Green Berets Founder, 94, Directs Start of 3,000-Mile Walk to Benefit MIAs : Career Gets a Fitting Cap

Although retired Army Col. Aaron Bank never completed his most important mission--a top secret 1945 assignment to kidnap Adolf Hitler in Austria--today the 94-year-old founder of the famed Green Berets is still a hero among members of the Army Special Forces Command.

“Col. Bank is the father of the Special Forces,” said Carol Jones, a spokeswoman for the Army Special Operations Command at Ft. Bragg, N.C. “He is the cornerstone of our Special Forces heritage.”

Bank, who left the military in 1958 and moved to San Clemente in the 1960s, was honored Sunday by about 80 people, including past and present Special Forces personnel. They gathered at Newport Pier to kick off a 3,000-mile walk across eight states to Lumberton, N.C.--just 40 miles south of Ft. Bragg, home of the Green Berets.

Operation Bank/Walk Across America, organized by more than a dozen chapters of the Special Forces Assn. across the country, is also a way for military groups to raise awareness of POW/MIAs. Organizers also want to earn money to upgrade exhibits housed at the newly renovated Special Forces Museum at Ft. Bragg.

Participants carrying military flags and an honorary wooden baton bearing Bank’s name have pledged to pay $1 for each mile they walk. They plan to cover about 50 miles a day. The baton will remain on display at the museum.

When the California contingent reaches the Arizona border near Needles, a ceremonial transfer of the colors to Arizona chapters of the Special Forces Assn. will take place. The ceremony will be repeated at the borders of all eight states.

On Sunday, Bank led off the first leg of the walk, seated in a golf cart and accompanied by his wife, Cathleen, 77, and one of their two daughters, Alexander Elliot, 43.

Bank is a legend to those who have served in the Special Forces. He is a venerable figure whose influence continues to inspire new recruits. It was at his urging that the Army established the Special Forces.

Special Forces soldiers are considered the Army’s “elite of the elite,” said Ted Encinas, president of Chapter XII, Special Forces Assn. of Southern California. To distinguish themselves from other soldiers, they unofficially began wearing the green beret in the 1950s. But President John F. Kennedy visited Ft. Bragg in 1961 and made the beret official.

“We were the first ones in the U.S. Army to wear a green beret,” Bank said, adding that Kennedy, being Irish, liked the color.

Kennedy later sent a memorandum to the Army about calling the green beret “a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom.”

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The Special Forces Command, founded in 1952 by Bank and the late Col. Russell Volckmann, now oversees about 9,500 soldiers among seven branches, including two National Guard units. They are volunteers who speak two or more languages, have at least a sergeant’s rank and are trained in infantry and parachute skills. They have been known to work behind enemy lines wearing civilian clothing.

“There had never been such a unit before in the regular Army,” Bank said earlier in an interview from the memorabilia-filled “war room” of his home. “It was the first time the Army authorized what we call an unconventional warfare unit. We were specialized to use all the dirty tricks that are not supposed to be used.”

Bank’s inspiration for the original 10th Special Forces Command came from his work as a special operations officer for the Office of Strategic Services. The OSS, which was deactivated in 1946, was the forerunner of the CIA, specializing in unconventional warfare and intelligence gathering.

“Once we get behind enemy lines, we are a thorn in his line of communication,” Bank explained.

Bank, who worked as a lifeguard before joining the OSS, was called upon to recruit and train about 200 German prisoners of war for a mission dubbed Iron Cross.

“I figured it was a gamble and I had to trust them,” Bank said. “They defected because they said Hitler was ruining Germany. He was forcing them to continue the war when they had no chance of winning anymore.”

The group trained for several months in France. Bank, their commander, trained them to parachute into enemy territory posing as a German mountain infantry company, in order to kidnap Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi leaders.

They were scheduled to parachute into the Austrian Alps, where Nazi leaders were believed to be seeking refuge during the final weeks of the war. As they waited to board the plane for Austria, about a month before Hitler reportedly committed suicide in Berlin, central intelligence called the mission off.

“They claimed it was too risky,” Bank said.

Forty-one years later, Bank wrote a nonfiction book called “From OSS to Green Berets: The Birth of Special Forces.” In 1993, he co-wrote a novel, “Knight’s Cross,” with E.M. Nathanson.

Nathanson said the first half of the novel is based on Bank’s anecdotes from the Iron Cross mission--but in the book, Hitler doesn’t get away.

“For years, Aaron always wondered, ‘What if we jumped in and caught the . . . ?’ ” Nathanson said.