Colonoel Aaron Blank has died at the age of 101.

He is generally considered as the father of the US special forces known as the "Green Berets". Although he never was authorized to wear when when he was in the service. IT was afterwards where John F Kennedy formalized the special forces that the Green Beret was authorized for them to wear.

During World War II as part of the Office of Special Services he trained for a mission to parachute himself and a group of anti-nazi Germans into the alps to capture high ranking officals, including the Austrian Corperal himself. The mission was scrubbed when concerns over the large number of communists in the group where raised.

I went ahead and posted the following link to an obituary rather then retype it here

http://forums.military.com/1/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=78919038&f=65819558&m=29110646