Dress Rehearsal for War

A dress rehearsal for war

The second of two parts

By Nomee Landis
Staff writer
Their dirt-crusted boots crunch in the carpet of dried leaves and brittle twigs as they walk through the pines from their camp, their weapons slung over their shoulders.

 

Staff photo by Brian Thorpe Robin Sage participants, from left, Capt. Aaron Duncan, Staff Sgt. Derek Burd and Staff Sgt. Lamont Townsend discuss a hostage resuce plan as part of the training test for Special Forces troops.

Just up the hill, fallen trees have been arranged, end-to-end, in the outline of a building. It’s meant to be the Peddycord FAC Air Museum near Asheboro.

Capt. Aaron Duncan, a Special Forces student, looks at his pencil sketch of the museum and directs fellow students and some of the guerrillas they have trained into the building.

Rotating their bodies, shifting their eyes from side to side, their weapons held high and ready, they clear the mock building, room by room.

This is a rehearsal. They will do this for real in just a few hours. Four hostages being held in the museum are depending on them. They must find them and get them out. Without getting anyone killed.

It is early afternoon on March 1, nearly two weeks after this team of 12 Special Forces students infiltrated occupied Pineland, a fictional country where role-playing and real life clash and Special Forces students are tested to see if they have the mettle to serve on real Special Forces A-teams.

This is the final mission of Robin Sage for this team, ODA 924. For two weeks, they have lived in the woods with 18 guerrillas. They have eaten with them, hiked with them through freezing rain and mud, conducted raids and ambushes with them and trained them to kill.

This final mission is critical. But more is at stake than four hostages. The ambition to earn the tab of Special Forces -- one of the Army’s most elite fighting units -- has driven them for these two weeks. They have trained for months or years already. But to earn a green beret, each student must pass Robin Sage. The unconventional warfare exercise is the final exam.

The soldiers of ODA 924 are Capts. Aaron Duncan, Eric Carver and Martin Schmidt, Staff Sgts. Lamont Townsend, Derek Burd, Joseph Paisley, Ronald Keller, Enrique Reyna and Asa Leckie, Sgts. Aaron Peters and Greg Trainor and Lt. Ahmed Ali Ahmed Kashoob of the Sultan Special Forces of Oman.

Before the weekend is out, two of these men will discover they will be repeating Robin Sage.

**

Duncan thinks he knows when he began to lose rapport with his teammates.

 

Staff photo by Brian Thorpe Sgt. Ronald Keller circles the Peddycord FAC Air Museum looking for members of the opposition force after the Special Forces unit rescued four hostages.

It was the day the guerrillas brought a prisoner of war into camp. Duncan was the only American there.

The prisoner was scraped up, bone sticking out of his leg. His name was Mr. Tyler.

Maj. Tom Pain, the guerrilla chief, went wild, Duncan says, believing Tyler to be the man who had killed his wife and daughter earlier in the war. Pain wanted to hang him. He held a pistol to Tyler’s head.

Duncan says he tried to calm Pain. He told him about the Geneva Convention and human rights violations and being tried as a war criminal for killing an innocent man.

About that time, some of the other students from Duncan’s team returned. Pain wanted them to leave, and Duncan told them to go pull security, to leave the situation in his hands. He did not want to argue with Pain at the moment, Duncan says, so he did not stick up for his team.

A medic treated the prisoner, got an intravenous line in. But Pain lost control, and he sliced the IV line, hollering to his men to hold Tyler’s feet in the fire, while he held a knife to his neck.

Two of Pain’s guerrillas said they did not want to kill Tyler. He might not be the same guy, they argued.

Duncan eventually persuaded Pain to turn Tyler over to his superiors. But Duncan’s teammates were angry that he did not stand up for them.

‘‘We saved the prisoner,” Duncan says. ‘‘We stopped them from torturing him. The mission was a success, but my mission wasn’t.”

**

Plans keep changing. The MH-47 Chinook helicopter that will carry Capt. Duncan, the team leader for the final mission, and his team from the airfield after the rescue arrives hours earlier than scheduled. The truck they await is a military troop carrier instead of the less-conspicuous civilian one they had planned for.

Duncan, a 29-year-old soldier from Oklahoma, rolls over on his back against the dirt hill, looks up, sighs.

A busy two-lane road stretches just out of view up the steep hill, not more than 15 feet away.

 

Staff photo by Brian Thorpe Special Force Capt. Aaron Duncan, left, a student, keeps watch at the museum as an operation force prisoner is led outside in the final operation for the students.

Duncan can’t reach his reconnaissance element on the radio. ‘‘Gulf-two, this is Gulf-one. Initiate fire at 18:18. Over.” Static. ‘‘…this is Gulf-one. Contact Gulf-two and tell them to initiate fire at 18:18. Over.”

But Duncan says he won’t let the changes rattle him. In the real world, beyond Pineland, missions change, too.

“We train for this,” he says. ‘‘We do an operations order and plan in excruciating detail, and about 50 percent will hold true. We depend on experience and judgment calls. You can say I’m under a lot of pressure. But I’m calm, cool and collected. We’re going to go in there and retrieve those four hostages.”

