had Reese shown some mettle the French officer would not have been killed. Bank and the OSS mission were recalled by authorities in Kunming. Post-war activities and the founding of the Special Forces After the war Bank remained in the Army and became a leading advocate for the formation of a professional special forces (unconventional warfare) division, equivalent to the SO branch of OSS. Along with Colonel Russell W. Volckmann, who had been a guerrilla in the Philippines, they argued for deploying this force behind the "Iron Curtain," in the Eastern European nations dominated by the Soviet Union, where there was a real possibility of a local resistance movement arising. In 1952, Bank became the first commander of the Army's first Special Forces unit, called the 10th Special Forces Group, a number which was selected to confound the Russians with suspicions of nine more such units. In establishing the 10th, he was as flexible as he had been with "Iron Cross", drawing upon former members of the "1st Special Service Force" known as the Devil's Brigade, as well as veterans of the OSS, the Parachute Infantry units, and guerrilla elements in the Pacific. Using the training and strategies and the lessons learned during World War II, Bank created an elite unit of men skilled in foreign languages (to interface with foreign insurgents), the arts of sabotage and stealth tactics, the use of explosives for demolition, amphibious warfare, rock climbing, jungle warfare, mountain fighting and as ski troops. Special Forces today are still all volunteer and organized into "A teams," as Bank organized his men in the 10th Special Forces group in 1952, with two experts in every specialty. They still undergo an arduous training process in which large numbers of men fail or quit, as Bank required of the men of "Operation Iron Cross". Bank was commended by President George W. Bush in 2002, the year he celebrated his hundredth birthday, for developing the unconventional warfare programs and techniques that were used in toppling the Taliban. Later years Bank retired from the Army in 1958, and remained a vigorous man well into his eighties, swimming several miles a day in the Pacific Ocean near his home in San Clemente, California. In the early 1970s, Bank began a personal investigation of the lack of security at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which is a few miles south of San Clemente.