As many of you know, I spent about 2 weeks running around with PJ’s earlier this year in Arizona and New Mexico. One night when we were out imbibing a few adult beverages I talked to one of the senior NCO’s about their job and the kind of men they were looking for. He said something that stuck with me:<\/p>\n
Unlike the other Special Ops units, we don’t measure success in the number of enemy lives taken, we measure success in terms of the number of friendly lives we save.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Which is not to say that PJ’s don’t bring the mayhem when it is needed. Just look at the various silver stars and other medals they’ve earned. But their primary task, their raison d’\u00eatre if you will, is getting folks out alive. And they are amazing at it. The training these guys go through is pretty sick. And they may have the easy cockiness of most the special ops guys I’ve been around, but they really are fundamentally a different group of people. I would hazard a guess that the number of people who know what green berets or “SEAL Team 6” is probably dwarfs the number who know what PJ’s do by orders of magnitude.<\/p>\n
Anyway, one of our readers forwarded this video. It matches nicely what I have been reasearching, although it only briefly mentions the August ’43 jump to rescue a bunch of folks, including CBS reporter Eric Sevareid. I actually have his book sitting right here, and he says of the PJs: <\/p>\n
Gallant is a precious word: they deserve it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Here’s the video:<\/p>\n