Thinking on their feet, working with the circumstances is all part of the test.

**

Their uniforms are stiff with dirt and sweat. Most of the students are wearing the same clothes they wore on infiltration. Extra clothes add unnecessary weight to rucksacks that already carry 110 pounds worth of gear.

Their short haircuts have gotten fuzzy around the edges.

It has been a long two weeks.

In Pineland time, ODA 924 has been training the guerrillas to fight for months. This hostage-rescue mission will be carried out in conjunction with the final missions of the 10 other Special Forces student A-teams scattered throughout Pineland for this class of Robin Sage.

In all, there are 131 students and hundreds of people supporting them. Troops from the 82nd Airborne Division have served as OpForland soldiers throughout the exercise, driving trucks into ambushes, getting shot in raids.

Soldiers from 1st Corps Support Company and elsewhere have played the roles of the guerrillas.

Country is one of the guerrillas, or Gs, who has lived with ODA 924 and guerrilla chief Maj. Pain. In the real world, Country is Spc. Terry Dickenson, a support soldier with 1st Special Forces Group at Fort Lewis, Wash. He says he has learned hand signals on patrol and how to conduct ambushes and raids.

But since he works with Special Forces soldiers every day, he says, his role also included playing dumb. ‘‘The hardest part for me was to act stupid,” he says. ‘‘Sometimes, I know what they are talking about, but I can’t let on.”

Hundreds of local civilians have played the game, too. They have transported the students on missions and during infiltration. They have fed them sometimes, housed them and allowed helicopters to land in their farm fields.

**

‘‘The war is coming to an end here, we understand, in the next couple of days,” says Capt. Martin Schmidt, one of the 12 students. ‘‘This mission is a decisive point,” says Staff Sgt. Derek Burd, the assistant patrol leader running a support-by-fire position for the final mission.

 

Staff photo by Brian Thorpe Guerilla freedom fighters rehearse their roles with American soldiers hours before attempting a rescue of four hostages.

‘‘Decisive for us,” Schmidt adds.

It has taken time to train the guerrillas, but the team’s efforts have paid off. The Pineland Freedom Fighters are winning the war.

It took time to win their trust, especially that of their chief, Maj. Pain. This final mission is a reward of sorts, a chance for the guerrillas to show off what they have learned.

Maj. Pain says this is the best training he’s seen from a team of students at Robin Sage. ‘‘They have a good grasp of the concepts they need to know. And there has actually been a lot of rapport between the Americans and the Gs.”

**

The Humvee screeches to a halt outside the Peddycord FAC Air Museum, and automatic gunfire and flashes of light erupt from behind the barbed-wire topped chain link fence at the woodline about 100 meters away.

Duncan jumps down, weapon ready. He and about 10 other students and guerrillas hit the wall of the museum, slink around it.

In short bursts, they swap fire with the OpFor, or opposing force, soldiers. The shots erupt like cannons in the still, clear evening.

They clear the museum, just as rehearsed, get the hostages out of the building and kill six of the eight OpFor soldiers in the meantime. Two OpFor are wounded and handcuffed.

Confusion reigns as dusk creeps in. Master Sgt. Tom Moore, their evaluator, surveys the situation from a spot between two hangars, along with two guest evaluators, Mike Thompson and Damon Storey, both of the 1st Special Forces Group at Fort Lewis, Wash.

‘‘Get ’em, Mad Dog. This is a different guy. They’ve got reinforcements,” Moore shouts at one of the guerrillas.

Mad Dog responds: ‘‘One, two, three,” and pops around the building, firing his weapon.

**

Maj. Pain tells Moore he has shot two of his own men.

Maj. Pain: Duncan was in an area they weren’t supposed to be, and I shot him and Stretch.

Where is Stretch?

By this time, Duncan is lying on the ground, wounded, and Stretch is trying to help him.

Maj. Pain: Hey, Stretch, you’re hurt, too.

Stretch: Where am I hurt?

Maj. Pain: You’re dead.

**

The Special Forces has been training soldiers in Robin Sage or similar exercises for more than 40 years. But the missions and locations change, to keep the students from learning too much about the exercise before they get there, says Moore, the cadre team leader and evaluator who will decide who passes and who fails.

 

Staff photo by Brian Thorpe Sgt. First Class Damon Storey, right, evaluates Special Forces students as they develop a revised plan for their hostage rescue. Storey, a Special Forces soldier in 1st Group, Fort Lewis, Wash., was a guest evaluator.

Maj. Pain, a real-life retired Special Forces soldier, also offers his recommendations and observations, along with the guest evaluators.

Evaluators look for character, personality and, especially, teamwork.

‘‘The No. 1 key to success out here is teamwork,” Moore says. ‘‘They have already been evaluated on tactics in Phase II and on their MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) in Phase III. Here, we put it all together in a tactical environment, where they can’t predict what’s coming.

‘‘This simulated environment gives us a pretty good idea of how they are going to react in the real world.”

