Staff Writer Tim Wilkins recently accompanied Army Special Forces trainees in a simulated infiltration of enemy territory. Last of a series.

“You’re going to be fine, buddy. Just hang in there. Think about home.”

Medical Sergeant “Doc” Norwood speaks reassuringly to Hannibal, a wounded “guerilla” who is lying on his back as his life leaks out in a flood of thick, red-black blood.

Just moments earlier, Hannibal had been caught in an ambush by a company of communist Opfour troops and shot several times. He moans and groans and writhes in agony.

Directly behind Doc, a Special Forces adviser barks off a litany of injuries that the young medic must attend to.

“Looks like his femoral artery’s been hit. Better apply a tourniquet. He’s going into shock — you’re going to lose him.”

But Doc doesn’t lose Hannibal. He reacts quickly and precisely to the laundry list of trauma invoked by the adviser. After about 20 minutes of treatment, the adviser says, “Good job, Sergeant. I think he’s going to make it.”

As two of Hannibal’s guerrilla comrades load him onto a makeshift stretcher and carry him away, you almost expect that familiar, bodiless television voice to start floating from out of the surrounding pine forest: “This was test and only a test. If it had been a real catastrophe, you would have been instructed to…”

Of course, it’s all make-believe.

Shortly after being carted into camp, Hannibal makes a Lazarus-like recovery, chopping firewood and trundling five-gallon cans of water despite just an hour earlier nearly having his leg blown off by a .50 caliber round.

The medical scenario described above was just another of the “tests” that Special Forces aspirants such as Doc must deal with during their 19-day Robin Sage training exercise if they want to earn the headgear made famous by John Wayne: the Green Beret.

Doc refuses to step out of character when I approach him with my tape recorder and ask him what it felt like to work on the “wounded” guerilla.

“He was seriously injured and I did what I was trained to do,” Doc says soberly. “It looked for a while that I was going to have to perform a field amputation. Luckily, I did one back in the States shortly before coming here. While I was training in an American hospital, I was allowed to amputate the leg of a woman suffering from diabetes. I was ready to do whatever had to be done to save that man’s life.”

Despite this reporter’s best prodding, Doc never lets down his guard and acknowledges that this is all just part of a grand training exercise. Even though he is in actuality standing in a secluded spot about four miles outside of downtown Ellerbe, N.C., in his mind, Doc is in the foreign nation of Pineland. And he is doing his part as a member of the United States Army to help the freedom fighters defeat the dictatorial regime known as Opfour that controls the nation.

Doc is one of 1,800 Special Forces candidates who are evaluated annually to determine if they have what it takes to drop the “candidate” tag and become full-fledged Special Forces graduates.

In squadrons of 11 to 12 men, these soldiers will carry out “unconventional warfare” exercises spread out over 7,000 kilometers and encompassing five central North Carolina counties.

Four Phases

In this, the final phase of their training, the Special Forces candidates must infiltrate Pineland and train the native freedom fighters all the military skills necessary to overthrow the communist government.

Their entire Special Forces training is divided into four phases.

Phase I lasts 24 days as the candidates have their physical fitness, intelligence, motivation and ability to work with a team evaluated through land navigation, obstacle courses, road marches, runs, and other tests.

Phase II lasts 39 days and is centered on an 18-kilometer land navigation course and two field training courses in which all ranks train together to learn the basics of infantry small-unit tactics.

Phase III lasts between 65 and 322 days and is known as Military Occupational Skill (MOS) specific training. Officers must train for 65 days, learning the skills needed to command Special Forces A-teams.

For their part in Phase III, noncommissioned officers train in one of four areas: weapons, communications, engineering and medicine. Doc’s medical sergeants’ course takes the entire 322 days to complete.

‘Creates a Challenge’

Phase IV lasts 38 days and is the last step before a Special Forces student can earn the coveted Green Beret.

Robin Sage covers the last 19 days of the training period, and it is the most vital portion of their training, as someone could pass every portion of the previous three phases but fail on the final 19 days and have to be “recycled” and do it all over again. After Robin Sage, the candidates must also endure a Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE school and specialized language training.

“There are guys out here who are going through Robin Sage for their third time,” Ted Pelitier says as we drive in his pickup truck along the muddy backroads of Pineland. “That creates a challenge. Students who have been through this before have seen many of the scenarios and have the answers. That’s why we’re always creating new scenarios and changing things up.”

One of those “recycled” Special Forces candidates sits forlornly in the middle of a graveyard as Pelitier swings the mud-spattered truck off the road and stops next to the soldier, who has a bare foot wrapped tightly in several coatings of Ace bandage.

The captain –– who asked that his name not be used –– was injured on the very first night of the exercise. Immediately after being dropped “in-country,” the captain stepped into a hole and severely twisted or broke his ankle.

