The graduation exercise, an unconventional warfare field-training exercise, which is conducted approximately seventy-five miles northwest of Fort Bragg in the Uhwarrie National Forest and surrounding communities and lasts approximately three weeks, is the culmination of the Q Course. During this period the Special Forces students, now organized as A-Detachments, put into practice the skills they have learned in their training.
For the purposes of the Gobbler Woods exercise in which Stiner participated, the training area became the fictional country, Pineland, which was run by a corrupt leftist government, backed by a larger Communist country. An insurgency was striving to overthrow the government and bring in democracy, but they needed help. The Communist country had meanwhile pledged to send forces to help the Pineland government crush the insurgents.
The exercise was made as realistic as possible. For example, local civilians played various parts, and provided support to both sides. The counterinsurgency force, usually an active-duty brigade, and the guerrilla force, approximately 100 to 150 soldiers, were drawn from various support units at Fort Bragg.
The fledgling Special Forces soldiers were evaluated on their specialties, tactical skills, and overall performance within their A-Detachment.
Carl Stiner continues:
I have participated on both sides of this exercise, both as a student and as a guerrilla chief. This is a particular exercise from 1964:
After they’d been given the mission, the A-Detachment entered an “isolation area” to begin their preparation (the isolation area is part of the preparation for every Special Forces mission). While there, they saw no families, friends, or anybody else who was not involved in preparing them for their mission. For the Gobbler Woods exercise, the isolation period lasted about a week; for a real-world mission, it could last up to six weeks. During this time, they developed their operations order and studied every aspect of the operational area where they would be inserted—the government, terrain, climate, personalities, the guerrilla force, the people, the culture, and anything else appropriate. They were assisted in this by a pool of experts with advanced degrees who provided instruction in specific areas.
The final phase of isolation was the briefback, usually to the Group Commander and his staff. This covered—to the “nth” degree—every detail of the mission and how it would be accomplished. This had all been committed to memory. No orders or paperwork were carried by any member of the team. After the briefback, the judgment was made whether or not they were ready to go. If that decision was a “yes,” they moved directly from the isolation area to the departure airfield ready for launch.
While the A-Detachment was making its preparations, the guerrilla chief (usually a Special Forces major or captain) had moved to the operational area and begun working at winning the hearts and minds of the local people in order to establish a support infrastructure for the guerrilla force.
When I played guerrilla chief, the most effective technique 1 found was to drive up on a Sunday morning to Albemarle County (in Pineland) with Sue, and spend the day meeting people. I would visit country grocery stores and restaurants and any other gathering I could find. I was looking for people who needed some kind of help.
At one stop, for example, I learned that a man with a large dairy operation was having a rough time getting his cows milked on time and was way behind getting his crops in, mainly because his wife was in bad shape with cancer.
I went to see him, explained who I was, and told him about the training exercise that was about to take place. Though he’d heard of it, he told me, he hadn’t participated in the past. I also told him that I grew up on a farm in Tennessee and was well aware of the challenges he was facing working a farm and taking care of a sick wife.
“In a couple of days,” I said, “I’m going to have about 150 soldiers, all wearing civilian clothes, who’re going to serve as my guerrillas. I’ll be glad to pick four or five farm-raised boys out of this group and let them live and work with you. You can let them bunk in chicken houses, or the dairy barn, or wherever you want them, and they are yours to work to help bring in the crops and to help with the milking, or whatever.
“All I ask is for you to protect them if the counterinsurgency force”—the 101st Airborne, in this case—“comes around trying to police up my guerrillas. If they do, I just want you to say, ‘I don’t know anything about that. I don’t fool with these things. And I don’t want you running over my fields with your trucks.
“All I ask in return is for you to let me use one of your trucks, maybe a couple of nights a week, to haul fifteen or twenty of my guerrillas over to simulate blowing up a bridge or some similar target.”
“That’s fine with me,” he told me. “And I appreciate very much the help.”
“That’s wonderful, I said. “But how about talking to some of your friends to see if some of them also need some help?”
He told me he’d do that, and he did.
I then reminded him about how important it was for us to trust each other. “If we don’t,” I said, “we stand to lose all of our guerrillas and then we won’t be able to help you or your friends.”
He told me he understood that, and he did.
And so, with this farmer’s help, I was able to establish other contacts that ultimately became a key part of my infrastructure throughout the community.
I also contacted local pastors to find out who in their congregations might need some help, and they offered me good sources that provided protection and support for small groups of my guerrillas.
It’s amazing how you can organize people for our kinds of causes. They all want to get in there and support—sometimes more than you really want. I USUALLY brought my guerrillas out a week before the Special Forces students jumped in, in order to allow time for blending with the local people and getting our operating base set up properly. On the day they arrived, I selected those who’d be going out to work for and live with the contacts I’d made, like the dairy farmer.
