Ron Vawter The Special Forces. The Green Berets. I had just completed a year and a half of training and was all set to go to Vietnam but I didn’t want to go. At the time, there were a couple of Green Beret Chaplains going to Vietnam and they were looking for people to replace them. Now, to be a Green Beret chaplain, you have to be trained as a Green Beret and then as a Chaplain. Very few people could get through both the theological and the military intensive training. I had already finished all of the military and as a kid I had always been religious . . . So they released me to reserve status and put me in a Franciscan Seminary Upstate. I spent the next four years training to be a Roman Catholic priest, and by the time I finished, I didn’t want to be a priest or in the military.