Not surprisingly, his paratroop superiors were aware of his knack for drawing and design, and so he was asked to create the first airborne qualification badge, and then to have a silversmith produce enough of them to award the first group of qualifying paratroopers. Airborne forces still wear the wings Bill Yarborough designed.
His talents were not limited to airborne wings. He had a further knack for designing specialized clothing: the first airborne jump boots, for instance — jump boots have had the same kind of meaning for paratroopers that green berets have for Special Forces — and he would later create other pieces of military clothing, some of which found their way into the catalogs of outdoor-clothing specialists such as L.L. Bean.
Early on in his command of the Green Berets, he argued for the use of the Bowie knife, both as a weapon useful in hand-to-hand combat and as a symbol of accomplishment. At one time sabers had satisfied that kind of need, but the Army had taken away sabers. They were no more practical in the twentieth century than horse-mounted cavalry. To Yarborough, the Bowie knife seemed like a splendid replacement, rich in frontier tradition and heroic resonance.
Yarborough's dream was to present a Bowie knife to each new member of his Special Forces, together with the green beret. The knife would have an inscription on each side: on one the soldier's name, and on the other the Special Forces motto, de oppresso liber ("to free the oppressed").
The Army never approved the idea — but Bill Yarborough kept coming up with others.
Like the movies, for instance.
Back in 1941, Bill Yarborough had become a leader of the new breed of airborne warrior, and he had learned an important lesson about selling a cutting-edge-but-maybe-somewhat-suspect military unit to both the Army and the American public.
Hollywood helps.
In 1941, RKO made a movie called Parachute Battalion about three young men, played by Robert Preston, Edmund O'Brien, and Harry Carey, who go through parachute training. Since it would not do to have big stars risk their lives jumping out of airplanes, Bill Yarborough and his paratroop companions stood in as stunt doubles. It was not a memorable movie, but it did glamorize airborne forces, and made both the "big" Army and the public take more notice of them.
Later, Yarborough grabbed a similar opportunity when the writer Robin Moore presented himself at his doorstep with an idea for a novel about Special Forces. Yarborough liked the idea so much that he became a kind of muse in the writing of The Green Berets, which later became the hit John Wayne movie.
The Green Berets turned out to be the Special Forces "Gabriel Demonstration" for the American public.
But Yarborough didn't stop there.
As far back as his service as an enlisted man, he'd loved military bands. He loved the way the old marches and military hymns stirred the heart. Later, as Special Forces commander, he felt strongly that the Green Berets deserved a heart-stirring military hymn of their own. First, he got the bandmaster at West Point to write a Green Beret march. Then one day, totally out of the blue, a young SF sergeant named Barry Sadler came into Yarborough's office and started playing a song he'd written called "The Ballad of the Green Beret."
Fighting soldiers from the sky, Fearless men who jump and die….
One thing led to another, and before long, Sergeant Sadler, still on active duty, appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show to sing his ballad. The public was knocked out; the song was a hit; it was translated into many languages; affection and respect for U.S. Special Forces mushroomed — and Bill Yarborough not only had a hymn, he had another huge public relations success for his Green Berets.[4]
Now he had his Special Forces novel, his Special Forces movie, and his Special Forces hymn. He needed only one more further component: a Special Forces prayer — some nondenominational words that would express and define the way Special Forces soldiers might relate to their God (there being no atheists in foxholes). It had to be something that would relate to all of his men, whatever the race or creed. And this is what he wrote:
Almighty God, who art the author of liberty and the champion of the oppressed, hear our prayer.We, the men of Special Forces, acknowledge our dependence upon thee in the preservation of human freedom.Go with us as we seek to defend the defenseless and to free the enslaved.May we ever remember that our nation, whose motto is "In God We Trust," expects that we shall acquit ourselves with honor, that we may never bring shame upon our faith, our families, or our fellow men.Grant us wisdom from thy mind, courage from thine heart, strength from thine arm, and protection by thine hand.It is for thee that we do battle, and to thee belongs the victor's crown.For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Meanwhile, back in World War II, Yarborough continued to jump out of airplanes, but now in combat — in the invasion of North Africa in November of 1942 (the first use of American parachute troops in combat) and in later operations in Tunisia. The parachute battalion he commanded for the invasion of Sicily lost twenty-three airplanes to "friendly" antiaircraft fire. His paratroop battalion later fought at Anzio, and one of his troops, Sergeant Paul B. Huff, was the first parachute soldier to win the Medal of Honor. Later, his battalion dropped into southern France and fought along the French Riviera to the Maritime Alps. As the war was ending, he received a battlefield promotion to full colonel and was given command of an infantry regimental combat team that fought along the rugged Italian coast to Genoa. During the process, he won a Silver Star.
Previously, however, he had come close to shooting his military career in the foot.
Always outspoken, Yarborough had openly questioned his division commander's handling of the massive airborne assault into Sicily that had resulted in many transports getting shot down, with great loss of life. His commander, then — Major General Matthew Ridgeway, was not pleased with his subordinate's outburst and relieved him of his command. Fortunately, Ridgeway's superior, then-Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, the 5th Army commander, liked Yarborough and saw promise in the rash young man. Clark gave him a temporary staff job, and later another fighting command.
In time, Yarborough and Ridgeway became good friends, and in fact, Yarborough came to realize that Ridgeway had done what was necessary when he'd ordered the assault. It was like with Eisenhower and D Day. The attack had to be so overwhelming that it would prevail despite the staggering losses. It is every commander's nightmare — but it was a powerful lesson for young Yarborough.
After the war, he was sent to Vienna as the provost marshal of U.S. forces in Austria and provost marshal in Vienna. The job resembled a police chief's, but also involved cooperation with the equivalent officers of the three other occupying powers: England, France, and the USSR. It proved to be Yarborough's first introduction to what was later called "civil affairs."
Since the official mission of the four occupying powers was to restore civil order and the rule of law, Yarborough grew interested in how the occupying troops might be disrupting that process — by, for example, criminal activities. To that end, he initiated a statistical study showing the nationalities responsible for the greatest number of crimes and the nature of those crimes. He then published regularly a booklet showing the curves of murder, rape, theft, arson, black market, and so on.
The results were fascinating. The Russians committed by far the most crimes, followed by the French, the Americans, and then the British.
4
An unexpected but gratifying endorsement came from the Soviet censors, who banned "The Ballad of the Green Beret" in the USSR.