Wayne Downing from Cop The Truth
The SpecOps community lost a living legend when General Wayne Downing died of bacterial meningitis and multiple myeloma in Peoria, Illinois, yesterday. Downing was 67. The old warrior, who lost his father late in WWII during a POW rescue attempt, [Read More]
Tracked on Jul 19, 2007 7:38:47 PM
