by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

Veterans among our readers will be familiar with the old military service axiom in the headline for this column. Many, many years ago during my service days, I recall that the phrase was used to explain away decisions by military leaders that defied common sense or seemed to vary 180 degrees in comparable circumstances.

I was reminded of this by some recent news reports, the one a tragic example of bad decision making. The other showing that there is a real right way.

The bad case was the Army Special Forces training/test exercise in North Carolina during which 1st Lt. Tallas Tomeny was killed and Sgt. Stephen Phelps was wounded.

The clearest explanation for what happened appeared in a report for Fayetteville, NC, near Fort Bragg, where the Army unit was stationed.

The Moore County, NC, sheriff’s deputy who shot one Fort Bragg soldier to death and injured another on Feb. 23 did not know the soldiers were part of a role-playing Special Forces exercise, said Lane Carter, chief deputy of the Moore County Sheriff’s Department.

“They attacked the deputy with everything they had, and he responded accordingly,” Carter said. “One was trying to get the deputy’s weapon. The other was pulling a weapon out of a bag. They ended up getting shot over it. He reacted as any officer would react.”

The soldiers were not wearing uniforms. One of them carried a bag containing a disassembled M-4 carbine, Army officials said. Participants in the exercise do not carry live ammunition.

“It was a tragic misunderstanding and miscommunication between those individuals,” said Maj. Gary Kolb, a spokesman for US Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg.

Deputy Randall Butler shot the soldiers at 2:30 p.m. on Acorn Ridge Road, about &Mac251;-mile from state Route 705, near Robbins in northern Moore County, the Sheriff’s Department said.

The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) said Butler stopped what appeared to be a suspicious vehicle.

Randy Myers, a criminal specialist in the Fayetteville district office of the SBI, said there was a confrontation and “Deputy Butler felt like his life was in imminent danger.”

The soldiers were among about 200 students in the Robin Sage exercise, the culminating part of the Special Forces Qualification Course.

The 19-day exercise takes place in the Uwharrie National Forest and 10 counties in central North Carolina, which make up a fictitious country called “Pineland.”

Kolb said it has been “standard procedure for many years” for students to wear civilian clothes and drive in civilian vehicles during the exercise designed to test skills in survival, tactics and dealing with people, as well as ethics, judgment and decision-making.

The Army has received help from local residents and governmental agencies for Robin Sage for years, and that support is crucial to the program’s success, Kolb said.

But the scenario did not anticipate the involvement of local law enforcement, he said.

“Because of that, we would not have notified any of the agencies involved that this was taking place,” Kolb said.

The soldiers were riding in a truck with a civilian driver. The civilian was a local resident playing a role as a resident of “Pineland.”

‘No Earthly Idea’
Carter, the Moore County chief deputy, said Butler had “no earthly idea” what was going on. “He thought they were going to kill him,” Carter said.

Butler is on administrative leave. He has been with the Sheriff’s Department since 2000 and has been in law enforcement for about 15 years, Carter said. No charges have been filed.

Carter compared the traffic stop to a 1997 incident on Interstate 95 when two law enforcement officers were killed. Carter said the situation was similar on Feb. 23 in that one person tried to get the officer’s attention while the other tried to fire a rifle.

Carter said he understood that law-enforcement officials in adjacent Randolph County had been involved in part of the exercise, but Moore County was not involved.

An Associated Press (AP) report from Fort Bragg on Feb. 26 said, “The Army’s Special Forces has changed some procedures in Green Beret training to prevent a repetition of the fatal training accident.”

Among other things, AP said, soldiers will no longer wear civilian clothes during exercises outside Fort Bragg, and no role-playing will involve civilian law enforcement agencies.

In addition to the changes in procedures, Army officials already have met with officials of the sheriff’s departments in each of the counties where the military exercises take place.

Kolb said police in the Moore County town of Robbins had been involved in an exercise with the same group of students several nights before.

“When we know ahead of time a training scenario involves local law enforcement, we will coordinate with those agencies ahead of time,” Kolb said.

However, apparently the Army saw no reason to notify local officials, particularly law enforcement agencies, that the exercises where continuing and that the Special Forces trainees would be operating in their areas. The possibility that such misunderstandings as took place could conceivably have occurred, particularly given the current fear of terrorists and heightened security since Sept. 11, apparently never dawned on the military. Nor did it even consider the common sense etiquette that should rule when military and law enforcement agencies are operating under entirely different guidelines in such close proximity.

The Robin Sage exercise began on Feb. 16 and is scheduled to continue through March 2, said Maj. Rich Patterson, a spokesman for the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg.

The JFK Center and School has “recontacted all of the counties we are currently operating in,” Patterson said. “We also asked the Moore County Sheriff’s Department through their law-enforcement channels to ensure the municipalities know we will be continuing to train through March 2.”

The responsibility for notifying local officials of exercises is with the 1st Battalion of the 1st Special Warfare Training Group of the JFK Center and School, Patterson said. The battalion is in charge of the qualification course.

As if to reassure everyone, an Army statement said, “The training has been conducted in central North Carolina since the mid-1950s ‘without incident.’ ”

Marines to Practice
Two other February news reports of US Marine Corps training for urban warfare in American cities seem to stand in stark contrast to the Army’s approach in North Carolina.

The first, dated Feb. 16, from Reuters news service, provided plenty of advance notice that Marines were to hunt mock combatants in a real city, North Little Rock, AR, in a “first-of-its-kind” urban warfare exercise aimed at improving tactics in the US war on terrorism and other dangerous overseas missions.

About 300 Marines were to practice reconnaissance and house and vehicle searches in downtown North Little Rock, on key bridges and at a nuclear power plant.

Note the following key information provided by Reuters: “Local police will accompany the troops as they move about, and city workers and officials will join in the role playing, including Mayor Pat Hays.”

And on Feb. 20, The Idaho Statesman, reported that Boise, ID, probably will be invaded by a small, stealthy group of US Marines this fall—creeping along the Greenbelt, near back yards, and inside buildings.

Unlike the exercise in Arkansas, Marines in the Boise exercise will not conduct car and building searches or carry weapons on city streets. Instead, they will work in small teams and try hard to avoid detection as they infiltrate urban areas and gather intelligence from a base in the Greenbelt area.

There will be plenty of media notice before the exercise, so no one should be that surprised.

If the Marines plan to use a particular neighborhood or building, they will pass out fliers and get permission to go onto property before doing anything, a spokesman said.