On one of the last training exercises I was with while in SF I was part of an OPFOR working against a regular army battalion. The exercise took place in the forests around Cedar City, Utah, down in the southwestern corner. The umpires were clearly on the side of the regular army and would not even give reliable information normally forthcoming in such an exercise. Our team leader got the bright idea of sending someone in to the local town under cover to see if we could pick up some information. Because I was the intel NCO, I was chosen. Actually, I think it was because I could look the scruffiest the quickest. Dressed in old civvies I headed for the nearest road.
Shortly, I caught a ride with a ranch hand in an old pickup truck. I took the chance of disclosing what I was doing and, with a big grin, he was recruited on the spot. He led me to the most likely watering holes and sure enough, it wasn't long before we found some talkative GI's. They not only told us how bad they were going to shame the SF, they told us exactly how they were going to do it. For starters, one of the umpires had accidently left our radio frequency laying around for all to see.
My part in the exercise was to capture and interrogate a downed pilot and keep him while the regular doggies beat the woods to rescue him. In the third bar I found myself sitting face to face with the guy who was going to be the downed pilot. He was a reserve officer, a lawyer by trade, a young LT who knew little about the army way of doing things and even less about the woods. By the time we left I knew exactly which road he was going to be dropped off on. My recruit knew where the road was and we pulled a little night recon when we left the bar. Amazing what a little beer and gasoline can accomplish.
Putting our heads together the next day we decided to go on the offensive. We split the team. My job was to hold the prisoner. Some more guys were to create false leads as to the location of the prisoner. Another couple of guys were to ambush the road net and some more were to disrupt communicatons. For our part, we changed our commo, but we couldn't make it obvious so we created a useless code to be traded on the net we were supposed to use. We would commo check on this net every 90 minutes with our worthless code. We hoped this would pin their interception effort while our real commo would be on rotating frequencies, changed every three hours. In case they tried to triangulate our radios, we would set up fake transmitter sites in two locations moving them frequently. For emergancies we would use the URC-4 whisper radio.
Along with the umpires and the regulars, our team leader attended the final briefing. He reported everyone looked real smug and cozy. After the briefig he followed one umpire, a sergeant who had been a real smart**s to the woods. The umpire had just finished his call to nature and was walking past a tree when the team leader grabbed him and waved his knife in front of his throat, saying, "Aren't you glad this isn't the real thing?" The knife was one of those Gerber survival knives, the kind that are shaped like the business end of a Zulu spear. The segeant gave the appropriate response, where upon the team leader told him we knew all about their plans and threatened him down to three generations if he didn't change allegiance. All he had to do was transmit on our supposed frequency a code word if the regulars were planning more than a company sized operation. He also gave us the umpire frequency. We had our second convert of the operation.
We received an augmentation of three squads of National Guardsmen from Alaska, some of whom were Native Americans, Inuit, I believe. Four were assigned to me to help guard the prisoner. Also assigned to us was an umpire, only one, the regulars, in their demented thinking, assumed we would stay together in a group of 40 souls cowering in the forest until they policed us up. He was a West Pointer, arrogant and upset that he was stuck with SF. Proof to the addage that the Army does not issue a sense of humor. We assigned him to the team that was setting up false prisoner locations. If nothing else we would run his butt off. The first thing we did was steal his map. He had a radio and would probably report our location. With no map, he would have to give co-ordinates we provided him with until he could get another map delivered to him. If we kept him lost enough he would never get another map.
On the day the exercise was to start we were prepared. Our little teams had simply disappeared while our umpire slept sound as a baby and now he found himself with two closed mouth SF sergeants and four National Guardsmen who knew nothing.
For the prisoner snatch, we had prepared an ambush. Scrounging up some C-4 (every SF carries C-4 on an op, and some live ammo, no matter what they tell you) we blew a tree across the road that would force the downed pilot/lawyer/reserve officer to walk to his jumping off point. That way we could keep up. Being forced to walk, his umpire escort of our nations finest didn't take him too far into the woods and after about fifteen minutes they deposited him, sleeping bag, five gallons of water, some heat tabs and a case of C's under a tree next to a prominent rock formation that was easy to find on a map. We let the escort get about a half hour away and watched the pilot/lawyer/reserve officer get bored. We were about to change that. I was still in civvies, as was my intel assistant and the NG's, and was carrying an M-1 carbine. Some of the Guardsmen spoke some Inuit, so I decided we would speak no English around the prisoner. If they spoke to me in Inuit I would try to look intelligent as I nodded my head. Like Santa Claus, we spoke not a word as we picked up the victem and his goodies, blindfolded and gagged him and took to the woods at a respectable SF clip, my assistant brushing out our trail. Imagine his expression when he recognized me as the friendly local that bought him a drink two days earlier.