But before they did that, I laid down the law about standards, principles, and conduct: “There is to be absolute integrity,” I told them. “Respect for the human dignity of each and every person; respect for property; no abuse (verbal or otherwise); no hanky-panky; and no incidents that would degrade your morality and our ability to live and operate among the people. We are here to help them, and they will help us if we do. We cannot survive without their protection and support. One bad incident from you, and you are gone—and so is your career. And by the way, no alcohol!”
I would also tell them, “Co to church, sing in the choir if you can, and get to know everybody in that church. If you blend into that community and cause them to respect you, they will protect you and we’ll have their cooperation in everything we do.”
1 always tried to put my guerrillas in key parts of the community. They and the people that support them were my intelligence network. That way I always knew what was going on all over the county.
A COUPLE of days before the A-Detachment was to jump in, my guerrillas would come together in order to organize our “base camp” and develop plans for the linkup and reception of the A-Detachment. There was also a rehearsal for securing the drop zone.
After the jump, the assistant guerrilla chief (a Special Forces NCO) usually made the linkup and guided the detachment to the base camp. Once there, they were told they would meet the guerrilla chief the next morning. The A-Detachment spent the rest of the night in the base camp, usually guarded by the guerrillas.
At the morning meeting, which usually took about an hour, the guerrilla chief always played hardball. He made his initial demands as tough as he could, so it would be close to impossible for the A-Detachment commander to meet them. We did this in order to evaluate the A-Detachment commander’s ability to establish rapport and gain enough of the confidence of the guerrilla chief to accomplish the mission.
After the meeting, the guerrilla chief presented a list of the supplies and materials he wanted and
gave a rundown of the capabilities of his force and the training assistance they needed.
The A-Detachment commander, having done his homework during the detachment’s isolation back at Bragg, then presented his training plan for the guerrillas.
The initial phase of formal training usually started the next morning. While this was under way, the A-Detachment assessed and validated the training readiness of the “G” (guerrilla) force for conducting operations. Meanwhile, the detachment commander and the guerrilla chief formulated an operation plan together, with specific targets for accomplishing the overall strategic objective.
In addition to the tactical aspects of the plan, psychological operations and civil affairs played a vital role to ensure the support of the people. The entire effort had to be truly integrated, with the parts supporting the whole.
Of course, I had already started civil affairs work within the community by providing selected guerrillas to work with people like the dairy farmer whose wife had cancer. But more could be done—such as medical assistance missions, for example, where our medic treated minor illnesses in the more remote parts of the county where medical help was scarce. We also had guerrillas (free labor) clean up playgrounds and cemeteries and the like. And to widen and strengthen my intelligence net and base of support, I provided guerrillas (in pairs) to the city and county maintenance departments.
The A-Detachment itself had been augmented with a psychological operations specialist, who (among other things) could produce leaflets (though in a very rudimentary way compared with what we can do today). Nevertheless, we produced and distributed leaflets designed to degrade the will, loyalty, and combat effectiveness of the counterinsurgency force, and to bolster and widen our support among the people.
We distributed our leaflets by airdrop at night, or by hand; and they were amazingly effective, especially in inhibiting the counterinsurgency force. For example, landowners and farmers would prevent them from using or even crossing their land—while at the same time harboring us and providing support.
1 guess this was the beginning of my understanding of the real power of psychological operations. If you can influence and control people’s minds, then you are well on the way to winning, while keeping the loss of lives to a minimum.
By the end of the first week, the training of the guerrillas was going well, and they were hitting one point target (a bridge, for instance) each night. Meanwhile, local farmers, bread-delivery distributors, and the county maintenance department were providing trucks for our transportation—and were even scouting some targets for us. By the end of the second week, the guerrillas had progressed to platoon-size (thirty to forty men) raids on larger targets. By the third and final week, they were making even larger raids.
Throughout all this activity (while operating in a community we had never known before), we didn’t lose a single man to the counterinsurgency force—although they chased us day and night. Nor did we have a single bad incident from either our A-Detachment soldiers or the guerrilla force. Nobody did anything we would not be proud of.
As a result of our operations, the leftist government of Pincland was overthrown and replaced by a democracy.
Was it now time for the A-Detachment to go home? Not quite yet.
An important aspect of unconventional warfare is bringing it to closure. Quite simply, no new government can exist for long without the support of the force that helped to bring it to power, nor can they risk having a formidable armed band running around out of control. The best way to deal with these possibilities was for our guys to work out a plan to disarm and disband the “G” force. And they had to do it before they could go home. (In real life, the smoothness of this operation usually depended on concessions made by the new government to the guerrilla leader.)
And so ended the Q Course of 1964. I’m proud to say that all the SF students who participated earned the “flash” that made them fully qualified as Green Berets.
SPECIAL FORCES TRAINING TODAY
In recent years, Special Forces mission areas have expanded. As this has happened, so has the scope of the selection process and the training program. Thus today, the initial phase of formal qualification training lasts between twenty-four and thirty-six months, depending on the MOS of the student.
