The US had people over there hunting war criminals in that time frame. There were also some "normal" MI guys, but they were well back from the tip of the spear.
HALO ops are expensive, complex, and dangerous, so they're reserved for times and places where you don't have good overland access. HALO plays a role, but it's not as widely used as people think. You also have to bear in mind that most of that time frame we were working with/for NATO and the UN, not running wide-open combat operations like we are now. A HALO drop under those conditions is a very big political and diplomatic deal, even more so when the goal is to capture foreign nationals. That's why the kind of people who do that kind of work don't talk about it much. Finally, when I was in, it was extremely unusual for a someone in a standard MI billet to get a slot to HALO school, but things may have changed, especially if he's a linguist. (If he's a native speaker of a language common in that area, then almost anything is possible.) If he actually had been to an accelerated MFF course and actually was on HALO status, then 17 jumps might be about right.
Whether jumps are logged as combat jumps or not can depend on a lot of things. It's possible to run a proficiency jump in an area that's technically a combat zone but where there's no real danger. That's considered a combat jump, and you get the same gold star on your wings that our forefathers got for jumping into Normandy. That said, other paratroopers consider anyone who wears a star awarded under those circumstances to be a sad, pathetic excuse for a man. Air Force folks may get some cool stuff, too, so they have incentive to support this kind of boondoggle. This happens a lot when REMF officers want to get a combat star on their wings at the end of a tour. A lot of times they'll need people to fill up the plane, and if you've got wings, you're voluntold to go.
Getting wounded in an ambush is possible, even far from what passes for the front lines.
The term "team" is loosely defined. It used to refer to a Special Forces A-Detachment, but those often get augmented with lots of non-SF people. An ODA starts out with 12 people, and adding three isn't uncommon. But for all 15 to get hurt in one ambush is 100% casualties, and that's a BIG deal. It's more likely that 15 people out of a specific bunch got hurt in a series of missions that took place over several months or a year.
As for snatching prisoners, umm, no. He MAY have been on the perimeter or watching the action on a screen in a bunker, but chances are very slim that he was in there kicking doors with people who do that for a living.
My guess is that your guy may have done some or even most of this stuff, but he's probably stringing a bunch of stuff together, enriching it, and claiming that it all happened at the same time.
Okie John
Last edited by okie john; 09/17/17.