The location chosen to hide him was a wooded hillside on the extreme edge of the exercise operation area and was approachable only from an old logging road that came in from outside the area. Our recruit with the pickup would check up on us every so often and if push came to shove I was planning to use the pickup to move the prisoner. I tied the prisoner's feet together about shoulder width apart and used medical adhesive tape to tie his hands together in front. I also tied a ten foot length of parachute cord around his neck and secured it to a tree. We cleaned out his pockets, took his watch and gave him a poncho. He could stand up and move around, eat and go to the bathroom on his own but was constantly being guarded. If he moved toward the end of the cord around his neck the click of a safety warned him to go back. I wasn't worried, if this guy got loose he was lost immediately. We spoke no English around him and soon this got to him. He was becoming desperate for human contact. The first few nights he didn't sleep a wink and I just let the natural sounds of the woods do their work. When he began to fall asleep from exhaustion I would wake him at odd times and make him think it was time to eat. The NG guys loved every minute of it and played their role to the hilt.
The rest of the team did an incredible job. Normally all participants have an umpire with them that reports when bridges are blown, etc, but we had successfully isolated our umpire so we had to use more subtle methods. Cardboard signs hung on fishing line would be suspended across bridges with the message that the bridge was blown. One team used "materials readily available on the local market" (read C-4) to blow a tree across a major road to the HQ. One ingenious guy figured out how to take a forked stick and lay it in the road so it would pop up next to the vehicle that just ran over it. Attached would be a piece of cardboard that said "BOOM." Another team stole the HQ generator under the cover of CS. Who takes a gas mask on a training exercise? Actually didn't steal the generator, just relocated it about two hundred yards away under some brush. We put training booby traps all over the AO and especially the latrine. The little fireworks that go pop when you pull them apart are wonderful. Imagine stumbling to the latrine at 0 dark thirty and having a loud bang greet you when you opened the door. Its also hard to see saran wrap across the seat at that hour. The solution, a 24 hour guard on the latrine. One morning, coffee was late at HQ. The cooks were tied in their bunk with fish line, adhesive tape across their mouth.
Needless to say, it was a wonderful six days. The Army never accomplished a single objective so they declared victory because we didn't play fair. Another group of regular officers out for revenge against SF. Oh well, its all good.
Rotor rbo;
Shortly, I caught a ride with a ranch hand in an old pickup truck. I took the chance of disclosing what I was doing and, with a big grin, he was recruited on the spot. He led me to the most likely watering holes and sure enough, it wasn't long before we found some talkative GI's. They not only told us how bad they were going to shame the SF, they told us exactly how they were going to do it. For starters, one of the umpires had accidently left our radio frequency laying around for all to see.
My part in the exercise was to capture and interrogate a downed pilot and keep him while the regular doggies beat the woods to rescue him. In the third bar I found myself sitting face to face with the guy who was going to be the downed pilot. He was a reserve officer, a lawyer by trade, a young LT who knew little about the army way of doing things and even less about the woods. By the time we left I knew exactly which road he was going to be dropped off on. My recruit knew where the road was and we pulled a little night recon when we left the bar. Amazing what a little beer and gasoline can accomplish.
Putting our heads together the next day we decided to go on the offensive. We split the team. My job was to hold the prisoner. Some more guys were to create false leads as to the location of the prisoner. Another couple of guys were to ambush the road net and some more were to disrupt communicatons. For our part, we changed our commo, but we couldn't make it obvious so we created a useless code to be traded on the net we were supposed to use. We would commo check on this net every 90 minutes with our worthless code. We hoped this would pin their interception effort while our real commo would be on rotating frequencies, changed every three hours. In case they tried to triangulate our radios, we would set up fake transmitter sites in two locations moving them frequently. For emergancies we would use the URC-4 whisper radio.
Along with the umpires and the regulars, our team leader attended the final briefing. He reported everyone looked real smug and cozy. After the briefig he followed one umpire, a sergeant who had been a real smart**s to the woods. The umpire had just finished his call to nature and was walking past a tree when the team leader grabbed him and waved his knife in front of his throat, saying, "Aren't you glad this isn't the real thing?" The knife was one of those Gerber survival knives, the kind that are shaped like the business end of a Zulu spear. The segeant gave the appropriate response, where upon the team leader told him we knew all about their plans and threatened him down to three generations if he didn't change allegiance. All he had to do was transmit on our supposed frequency a code word if the regulars were planning more than a company sized operation. He also gave us the umpire frequency. We had our second convert of the operation.