Applicants are all volunteers. They must be airborne-qualified, in good physical condition, and have nothing in their backgrounds that would prevent a security clearance to at least the SECRET level.
The Special Forces Qualification Course breaks down as follows:
Phase I (Camp MacKall): SF Assessment and Selection—25 days
Phase II (Camp MacKall): Land Navigation, Small-Unit Training, Live Fire—48 days
Phase III (Fort Bragg): MOS Training: 18B (Weapons)—2 months
18C (Engineers)—2 months
18D (Medic)—12 months
18E (Commo)—4 months
Phase IV (Camp MacKall): Training to include Robin Sage (2 weeks)—39 days
SERE: Survival, Escape, Resistance, and Evasion (Camp MacKall): 19 days
Graduation: Flash Awarded
Language Training: 4-6 months
The toughest part physically is the SF assessment and selection phase, during which soldiers are continuously assessed to determine whether or not they have what it takes. The first week is designed to evaluate a soldier’s emotional and psychological makeup, mainly by means of written and practical tests. The second week is structured to test the soldier’s endurance, strength, will, and mental toughness. It involves a complete range of physical tests, including timed runs, obstacle courses, rucksack marches, day and night land navigation, and swimming wearing uniform and boots. During this week, the soldier’s ability to function effectively in a high-stress environment is also evaluated by means of sleep deprivation and more psychological testing. The third week evaluates his leadership abilities as an individual and as part of a team.
At the end of the three weeks, a board of impartial senior officers and, NCOs reviews each candidate’s performance record and makes the final determination about his suitability for Special Forces training. The board also recommends a military occupational specialty for each soldier.
The Assessment and Selection course is conducted eight times a year. In the past, the average selection rate has averaged about twenty-nine percent. Recently, however, the rate has risen to fifty percent. A more stringent preliminary screening process and better-quality applicants have meant that the higher rate has been accomplished without sacrificing quality. Soldiers who fail to make the selection are sent bach to their units with a letter of commendation. Some are allowed to try again, and some of them will make it on the second go.
Meanwhile, those who were selected mill enter the Q Course (Phase II), where they must satisfactorily complete whatever their MOS requires (including Robin Sage and SERE training).
After graduation and award of the “flash,” each soldier is assigned to a unit, but before he joins his A-Detachment, he must complete six months (or more) of language training (depending on his unit’s area of orientation).
Now he has mastered the basics, but as a member of a team his training continues for the rest of his career. His next formal course of instruction (which comes very soon) will likely he military free-fall (parachute) or combat diver (scuba) training. Additionally, he will hegin to receive intense formal instruction in the culture of his area of focus.
CARL STINER, GREEN BERET
During the two months after graduation from the Q Course, Stiner attended Jumpmaster School (two weeks at Fort Bragg) and continued to improve the proficiency of his A-Detachment in field-training exercises in the Uhwarrie National Forest.
In January 1965, and for the next six months, he was commander of a B-Detachment in A Company, 3rd Special Forces Group. More field, training followed, and on a larger scale.
ONE exercise I particularly remember (modeled after “Cobbler Woods”) involved two B-Detachments—mine in a counterinsurgency role ag
ainst Captain Charlie Johnson’s in a UW role. This exercise was conducted in an area of Florida, bounded in the north by the city of Titusville, in the south by the city of Melbourne, in the west by the St. John’s River, and in the cast by the Atlantic Ocean. All of this was civilian-owned land, and virgin territory for military training activities. A large segment of the civilian populacc was organized and trained by one or the other B-Detachment, and they participated enthusiastically. Army aviation was used extensively in support. Air boats were also used by both sides (great preparatory training for Vietnam!).
At the conclusion of the exercise, and in an effort to desensitize and reunite our civilian friends who had participated (some had gotten a little too involved—they actually wanted to keep fighting their “enemies,” some of them with guns), we hosted a barbecue supper—and military demonstration—for the entire community. This worked. Peace was restored.
As we were flying back to Fort Bragg the next day, I noticed a commotion up near the front of the airplane.
Some NCOs had been trying to smuggle a four-foot alligator back as a company mascot. When I checked out the commotion, I discovered that the alligator had gotten loose, and they were trying to subdue him. They eventually did, binding him with rope from one end to the other.
When we landed, we were met by our commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hoyt, and Sergeant Major Arthur. the sergeant major immediately detected the smuggling operation, and took the four smugglers, along with the gator, to the company area and had them spend most of the night digging the gator a pond. They secured him there with leg irons so he would not get loose and cat the real company mascot, a dog.
It didn’t stop there. The NCOs allowed that the gator had to be “airborne-qualified, especially since the dog was. So they connived with the riggers into making him a harness and a special parachute. About a week later, during a scheduled jump on St. Mere Eglise Drop Zone, they threw the gator out of an aircraft and followed him to the ground. He made it down just fine, but when they got to where he’d come down, all they found was the harness and chute. He’d eaten his way out of the harness and disappeared.