That, among other things, is what Capt. Joe and a dozen other candidates for the U.S. Army’s legendary Special Forces are in Pineland to learn — or, more precisely, to prove they can figure out on their own.
Pineland is a fictitious country on the imaginary island continent of Atlantica. Looking at a map, the nation is exactly the size and shape of North Carolina and South Carolina combined.
Opforland — “OpFor” is the Army word for “opposing force” — is a neighboring nation the size of the east coast from Virginia to Vermont and west to Indiana. This is where the bad guys live.
Last week, the Army allowed the Salisbury Post into Pineland to shadow a few of the 200 men in the most recent class of soldiers trying to earn the coveted Green Beret.
Special Forces qualification culminates in an expansive war game called Robin Sage. It’s played out over 4,500 acres in 10 central North Carolina counties. The soldiers the Post followed were in Stanly County.
There were a few stipulations. One was touse rank and first name only. Another, don’t ask the candidates about the Feb. 23 shooting death of one of their own during this exercise in Moore County, when a deputy sheriff who wasn’t aware of the training mistakenly thought two Special Forces were attacking him during a traffic stop.
And there was one more requirement for the story: take on fictitious personae as members of the Pineland press to maintain realism of the war game.
A photographer and reporter have ventured back home for the first time in more than a year. Opforland forces shut down their newspaper, saying it was sympathetic to the resistance.
Swerving the old red pickup in a vain attempt to avoid bottoming out on the rutted, narrow dirt road, they approach the site where reports say Maj. Tommy Hawk and his freedom fighters — Hawk’s Heroes — are encamped.
The pickup creeps along, so the photographer doesn’t have to press hard on the brake when a camouflaged soldier darts into his path from the underbrush and points a black M-16 rifle at the windshield.
The photographer and reporter hold up their hands like the soldier tells them, and wait for another soldier to emerge from the woods and ask their business. When Hawk arrives, spitting obscenities about the lack of security so near his base, he confirms their identities and they are allowed to enter the camp.
The Army has conducted Robin Sage for about 50 years, in part to train Special Forces candidates in the type of “unconventional warfare” they’re likely to encounter in their assignments.
Unconventional warfare means training and assisting a friendly and indigenous paramilitary force — they go by names like guerrillas, rebels or freedom fighters — in fighting their own battles, as opposed to providing a ground force to do battle for them.
“I believe in what it stands for,”Staff Sgt. Harvey, a Special Forces candidate, said of that mission. “It keeps the majority of U.S. troops out of situations other countries can take care of themselves.”
And never, says Master Sgt. Bret, the instructor for the baker’s dozen soldiers going through the qualification course near the Uwharrie National Forest, has it been more relevant than it is now.
Green Berets were some of the first Americans on the ground in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks and the declaration of war on terrorism.
“I think that, more than anything, has validated what we’re doing,” he said.
Phillip “Butch” Young agrees. A Salisbury native and 30-year Army veteran with more than 20 years in the Special Forces, he now contracts with the Army to play Hawk, the Pineland warlord who sometimes goes too far.
“With the events occurring in the world today, this is a very realistic scenario,” he said.
The Army assigns soldiers and takes volunteers to play the roles of guerrilla fighters and enemy forces.
Sgt. Bret says he wants it to be as realistic as possible. That’s why he canceled a truck that was supposed to pick up a patrol the candidates sent out to do reconnaissance in enemy territory.
They wouldn’t have a truck to pick them up in enemy territory, he reasoned. The patrol ended up walking back to camp, about 20 miles away.
A four-man patrol — two Special Forces soldiers, two guerrillas — is two days late getting back to camp. The security team sent to meet them arrives 45 minutes early.
You always want to be early, Capt. Luciano explains to the reporter tagging along, in case something goes wrong. Facing the shoreline, he takes a knee as two soldiers with him crouch and face in opposite directions, forming a small triangle.
One of them, a guerrilla fighter, tries to bum a cigarette from the reporter, then the photographer. Neither of them smoke.
They all wait.
Capt. Luciano’s friends call him “Chuck.” Maybe it’s just easier than saying Luciano all the time, because there’s nothing about him that brings to mind the name Chuck.
A native of Puerto Rico, he left college after two years and enlisted in the Army. He planned to pull his tour of duty, take advantage of the Army’s college tuition plan and return to his education.
His plans changed in 1988. Luciano took part in the invasion of Panama and saw Special Forces soldiers in action. He decided then and there that he wanted to be one of them.
All Green Berets have to speak a second language and their assignment depends on the language they know. Since Luciano already spoke Spanish, he was assigned to the Special Forces group for Central and South America.
He has worked in Columbia, Peru, Bolivia and Panama, mostly with allies who asked the United States for help with internal security. It’s not a glamorous job, he says.
“It’s not like in the movies, the guy kisses his wife goodbye and the next thing you know, he’s in an airplane over Somalia or Libya,” he said.
Well, in a way it’s like that. He does have to kiss his wife goodbye a lot, and his 7-year-old son.
“They don’t particularly like it, but they accept it,” he said. “My son knows daddy’s a soldier; when you’re married, it’s a family effort. The whole family serves.”
Even though he was already a Green Beret when he became an officer, Luciano had to go through the training again after getting his commission, because the qualifications are slightly different.
Since they arrived in Pineland, Special Forces soldiers have spent a lot of time teaching the guerrillas. They train them not only in military tactics, but also in how to keep their camp sanitary.
The medics hold a sick call daily for the native fighters.
They’ve provided humanitarian aid, like helping to deliver food and caring for the sick among the local residents.
Building a rapport with the local populace is often one of the most important tasks for a Special Forces unit.
“What better way to do that than treating their sick?” asks Sgt. Brian, one of two medics on the team training in Stanly County, in and around the Uwharrie National Forest.
