Please don't shoot, we're just Green Berets

US Army special forces are planning such a realistic military exercise across North and South Carolina this month they have had to warn local police and rifle-carrying rednecks not to mistake the gunfire for a real insurrection. The exercise, carried out four times a year, is the culmination of the gruelling training programme faced by recruits at the John F Kennedy special warfare centre and school (SWCS) who are hoping to become Green Berets. Spread across the two states from January 22 to February 4, the would-be Green Berets will be engaged in intensive unconventional warfare against a simulated guerrilla force. Perhaps with the recent warnings in mind of a potential civil war breaking out in the United States following the January 6 assault on the Capitol in Washington a year ago, the special forces school put out a release to warn local people that the upcoming exercise was designed to replicate an “environment of political instability characterised by armed conflict”. The exercise is codenamed Robin Sage, derived from the town of Robbins in North Carolina and a former army colonel, Jerry Sage, a Second World War veteran who taught unconventional warfare tactics. In a Robin Sage exercise in February, 2002 , a soldier died because of a breakdown in communication. A sheriff’s deputy in Robbins pulled over a vehicle containing two soldiers in civilian clothes who were involved in a reconnaissance mission. The deputy was unaware the exercise was underway and the two soldiers thought he was part of the training programme because, traditionally, local people were enlisted in role-playing. When one of the soldiers tried to disarm the deputy he opened fire, fatally shooting one and injuring the other. In the news release, the SWCS warned locals they might hear gunfire and see flares going off but promised there would be “no risk to persons or property”.