Integrity, esprit de corps, and disciplined conduct will be necessary to ensure the Army’s readiness, cohesion, and ability to face threats effectively in future large-scale combat operations. Sometimes, in our drive to anticipate and prepare for this future, we overlook the invaluable lessons of the past. Some of those lessons were earned in blood; others were instilled in us due to the impact of transformational leaders. Within the Army special operations community, one such leader was Col. Charles Fry, a pioneer and legend within Special Forces. Col. Fry instilled a spirit of quiet professionalism in a generation of Green Berets. As our army anticipates the future battlefield and undergoes a period of transformation to prepare for the challenges ahead, Col. Fry’s words echo through time reminding us of our duty to the profession and to each other.
Colonel Fry began his Army career as an enlisted Infantryman in 1951, serving in combat in Korea before eventually joining the Special Forces in 1954. Fry later commissioned as an infantry officer in 1961 and commanded both Special Forces and light Infantry companies in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Colonel Fry became known as a Latin American specialist with a myriad of operational deployments throughout the region. When he assumed command of 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) in 1978, he immediately became concerned with a growing divide between his unit and the conventional 193rd Infantry Brigade it was assigned to. Identifying the integration of Special Forces and conventional forces as key to the Army’s collective success, Col. Fry immediately moved to bridge the divide. He corrected the brash culture within his battalion and took the time to educate conventional commanders on Special Forces’ capabilities.
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The result was a resounding success, and the culture of “quiet professionalism” became synonymous with the culture of Green Berets.
This edition of the
Special Warfare Journal’s “Perspectives from the Force” underscores the importance of “quiet professionalism” as we prepare for tomorrow’s war. See Col. Fry’s original Army Times article from May 1979 below:
QUIET PROFESSIONALISM
Special Forces: No More Hot-Dogging
By Colonel Charles Fry, U.S. Army Special Forces
FORT GULICK, C.Z. [Panama Canal Zone]— We read with a great deal of interest the March 5 Army Times, “Bo Gritz: Another Green Beret Casualty,” announcing his surprise retirement. It touched a number of our concerns, the most important of which is the future of the Army, and how Special Forces fits into the defense of our nation. We have felt the pressure of “the Army’s attitude toward unconventional warfare, and the emphasis on conventional warfare.” But Bo knows that has always been our Army’s attitude. Our Army is a conventional Army trained and dedicated to winning a conventional war against a predominantly conventional enemy force. We entered the conventional Army, we all have conventional MOSs and are now entrusted to employ unconventional techniques to support the conventional commanders to prepare for and win wars. If we don’t have the conventional Army to win the big one, we just wouldn’t have much of a job, would we?
We remember last year how happy Bo Gritz — our former commander — was because we were getting a commander who “had been around a long time,” “had nothing to lose” and could therefore “ruffle feathers,” fall on his sword, speak up for SF and demand “special treatment” from a “conventional commander.” We know that we are good because of what we are and we neither hide it nor are we ashamed of it.
This may surprise some, but we sat back and took another look at ourselves and our attitudes as well as the other problem facing SF today — that we don’t have many conventional commanders who understand the capability of the Green Berets. We agree that they see us as “a lot of overpaid, cocky guys… who spend our time… making them look bad during training exercises...” But our battalion has been working to change that perception.
We hesitate to tell Bo this because we love and respect him for his contribution to Special Forces, but we know he believes in telling it like it is. We just haven’t done a good job over the years of selling ourselves and our capabilities to the conventional commander. Yes, we remember those training exercises starting in 1952. Boy, did we tear up those unprepared, young conventional company and battalion commanders. We embarrassed them by making their troops look bad. They weren’t prepared to react to behind-the-line operations and we ran rampant. Remember in Sagebush 1955, when we damn near stopped a multi-division training exercise?
Gen. Paul D. Adams said we were a “disorganized” mob, took us out of the maneuver, and took our Green Berets away. We earned them back by being more professional but it took seven years. Remember how we treated the conventional units when they came into our area of operations in Vietnam? Do you know where those commanders that we ridiculed and poked fun at are today? They are running the Army. They are even in Force Development at DA. Who is laughing now?
