HISTORY OF U.O.E.

 

          BY COLONEL  JULIO YAÑEZ GOLF

 

 

Founder of the Special Operations Unit “UOE”

Spanish marines

1st. Honorific President of 5º ESTOL

 

In 1952 and after that a group of Spanish Marines Officers made the course of Mountain Units Command Aptitude in the Army Mountain Military School, a company was created in the Tercio Norte in El Ferrol del Caudillo, that received the generic name of Amphibious Climbers Company.

In 1957 when the Spanish Marines Special Group was created, this unite was relocated from El Ferrol to the Tercio Sur until the Support Group was created, depending of it after that.

The Special Operations Unit (“I am Capable") began to work in September 1^st of 1966 with the remains of the mentioned Amphibious Climbers Company.

It was organized and they began the training with the name of Special Operations Company, as core that the UOE would be, by the captain Yáñez Golf when concluding the 10^th Course of Aptitude for the Special Operations Units Command after proposal to the General Martínez de Galinsoga, Commander in Chief of the Special Group Spanish Marines. The Special Operations Company had the following composition:

• A Command and Staff.

• A Recognition and Assault Section.

• An Amphibious Climbers Section.

They had the following duties:

1. In independent execution:

• Recognitions

• Incursions.

• Hand strokes.

• Link with Guerrillas.

2. Being part of a Landing Force:

• Link among units.

• Outflanks

• Key points occupation behind the enemy lines.

• Vertical involvement actions.

The Special Operations Company, of high-level use and selective character, was characterized by:

• A peculiar training of their components.

• Specialization of the same ones.

• Bigger framing of their reduced troops.

• Enlistment for immediate intervention.

In the year 1967 the General Martínez de Galinsoga authorizes the Captain Yáñez to distinguish to the members of his unit with the use of the green beret. To encourage the so necessary unit spirit, specially in those of special character that suffer a difficult training, with marked aggressive sign and serving at the same time to compensate and to stimulate them in their stresses and discipline. This distinction is regulatively proclamed in October 30^th of 1972 by Ministerial Order and the fatigue cap is substituted by the raised beret, arranging that for Navy Divers and Mechanized Units is of navy blue color and green for the Special Operations Unit of the Tercio de la Armada.

In 1969 being Minister of the Navy the Admiral Nieto Antúnez is organized the Spanish Marine Corps creating the current Tercio de la Armada (TEAR). In January 1^st of 1970 the Special Operations Company, already with the current term of Special Operations Unit (UOE), and with command of major, passed to depend on the TEAR, incorporating to the Landing Group (AD).

The new organization was:

• Command: Mayor in Chief of the UOE: Capt. Yañez in destination of upper category

• Staff with Capt. in Chief of the PL.M, and 2º Mayor of the UOE and two more captains (S-1, S-4 and S-2, S-3)

• Recognition and Assault Section: with a Capt. Mayor

• Amphibious Scalers Section: with a Capt. Commander

• Amphibious Sappers Section: with a Capt. Mayor (Combat Divers that were aligned in the Support Group).

• Training Section: with a Capt. Mayor and with the commission of forming, instructing, and training to the personnel staff selected by the command of the UOE in the C.E.I.M. of Cartagena.

Due to the special commissions commended to the operative sections, the command of the same ones rises from lieutenant to captain.

It was astonishing and exemplary the behavior and the reaction of those volunteers for those that techniques of guerrillas were surprising and unknown. And that however they reached in little time an enthusiasm and preparation so high that they didn't register some accident.

1. Tests of morale and endurance:

• falling down to the empty space in scaling.

• rappelling from helicopters until near 50 m. of height.

• to cross slithering of “fire tracks” over buried explosive charges which an instructor was explode them to their side while the machine guns shot over their heads.

• "mire walks" buried until the knees, with the rubber dinghys on the heads or by the arms and with the complete outfit and necessary material for the development of the incursion on board the dinghys.

• walks by the dunes with the partner to the shoulder.

• the 10 Kms. against the clock with the complete combat outfit...

2. Tests of underwater morale and endurance:

• the "mile against the clock" with fins.

They were tests that Training Section "newbies" did and overcame. All that filled with pride their hearts for the stress and sacrifice that it represented. They had to reach the necessary toughness to beat the fear to the pain and the fight, in order to be responsible for their acts with valiant and made an effort spirit that it would overcome the difficulties and hazards. The reward was to reach the coveted green beret delivered at the end of the course in a plain and very moving act. They were sentenced: "The Green Beret will experience the emptyness to its surroundings without more company than his weapon, his backpack and his spirit: it will find himself in situations that he will have to take make decisions on his own account, with sangfroid, self-control and initiative spirit, he will remain awake and attentive night and day and he will always prefix the Homeland, his Unit and his honour to his personal interests.

In the UOE the officers, non commissioned officers and troops received the same training, owing the Commands to make any movement more correct and quickly that the best trained man. They lived the same hard life together, overcoming the same barriers. This narrow joint among those that order and those that obey are the key of the success in the action moments.