**

The soldiers have moved the four hostages -- Joyce Yarborough, Betty Franken, Victoria Miranda and Alice Geier, who all have day jobs as civilian employees of the Special Forces -- to a more secure area, away from the museum and near one of the airfield’s hangars.

Meanwhile, Staff Sgt. Joseph Paisley is working on Duncan, whose wounds are imaginary, but whose treatment is about to become very real.

Paisley: So, how much blood has this man lost?

Moore: One thousand milliliters.

Paisley, focusing on Duncan: Tell me what your name is, what time it is.

Duncan moans.

Paisley: Move your leg. Lift it up. There you go. Move your hand, sir. I’m going to tie this knot, and it’s a go.

Moore: Your patient is unconscious. Move to a secure area of the airfield.

Paisley keeps working hurriedly to save his patient. He unwraps a needle, prepares to give Duncan an intravenous line.

The crescent moon sheds the only light.

Mad Dog: You’re really going to stick him?

Duncan: Hell, yeah, he’s going to stick me.

Duncan moans as Paisley slides a real IV needle into his arm.

Behind him, the hostages gasp in unison: Ooh.

**

Through night-vision goggles, the 30 soldiers appear to be running in a greenish-yellow haze away from the Chinook that just deposited them in the bare field on Carlton Spillman’s farm.

They are carrying Stretch, the dead guerrilla, and Duncan away from the bird. It lifts off again. Without the goggles, you can only hear it as it leaves the farm.

Paisley removes the IV from Duncan’s arm. Stretch comes back to life.

It is over.

**

It is Friday, the morning after the final mission. The 12 students sit in back of the North Pineland safe house, leaning against their rucks.

The guerrillas have been demobilized. Guerrilla chief Maj. Pain is off to resume his real identity.

It’s a big day.

There is a shower in the safe house. With hot water.

And it is also peer evaluation day.

‘‘It’s time to be blunt, gentlemen,” Moore says as he hands around the evaluation sheets.

**

“They peered me,” Duncan says. “They say I am arrogant, that I lost rapport and that I didn’t delegate enough.”

It is Saturday, two days after the final mission and one day after the 11 American students have filled out their peer-evaluation forms, describing who they would or would not want to deploy with and why. His teammates ranked Duncan second to last.

Lt. Kashoob, a foreign guest to the Qualification Course, just waits. He is not included in the peer evaluation. He misses his two children, back home in Oman.

Duncan is angry. He has always done well. He’s been through Ranger school, sniper school, air assault school, he says, all with great success.

‘‘It’s frustrating. I passed everything except interpersonal skills,” Duncan says. ‘‘I’m arrogant and hard-headed, yes, but I delegated everything.”

He says his teammates and the evaluators did not see the whole picture of his performance. He says his fellow officers let him down.

But peer evaluation is critical to the course, says Capt. Schmidt. ‘‘If you can’t get along with the guys on your team, how are you going to get along with people who are not on your team?”

The soldier his team ranked last -- Sgt. Greg Trainor -- has also failed Robin Sage.

**

Trainor says he got a bad feeling in his gut about halfway through Robin Sage.

‘‘It’s kind of a blow to my ego,” Trainor says. “I don’t want to go through it again. But you go through it again, and you come out the better person for having done it again.”

There is a reason why students get ‘‘recycled” to repeat Robin Sage, Moore says.

‘‘It deflates them a little bit, but actually it is not a bad thing,” he says. ‘‘Whey they finally do make it through, some of our better guys to graduate the course have had recycles in the past.”

Staff Sgt. Enrique Reyna, who has passed Robin Sage on his second try, will join a team at 7th Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg.

‘‘I think I was able to give those guys some insight, some direction,” he says of this class. ‘‘I think it did help.”

**

The auditorium at the Cumberland County Coliseum Complex is packed. The center front rows of seats are filled with the 121 Special Forces students who got a ‘‘go” in Robin Sage.

It is 10:45 a.m. on March 9. Wives and mothers, fathers and brothers crowd the aisles, cameras flashing.

Among the seated men, all in dress greens, polished boots and new haircuts, sit 10 members of ODA 924.

One by one, they file across the stage to claim their graduation certificates. The cameras snap on.

They still have months of work before they join their assigned Special Forces groups. Each must still complete SERE -- survival, evasion, resistance and escape -- school. And most will need to complete months of language training.

They hold their green berets in their laps.

Staff Sgt. Joseph Paisley is a medic who will join 5th Special Forces Group at Fort Campbell, Ky., after he learns to speak Russian. He said donning his beret for the first time was a big relief. ‘‘I’m glad to be here.”

‘‘It was pretty cool,” says Staff Sgt. Ronald Keller, who will head to 10th Group at Fort Carson, Colo.

The pressure does not end here, though, says Capt. Martin Schmidt.

‘‘The beret doesn’t make the man,” he says. ‘‘The man makes the beret. This is just a small piece of a big picture. It’s not just a one-time thing: I’ve got it, and I’m on top of the world.

‘‘Now you’ve got to prove that you’ve earned it.”

Reprinted from The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer  Copyright 2002 

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