We received an augmentation of three squads of National Guardsmen from Alaska, some of whom were Native Americans, Inuit, I believe. Four were assigned to me to help guard the prisoner. Also assigned to us was an umpire, only one, the regulars, in their demented thinking, assumed we would stay together in a group of 40 souls cowering in the forest until they policed us up. He was a West Pointer, arrogant and upset that he was stuck with SF. Proof to the addage that the Army does not issue a sense of humor. We assigned him to the team that was setting up false prisoner locations. If nothing else we would run his butt off. The first thing we did was steal his map. He had a radio and would probably report our location. With no map, he would have to give co-ordinates we provided him with until he could get another map delivered to him. If we kept him lost enough he would never get another map.
On the day the exercise was to start we were prepared. Our little teams had simply disappeared while our umpire slept sound as a baby and now he found himself with two closed mouth SF sergeants and four National Guardsmen who knew nothing.
For the prisoner snatch, we had prepared an ambush. Scrounging up some C-4 (every SF carries C-4 on an op, and some live ammo, no matter what they tell you) we blew a tree across the road that would force the downed pilot/lawyer/reserve officer to walk to his jumping off point. That way we could keep up. Being forced to walk, his umpire escort of our nations finest didn't take him too far into the woods and after about fifteen minutes they deposited him, sleeping bag, five gallons of water, some heat tabs and a case of C's under a tree next to a prominent rock formation that was easy to find on a map. We let the escort get about a half hour away and watched the pilot/lawyer/reserve officer get bored. We were about to change that. I was still in civvies, as was my intel assistant and the NG's, and was carrying an M-1 carbine. Some of the Guardsmen spoke some Inuit, so I decided we would speak no English around the prisoner. If they spoke to me in Inuit I would try to look intelligent as I nodded my head. Like Santa Claus, we spoke not a word as we picked up the victem and his goodies, blindfolded and gagged him and took to the woods at a respectable SF clip, my assistant brushing out our trail. Imagine his expression when he recognized me as the friendly local that bought him a drink two days earlier.
The location chosen to hide him was a wooded hillside on the extreme edge of the exercise operation area and was approachable only from an old logging road that came in from outside the area. Our recruit with the pickup would check up on us every so often and if push came to shove I was planning to use the pickup to move the prisoner. I tied the prisoner's feet together about shoulder width apart and used medical adhesive tape to tie his hands together in front. I also tied a ten foot length of parachute cord around his neck and secured it to a tree. We cleaned out his pockets, took his watch and gave him a poncho. He could stand up and move around, eat and go to the bathroom on his own but was constantly being guarded. If he moved toward the end of the cord around his neck the click of a safety warned him to go back. I wasn't worried, if this guy got loose he was lost immediately. We spoke no English around him and soon this got to him. He was becoming desperate for human contact. The first few nights he didn't sleep a wink and I just let the natural sounds of the woods do their work. When he began to fall asleep from exhaustion I would wake him at odd times and make him think it was time to eat. The NG guys loved every minute of it and played their role to the hilt.
The rest of the team did an incredible job. Normally all participants have an umpire with them that reports when bridges are blown, etc, but we had successfully isolated our umpire so we had to use more subtle methods. Cardboard signs hung on fishing line would be suspended across bridges with the message that the bridge was blown. One team used "materials readily available on the local market" (read C-4) to blow a tree across a major road to the HQ. One ingenious guy figured out how to take a forked stick and lay it in the road so it would pop up next to the vehicle that just ran over it. Attached would be a piece of cardboard that said "BOOM." Another team stole the HQ generator under the cover of CS. Who takes a gas mask on a training exercise? Actually didn't steal the generator, just relocated it about two hundred yards away under some brush. We put training booby traps all over the AO and especially the latrine. The little fireworks that go pop when you pull them apart are wonderful. Imagine stumbling to the latrine at 0 dark thirty and having a loud bang greet you when you opened the door. Its also hard to see saran wrap across the seat at that hour. The solution, a 24 hour guard on the latrine. One morning, coffee was late at HQ. The cooks were tied in their bunk with fish line, adhesive tape across their mouth.
Needless to say, it was a wonderful six days. The Army never accomplished a single objective so they declared victory because we didn't play fair. Another group of regular officers out for revenge against SF. Oh well, its all good.
Rotor rbo;