The Green Beret highlights for the group of his military virtues: concept of the honor, loyalty, disciplines, love to the service, high moral, and especially a strong companionship that reaches its maximum grade in his heroic self-denial with which each other should help in combat, taking a risk for saving a committed status or to retract wounded and dead; the self-denying help is committed without it excuses the risk of the own life. The companionship surpasses the generic concept of accompanying to be welcomed the one of sharing that it is nobler and deeper.

The commandos always trained and acted per mates (indivisible unit), elbow with elbow with which had chosen as friend, being supplemented, being helped in adverse circumstances and stimulating their urge to improve.

The S-112 is published in which when allocating commissions to constituent Units of the TEAR in the paragraph 7.1.7.1. it refers in these term of validity:

"This Unit arranges permanently trained experts' outfits and preparations organically to carry out the following stocks:

• Intrude.

• Destructions.

• Sabotages.

• Link with partisan groups.

• Prisoners' capture.

• Recognitions.

To develop with effectiveness their made, the UOE can highlight operative organizations or UNESIANs (Special Amphibious Incursions Units) being necessary to have certain capabilities to which responders the features of the structure of the UOE. These features will be:

• Infiltration capability. (Usig submarines, slight crafts, kayaks, helicopters, parachuting and diving…)

• Recognition capability. (Day and night, Infrared observation means, stellar intensifiers; photography in day, night, air and to periscopic level; recording; special means of data transmission...)

• Shock capability (usually on the objective).

• Destruction capability (by means of the intensive employment of the explosive)

In the year 1971 and by initiative of the Commander. Gorordo (Boss of the Unit during eight months, until the Capt.Yáñez that had performed its headquarters, in destination of upper category, ascended to major and coming from the III Intelligence and Counter-intelligence Course, developed in the High Staff, it recovered the command of the same one, during 4 years more up to November 2^nd of 1974 that he gave the command of the UOE to the Commander. Martin Barreto) it offered the change of terms of the subordinate units. The sections passed to call himself ESTOLES.

The term of validity Estol coming from the "Companies" of Almogavares, precursors of the glorious Spanish Marines Units (the oldest in the world) that boarded in the ships of the Kingdom of Aragon, as prey and landing units and under the command of commanders of the prestige of Roger de Flor, Berenguer de Entenza or Bernardo de Rocafort, to the scream "DESPERTA FERRO!" they leaved upright the Spanish pavilion in their campaigns of Napoles, Sicily, Bizancio... The legend tells that Roger de Lauria, Admiral of the Fleet, launched his celebrated sentence: "The same fish to be leaned out don't dare... if in the loin the Weapons of Aragon don't take...". Also the coat of arms of the UOE was changed adopting for it a new one that symbolizes a ram of war beating from the sea to the earth.

The "meigas" (witches in galic language) that don't know how to be restful, decided in the year 1983 and during a 5 year-old stage, to transfer the term of the Unit, calling Special Amphibian Commands (COMANFES) maintaining more or less the same organization (Estol of Staff and Services; three Estoles of Amphibious Commands and a Training Section)

The Comanfes became of Command of Lieutenant-Colonel and to depend directly on the General of the TEAR. As in the brilliant plays of chess, because if something limited the strategic and selective employment of the UOE it was their framing in the A.D.

With the creation of the diving cores in the Maritime Areas the underwater tasks disappear that had allocated the Estol of Amphibious Sappers, passing this to be one of Special Operations, conserving the Unit their capacity for the diving.

Five years later, in 1988, the Unit changes again the name, being named it definitively again, SPECIAL OPERATIONS UNIT with the following template:

• Command and Staff.

• Estol of Staff Services.

• Three Estoles of Special Operations.

• Training Section

The Estoles of Special Operations were made up of three sections aligning each one to a Sergeant, an 1^st Corporal and eleven corporals. The total of the Estol was composed by 41 men, including to the Captain and its reduced Staff. All the 1^st Corporal and corporals are military of employment, professional troop (METP) that after a month and a half in the ESFORCA, they pass to be part of the Training Section to develop a course of two months that empowers for their later destination in the operative Estoles of the Unit and that it reduces to 30%, as average to the personnel staff that is able to overcome it.

They were inculcated in the Training Course that the Green Beret didn't differ in anything of his siblings Marines, unless they had chosen voluntarily to be more vigorously instructed and to serve to the Homeland in the places with more risk and tired.

With an average of more than twenty monthly days of exercises, maneuvers and camps, they realized maneuvers so much with elite Spanish units (Submarines, Helicopters, PT Boats, Navy Diving Center, Parachutist Brigade; Mountain and Special Operations Military School, C.O.E.S., etc) as foreigners (French Commands of the GROUFUMACO, BRITISH ROYAL COMMANDOS, U.S. NAVY SEAL Teams, UDTs, SPECIAL FORCES and American RECOGNITION Units and Combat Divers of the SAN MARCOS Squad of Italian Marines) receiving their commands numerous congratulations for the high grade of training of the UOE.

The Special Operations Unit was and it is required whenever it was needed, or it is needed, a unit of prestige and effectiveness to the service of Spain intervening in the campaigns of Guinea, Sidi-lfni and the Sahara.