FORT LIBERTY — Maj. Gen. Sidney Shachnow will forever be remembered by his beloved special operations forces at Fort Liberty.
The John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School hosted a ceremony Friday to officially designate Shachnow Lane after the school’s former commander and Holocaust survivor.
Formerly Mosby Street, the road in front of the school’s campus is one of nine roads identified by officials to be renamed after the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act mandate to rename Department of Defense assets commemorating the confederacy.
SWC commander Brig Gen. Jason Slider said that future special operators and hundreds of Army special operations forces soldiers pass along the route daily.
“It is appropriate that the path they travel bears the name of Maj. Gen. Shachnow, as his legacy of SOF guides them as they become the next generation of special operations professionals,” Slider said.
Shachnow, who died Sept. 28, 2018, at the age of 83, was the only general officer in the Army to have survived the Holocaust.
He was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1934, and when he was 6, he was imprisoned for three years during World War II at the Nazi Kovno concentration camp before it was liberated by the Soviet army.
Shachnow lived in Europe until he immigrated to the United States in 1950 followed by enlisting in the Army in 1955 and spending 32 in the Special Forces community.
Legacy
Shachnow’s grandson Maj. Alexander Smith spoke on behalf of the family at Friday’s dedication ceremony.
Smith serves under the 75th Ranger Regiment at Fort Moore Georgia, which falls under the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. He said his grandfather made a great impact on his life.
Smith said that while signs and plaques about his grandfather are an honor, they do not capture his grandfather’s humor and fun spirit.
He gave an example of a lesson he learned when he was about 7 or 8 years old from the man he called Pops.
Smith was at his grandfather’s Southern Pines horse farm when his grandfather told him there was a problem — a wasp nest was above the barn and posed a risk for Smith’s mother and grandmother who would be riding horses the next day.
“After careful consideration and gathering some key equipment, I got my assignment and an overview of our three-step plan,” Smith said.
Step one involved Shachnow spraying the wasp nest with bug killer, though they risked running out of spray. Smith would be involved in the second step of whacking the nest with a broom handle.
“Sounded a bit risky though, but I trusted Pops implicitly, so I steeled myself for the awesome responsibility at hand,” Smith said. “Step three, he assured me, was the most important part, and I quote, ‘Then we are going to run like hell.’”
Smith said they accomplished the mission unstung, and it taught him “a well-briefed plan, violently executed will do in a pinch.”
Smith said his grandfather also taught him more serious life lessons.
He said that when he hears the Special Forces’ motto of de oppressor liber, which means to free the oppressed, he thinks of his grandfather.
“He went from prisoner to refugee, to immigrant, to soldier, to citizen From special operations leader to commander of the Berlin brigade to general officer and SOF visionaire,” Smith said. “None of it was easy.”
Smith said he hopes Shachnow Lane and the nearby plaque with his grandfather’s biography inspires the next generation of special operation forces who may be called upon one day to liberate a nation.
“I hope especially that those walking this area just starting a career in special operations consider the man and what his broader life represents, truly the ultimate American dream, built on grit, love and for those lucky enough to know him like I did — a great sense of humor. A man who started with less than nothing,” he said.
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Military career
Roxanne Merritt, director of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School Museum, recounted Shachnow’s military career during Friday’s ceremony.
Shachnow enlisted in the Army shortly after immigrating to the U.S, in order to become an American citizen and first reported for duty at Fort Dix, New Jersey, when Smoke Bomb Hill and the first Psychological Warfare Center and School at then-Fort Bragg was “an island of scrub rush, oak and pine trees,” near a smelly meat rendering plant and the railroad roundhouse, Merritt said.
“Little does he know that this will lead to a 35-year commitment to the U.S. Army and to his country,” she said.
In 1962, he graduated with distinguished honors from Officer Candidate School, just a decade after being able to barely speak English, Merritt said.
While the Psychological Warfare Center and School was renamed and under the command of Brig. Gen. William P. Yarborough, then-Maj. Shachnow returned from his tour in Vietnam as commander of a 5th Special Forces Group detachment.
Over the next decade, Merritt said, Shachnow reported for assignments in Germany and attended the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
Merritt said that although Schachnow was cautioned against returning to Special Forces, he accepted command of the “then-clandestine covert organization known as the 39 Special Forces detachment.”
Merritt said she met then-Col. Shachnow and his wife Arlene in 1983 when they were walking his dogs and when he was chief of staff for SWC before becoming its commander.
She recalled when Shachnow was under the U.S. Special Operations Command and sent to Washington D.C. as a liaison “to try to explain what special warfare special ops was to Congress,” which she said he was able to summarize in four sentences.
In 1990, Maj. Gen. Shachnow was the commander of all American forces in Berlin when the Berlin Wall was toppled near the end of the Soviet Union.
He told The Fayetteville Observer in 1994 it was the same area where Nazis “were goose-stepping and heil-Hitlering the very system that put me in the camp and killed many people.”
“Here we are 40 some-odd years later, and I come back to be commander of American forces in that city and a Jew on top of that … It sort of adds insult to injury, doesn't it,” Shachnow said in 1994.
In 1992, Merritt said, Shachnow became commander of SWC.
“He felt very strongly that we had wandered from our roots, and he was determined that we would be reoriented,” Merritt said.
Shachnow told his superiors that language and culture, force multiplication and the unconventional warfare exercise known as Robin Sage were important and he advocated for keeping the special operation forces noncommissioned officer school, civil affairs proponents and the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school under SWC, she said.
“Many a general officer felt his steely gaze as he would not back down,” Merritt said.
Merritt said that when Shachnow retired in 1994, his legacy “was and is still evident.”
“I want to believe that the young man once known as Schaja Shachnowski is looking from above and is exclaiming you’ve got to be kidding me upon realizing that his legacy will be perpetuated on a daily basis,” Merritt said through tears. “Every time somebody looks at a map, reads GPS and asks for directions or goes anywhere on this campus, they have to go by him first. I think he would appreciate that.”
Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528.
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