Pelitier helps the captain into the back of the truck and heads for the “safehouse” where the injured Special Forces candidate will have his injury attended to.

Seen through the window, the eyes of the injured soldier show complete and utter disconsolation.

“This is his second time through,” Pelitier says as he drives. “He’s a heck of a soldier and he’s done everything he needs to do to qualify. Technically, all he had to do was step off the helicopter and he passed the course. He’s really upset now because he thinks he’s going to have to be recycled and do it all over again.

“I’m not going to let that happen. I’m taking him back to the safehouse and we’re going to get him fixed up and he’s getting back into the woods. He’s going to qualify. He’s come too far.”

True to his word, Pelitier returns the mended captain back to the guerilla base camp, where he is relegated to “ordinary” camp duties such as gathering firewood. He will not participate in such arduous missions as the mock ambush of a supply truck or the storming of an Opfour outpost that his comrades will carry out over the next two weeks. But for the captain, it’s a case of “been there, done that.” He will earn his Green Beret.

Learning From Mistakes

But that honor is still up in the air for the remaining 11 members of the captain’s squadron.

Doc performed admirably when confronted with the wounded freedom fighter, but, three days into the Robin Sage exercise, guerilla commander Col. Jack Daniels is unimpressed with many of the other candidates.

“They’ve made a lot of mistakes,” Daniels says. “They missed their alternate and emergency link-up points; they failed to build proper rapport with the guerillas when they initially came into camp; they didn’t institute a guard on their first night in the camp, which led to the theft of one of their machine guns (by Pelitier) and I’m not happy with the training they’ve given my men (the guerillas). It’s been inefficient because they’ve staggered the training in such a way that not all of my men have gotten trained.

“But it’s all part of the training. It’s early and they’ll learn from their mistakes as the training progresses.”

The “training” Daniels refers to revolves around lectures and demonstrations carried out by the Special Forces candidates in a series of bamboo classrooms constructed around the guerilla base camp. Under the rapt attention of the motley but studious guerillas, each Special Forces student gives a “class” in his specialty.

But unlike in traditional classroom environments, there is no reading, writing or arithmetic anywhere near this curriculum. Instead, the guerillas get a crash course in weapons, field medicine, communications, and demolition and construction.

Chicken Caper

Sgt. French demonstrates how to disassemble, clean and fire a massive machine gun.

Captain McLendon shows the guerillas the basics of constructing a Morse code antenna out of a common piece of wire — an antenna with a broadcast range of up to 500 miles.

“You can’t always count on a radio,” McLendon tells the guerillas. “This is a simple device, but in a pinch it may save your life and all the lives of your fellow guerillas.”

In an adjacent bamboo classroom, Doc teaches the basics of military first aid.

Behind him hang five dead chickens, upon which he continually casts a wary eye.

“Hey, Lancelot,” Doc says, motioning for camp cook Lancelot, who is also, perhaps not coincidentally, the thinnest man in the camp. “How long have these chickens been hanging here?”

Lancelot smiles wryly. When the Special Forces candidates initially came into camp, one of their first meals was a chicken stew –– supposedly made from these very chickens, which were now collecting a battalion of flies.

Actually Pelitier went to the local Food Mart and bought the very chickens used in the welcoming stew. The dead chickens hanging in a sad state of decay next to the cook pot were actually purchased from a local chicken farmer for “show.”

But Doc and the other Special Forces students didn’t know this.

“Oh,” Lancelot says, playing his part to the hilt and whetting his knife as he examines the bloated carcasses. “Two or three days. The cold’s kept them pretty good, don’t you think?”

Doc realizes he can’t insult the guerilla chef — that would be a gross miscarriage of the rapport he and his fellow American soldiers have been trying to build with the freedom fighters.

So he just offers advice.

“Well, I’d make sure they’re cooked extra well,” Doc says. “I know what to do for food poisoning but I don’t want to give an actual field demonstration on that.”

‘This Is Our Job’

In addition to training the guerillas, the Special Forces candidates must endure the unveiled derision and contempt hoisted upon them by the guerillas — played with Shakespearean elan by 82nd Airborne troops from Fort Bragg.

The guerillas have been informed to make it as difficult as possible on the Special Forces candidates in order to simulate a “real world” situation where the natives aren’t always going to be totally receptive to the arrival of Uncle Sam.

So the guerillas interrupt the training sessions with inane questions and loud, rude bodily noises designed to throw off the candidates.

But it doesn’t work.

The candidates remain unwavering and focused on the task at hand — training the guerillas and helping free Pineland from the oppressive Opfour regime.

When asked point-blank why he’s here, Doc answers as surely and directly as if he’s lecturing me on the proper cleaning of a field wound.