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February 26, 2002 |
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A Mistaken Shooting During Exercise By CHIP CUMMINS
FRANKLINVILLE, N.C. -- For more than 40 years, people around here have had an unusual hobby: posing as resistance fighters and enemy soldiers. Townspeople and farmers ferry soldiers around in their trucks and turn their homes and backyards into safe houses and guerrilla bases. Local police set up roadblocks along country lanes. The town librarian in neighboring Ramseur has played the role of a partisan fighter, smuggling coded messages in Dr. Seuss books. It's all part of the elaborate war games that the Special Forces troops at nearby Fort Bragg stage, enlisting local civilians to volunteer to help them train to fight behind enemy lines. Over the decades, "Robin Sage," as the two-week, four-times-a-year exercise is called, has become a family tradition, going back three generations. "A lot of people like ball games," said Michael Grigg, who has taken his six-year-old granddaughter, Taylor, with him some weekends when he is hauling troops in his Ford pickup. "I like doing this."
On Saturday, the tradition turned into tragedy. A Moore County sheriff's deputy stopped two soldiers and a local man driving on a quiet country lane near the town of Robbins. Dressed in civilian clothes, the threesome were taking part in the Special Forces exercise and believed the deputy was part of a training scenario. They resisted arrest, and the deputy, apparently not realizing the others were part of the exercise, shot the two soldiers, who were riding in the local's pickup truck and carrying a disassembled M-4 rifle. One soldier, First Lieutenant Tallas Tomeny, died from his wounds. The other was seriously wounded, and a community with long, close ties to the military has been shaken. The accident is especially poignant because it occurred in a community where residents take great pride in having helped prepare Special Forces troops in the sort of tactics that helped topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The weekend's fatal mishap casts a spotlight on the unconventional training and methods of these troops, who have played a leading role in the post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism. For decades, every Green Beret -- a nickname that refers to the distinctive Special Forces head gear -- has had to qualify here in central North Carolina before being sent overseas. The Moore County Sheriff's office and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation are conducting separate investigations of the weekend shooting. The prosecutor's office for Moore and two other counties said Monday that based on initial findings in those investigations, the sheriff's deputy, Randall Butler, acted appropriately, as did the two soldiers involved. Criminal charges aren't expected, the prosecutor's office said. The Army has said the shooting resulted from an "unfortunate case of mistaken identity and a breakdown in communications between the individuals involved." An Army spokeswoman said exercise planners are going back to all local law-enforcement agencies to ensure close coordination. The exercises are continuing this week, the Army said. The shooting took place in a 4,500-square-mile swath of North Carolina forest and farmland that Army war-game designers have reimagined as the nation of "Pineland." During the current 14-day exercise, which began Feb. 16, some 200 aspiring Green Berets were inserted behind "enemy lines" by parachute, helicopter or plane. Then, they were supposed to make their way to "guerrilla bases" outside small towns like Franklinville, population 1,258. Their mission: to help topple Pineland's fictional puppet government. A visit to the area before last weekend's accidental shooting revealed high enthusiasm among locals for the exercise. As part of the training, soldiers are supposed to try to win the confidence of guerrilla chiefs, played by civilians or retired Green Berets. The trainees then accompany the guerrillas on missions, including ambushes of enemy militia and raids to free hostages. The Army asks land owners for permission to use their property. Live ammunition isn't employed in the role-playing that involves local residents, who cheerfully refer to themselves as "Pinelanders." Residents said Monday they were saddened by the accident but that it hasn't dented their support for the military exercises. Cheryl Lamonds of nearby Troy has volunteered since the 1980s for Robin Sage. (Green Beret lore has it that the name refers to the daughter of a former commander.) Last week, Ms. Lamonds donned a camouflage uniform to play a senior guerrilla chief. A group of soldiers came to her home to meet and negotiate with her. Another such gathering is scheduled for tonight. "It's really a shock," Ms. Lamonds, 48 years old, said of the accident. "There has to have been a whole lot of misunderstanding. Someone, somewhere dropped the ball. It will make people more cautious." Still, she doesn't expect it to decrease local eagerness to help the military. "These people are attached to this training, to the instructors and to Fort Bragg. I don't want to say the word 'mystique,' but it's a family," she explained. "It has gone on for so long without incident. This is really an anomaly." A week before the accident, Mr. Grigg, a 58-year-old maintenance man for the local power company who spent six years in the Army, stood in the dark next to his sister's dump truck as a stranger emerged from the woods behind Mount Lebanon Church, near Franklinville. "Does the preacher allow praying in the cemetery?" the man called out. Mr. Grigg recognized the code. "This truck is dirty as a dog," he barked back. He opened up the truck's tailgate, and 12 camouflaged soldiers with heavy packs and rifles ran from the woods and piled in. "We're in Pineland," said one of