Every 12-man team of Green Berets has two medics, as well as two engineers, two weapons specialists, two communications specialists, an officer and a warrant officer.
All Special Forces candidates go through a 40-day selection and assessment process at Fort Bragg. There they undergo training and testing of individual skills like land navigation and small unit tactics.
They also take survival training, in which they’re taught how to stay alive in enemy territory, evade capture and escape if they are captured.
Although candidates have to meet certain physical-fitness criteria, much of the training is mental. They are expected to be able to work on their own, a departure from the Army’s normal chain-of-command mentality.
From start to finish, about two-thirds of soldiers who enter a Special Forces class will drop out. Many of them, say those who’ve made it to Robin Sage, are in it for the wrong reasons — the hat, the glory and a Hollywood-driven misconception of what it’s really about.
A lot of people “think of Special Forces soldiers as violent, callous and aggressive,” said Sgt. Joshua, a Michigan native. “In all actuality, we’re taught to think things through and minimize casualties.”
After the initial assessment phase, the candidates’ paths diverge for training in what will be their jobs.
Occupational school can last from 24 weeks for weapons and engineering specialists up to 57 weeks for medics.
Some of that time is spent working with the Fire Department of New York to become qualified as a paramedic.
“That was a really good first-hand look at treating gunshot wounds and dealing with chaotic situations,” Brian said.
The second half of medic training is spent at an Army hospital, diagnosing patients and prescribing treatment under the guidance of a doctor.
Brian, a red-headed and boyish-looking Massachusetts native, said he joined the Army after a collegiate hockey career spent riding the pine. His first contact with a Special Forces medic came when he fractured his ankle in Army Ranger school.
Like a lot of the men trying to win the Green Beret, Brian wears the Army Ranger patch on his left sleeve. Like all of them, he wears an Airborne patch. That means they’ve volunteered at least four times:for the Army, for jump school, for the Rangers and for Special Forces.
Sgt. Brian wouldn’t take back any one of them.
“A lot of my friends have desk jobs ... and I think ‘Wow, I’ve got the greatest job in the world,’ ” he said.
It’s late in the afternoon and the temperature, which hasn’t exactly strained the mercury all day, is dropping.
The Special Forces soldiers and guerrillas are keeping warm running through rehearsals of their planned attack later this evening on a marina that Opforland forces now control and are using as a base for maritime activity.
It’s also at the marina they believe the enemy is holding Hawk’s daughter, Amy, kidnapped two years ago. Part of the plan is to rescue her.
They scatter around the camp in several teams, practicing just where they’ll be and what they will do when they get there.
Another run-through or two and then it’s time to move out. The sun is setting. The cover of night they need for the operation.
The sun has disappeared, but the full moon that replaces it provides enough light to see everyone on the darkened pontoon boat skimming across Badin Lake. And everyone looks cold.
The temperature has dropped to below freezing and a harsh wind sweeps across the lake and assaults the men huddled on bench seats and hunkered down on the deck.
The boat, provided by the Coast Guard Auxiliary, carries one assault team. An identical pontoon boat carries the second team. A smaller boat left earlier with two advance security teams.
As the two pontoon boats near the docks near the Badin Marina and stop to wait for the appointed time, shots ring out. The security teams have been spotted and a firefight has begun.
The assault teams make a hard landing at the dock and join the battle. It ends within 20 minutes. The Special Forces and guerrillas have won, but with casualties. Two men are dead, one injured, the instructor rules.
The team later learns that at least one of the men was killed by friendly fire.
For now, though, they’ve taken the marina, and they found Hawk’s daughter and reunited the two.
They load up on the two pontoon boats, even those who came on the other boat, and prepare for the return trip. But one of the pontoons is too heavy at the front and dips into the water when it pulls away from the dock.
Several men get soaked when the shin-high, bitterly-cold water rushes onto the boat. One man is “dead”on the deck between two bench seats, but the bone-chilling drench miraculously revives him.
The rest of the trip back is a miserable mix of water and wind. A steady spray pelts those near the front of the open boat and the driving gale freezes the liquid almost instantly to their clothes.
Carrying their dead, walking slowly with their wounded, the wet, weary soldiers slog back through the woods to a clear spot on the shore of a river, load up in rowboats and paddle back across to a landing near their base.
Back in camp, a medic and his assistant work methodically on the wounded Green Beret. Others gather around a fire in the middle of camp and try to get warm and dry.
Hawk orders the bodies of the two soldiers killed in the battle placed at the base of a tree near the fire. The Pineland flag hangs above them and he calls them heroes of the homeland.
After a brief memorial service, Americans and their native counterparts sing the Pineland national anthem.
After the success of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, the Army began efforts to increase the number of Green Berets, including allowing new recruits to sign up with the intention of going into Special Forces.
The U.S. Department of Defense also sent down an order preventing Green Berets nearing retirement, like Sgt. Bret, the instructor for the Stanly County group, from leaving the Army after their 20-year commitment.
Bret said while he had planned to retire this year, he understands the value of a Special Forces soldier, and of this training, especially when compared to the cost of a cruise missile.
“They get a hell of a lot more bang for their buck out of this,” he said.
After the Feb. 23 shooting in Moore County, the Army made changes in its Special Forces training. No longer can soldiers wear civilian clothes, as they were that night.
But the training will continue. And that’s appropriate, said the instructor, because it’s invaluable not only to the Army but to the men who could soon find themselves in a similar situation, but far from Stanly County.
“We try and play it as much as we can just like a real war,” Sgt. Bret said. “The next time, it could be real bad guys, real bullets and real consequences.”
Contact Scott Jenkins at 704-797-4248 or sjenkins@salisburypost.com
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