Why were we so arrogant and cocky? Why didn’t we advise, train and establish rapport and confidence with our own? Why didn’t we do then what Lt. Gen. Harold R. Aaron says we have to do now? Convince our conventional leaders of our value in helping them prepare for and win the big one by quiet professionalism, not by being aggressive and brash.
We have decided not to be aggressive and brash nor to ruffle feathers. We believe in quiet professionalism. We still tell it like it is but we do it in a constructive manner, get the message across. We also have learned to listen when someone tells us like it is. We believe we are going to exist as Special Forces, and if our Army is going to be prepared to defend our nation, we need each other. Quiet professionalism really works. We are the only SF Battalion assigned to a tactical conventional brigade. We think the brigade — the 193d Inf — is pretty proud of us and we are proud of the brigade too. We have helped make the brigade one of the best if not the best-trained brigade in the Army. As a result we feel our battalion is the best-trained SF battalion in the force structure, because the brigade supports real SF training for us. And we have a conventional commander, who will soon put on his second star, as well as a CINC — fighting like hell to keep us in the force structure. All we did was to stop ridiculing and start advising, teaching and working to help make the conventional units better prepared and the fallout was greater training opportunities for SF tasks.
During a recent JCS exercise in the Canal Zone, one of those commanders who thought that we were “arrogant, disorganized, overpaid, cocky, typical SFers” when he arrived, told our commander after four days of work with our teams: “My impression of SF has changed. Your guys are true professionals. They want my troops to learn, to meet their high standards. I was ready to see a bunch of guerrillas with ‘Death Before Dishonor’ T-shirts, but they are all in the same uniform and they care about us learning.” Quiet professionalism works.
We aren’t “yes men” and we are trained and ready to go into denied areas and perform special tasks on a moment’s notice. At the same time, we are gaining the special trust and confidence of our conventional commanders, which is vital to our existence.
We are not throwing in the towel yet. We are going to be in the force structure somewhere, even if we have to […] between missions. We have had our ups and downs over the last 27 years. If we can get quiet professionalism working at all SF levels we can eliminate some of the downs and be around to do our thing when we are called to defend the flag.
MEMBERS OF 3D BN, 7TH SFG(A)
For more information about the life and career of Colonel Fry see the USASOC History page here. (Image credit: USASOC Command History Office)
Authors’ Notes
Colonel Charles “Chuck” H. Fry enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1951, serving as a combat infantryman in Korea before joining Special Forces in 1954. He became an early pioneer in underwater and HALO operations, as well as numerous other initiatives. After commissioning as an officer through OCS in 1960, he went on to serve as an Airborne and Pathfinder instructor and later commanded Infantry and Special Forces units in Vietnam. His Army career included extensive counterinsurgency advisory work in Latin America and culminated as the Commander of Special Operations Command – South. Fry received the Bull Simons Award in 2009 and became a Distinguished Member of the Special Forces Regiment in 2013 for his lifetime contributions to special operations.
Major John Byrnes is a pseudonym for an active-duty Regular Army Soldier and Civil Affairs Officer with a background in Infantry and Special Operations. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy and the National Defense University, and he currently serves as an editor for the Special Warfare Journal.
Chief Warrant Officer 4 William Bryant is a career Regular Army Soldier and Special Forces Officer (180A) with over 24 years of service. He is a graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies and the Air Command and Staff College, and he currently serves as the Special Operations Center of Excellence Harding Fellow.
The views, opinions, and analysis expressed do not represent the position of the U.S. Army or the Department of War.
References
01 ARSOF History,
COL Charles H. Fry, part 6, oral interview accessed 23 September 2025 from ARSOF History.org
YouTube.
02 U.S. Army Special Operations Command History Office,
COL Charles H. Fry, accessed 23 September 2025 from https://arsof-history.org/icons/fry.html.