the soldiers, smiling through streaks of black-and-olive face paint as he clambered aboard. Helping the soldiers train, said Mr. Grigg. "makes me feel like I've done something." His two-story clapboard house often serves as a place where local militia keep captured Army soldiers. He has scrawled additional numbers on the dial of his bathroom wall clock so that it displays 24-hour military time. Most residents typically don't see much of the exercises, except for a few Army trucks and the occasional helicopter at night. In years past, more locals have volunteered than the Army can accommodate. In the past, there have been instances of residents unaware of an exercise calling 911 after seeing armed soldiers prowling the woods. But until now, no one has been hurt as a result of interaction between soldiers and locals, according to Army officials There have been occasional complaints from people who say they didn't know about the mock troop movements in advance or are angry about soldiers trampling on private property. Sgt. First Class Wade Bramble, who devises scenarios around Franklinville, said before the weekend accident that he warns local law enforcement and 911 dispatchers when part of an exercise might involve fake gunfire or explosives. But he said he still worries about the well-intentioned resident who could stumble onto a staged raid. "It's the good citizens who might come out with their own guns," he said. With the exercises spread out over nine counties and dozens of small towns, he conceded, he "can't physically talk to everyone." Last October, Jessica Keeling, 18 years old, heard a spray of mock machine-gun fire behind the Citgo filling station where she used to work. She quickly locked the doors, herded customers playing video poker into the store's walk-in refrigerator and dialed 911. The dispatcher told her it was just the Army staging a hostage rescue at the body shop next door. "Nobody told me there was going to be shooting," she recalled before the weekend accident. She smiled when telling her story but recalled that "some customers were saying, 'I'm never coming back here again.' Kids were crying." Sgt. Bramble set up that mock gun battle. As he pulled into another Citgo station down the road, where Ms. Keeling now works, she shook her head, saying, "Every time I see that one, I say, 'You going to be shooting today?' " Most people "understand what's going on" and endorse the exercises, even after the accident, said Lt. Jerry Brower, deputy sheriff in Randolph County, which abuts Moore County, where the accidental shooting took place. Once civilians realize a gun battle or a roadblock is actually role playing, "they only wish they had been closer," he said. In the wake of the accident, the lieutenant said his office is re-evaluating its safety and communications procedures and expects the military to rethink its procedures, too. But he added that "in everything, there's a risk. A soldier could have fallen in a rappelling accident." The shooting of the two soldiers "was a tragedy, but should [the Army] stop because it's a danger? No." David Griffin, 36, started helping with the exercises as a teenager, although he didn't know what was going on at first. Playing one day on the outskirts of Troy, he met a team of soldiers who mistook him for a guerrilla in the exercise. "They run me through a cornfield like you've never been run before," he recalled, with relish. "They never did catch me." He had so much fun, the next time he volunteered to help the Army. His 17-year-old son, James, used to come along on mock missions until he joined the real Army last summer. Mr. Griffin said Monday that spirits among some Army instructors and locals have flagged because of the accident, but he plans to continue to help. "You stay together and work it out," he said. Mr. Griffin recalled meeting his friend Chad Nichols, a 30-year-old power-line inspector, during a Robin Sage exercise in the mid-1980s. Posing as local guides last week, the two drove a group of soldiers in Mr. Nichols's battered truck to a "guerrilla base" in the woods just outside of Franklinville. The two friends have played resistance fighters, enemy soldiers and injured pilots. They have also bought their own semiautomatic rifles for use in the exercises. Those weapons are loaded with blanks, too. Mr. Griffin, who drives a truck for a local gas company during the week, said he doesn't mind spending late nights and weekends in the woods with the troops. He recalled the time the Army sent Mr. Nichols and him up in a surveillance plane to take aerial photos of a mock prisoner-of-war camp built by the Army for the exercise. After getting the pictures developed at a Wal-Mart, the two civilians attended an Army briefing where the photos were used to plan an assault, Mr. Griffin said. "It's not only an honor, it's a thrill," he said. His friend, Mr. Nichols, enlisted in the Army as a high-school senior but had to drop out after crushing his leg in a car accident. Participating in Robin Sage takes away some of the lingering disappointment, he explained. Mr. Nichols said the Army's recent success in Afghanistan has made the exercise even more important to him. There, teams of Green Berets linked up with guerrilla fighters to help oust the Taliban regime. Mr. Nichols said he has heard that soldiers returning from Afghanistan have said their real-life missions were similar to those they went through years ago in the North Carolina woods. "That makes me proud as heck," he said. After each exercise, soldiers spend a day painting barns, clearing fields or fixing fences as a way of saying thanks. Maj. Patrick Marques, an exercise organizer, said before the accident that the realism the locals provide is crucial. The major said he can make do with too few Army trucks or helicopters, "but if we don't have the people, we can't do this." |
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