The exercise was made as realistic as possible. For example, local civilians played various parts, and provided support to both sides. The counterinsurgency force, usually an active-duty brigade, and the guerrilla force, approximately 100 to 150 soldiers, were drawn from various support units at Fort Bragg.
The fledgling Special Forces soldiers were evaluated on their specialties, tactical skills, and overall performance within their A-Detachment.
Carl Stiner continues:
I have participated on both sides of this exercise, both as a student and as a guerrilla chief. This is a particular exercise from 1964:
After they'd been given the mission, the A-Detachment entered an "isolation area" to begin their preparation (the isolation area is part of the preparation for every Special Forces mission). While there, they saw no families, friends, or anybody else who was not involved in preparing them for their mission. For the Gobbler Woods exercise, the isolation period lasted about a week; for a real-world mission, it could last up to six weeks. During this time, they developed their operations order and studied every aspect of the operational area where they would be inserted — the government, terrain, climate, personalities, the guerrilla force, the people, the culture, and anything else appropriate. They were assisted in this by a pool of experts with advanced degrees who provided instruction in specific areas.
The final phase of isolation was the briefback, usually to the Group Commander and his staff. This covered — to the "nth" degree — every detail of the mission and how it would be accomplished. This had all been committed to memory. No orders or paperwork were carried by any member of the team. After the briefback, the judgment was made whether or not they were ready to go. If that decision was a "yes," they moved directly from the isolation area to the departure airfield ready for launch.
While the A-Detachment was making its preparations, the guerrilla chief (usually a Special Forces major or captain) had moved to the operational area and begun working at winning the hearts and minds of the local people in order to establish a support infrastructure for the guerrilla force.
When I played guerrilla chief, the most effective technique 1 found was to drive up on a Sunday morning to Albemarle County (in Pineland) with Sue, and spend the day meeting people. I would visit country grocery stores and restaurants and any other gathering I could find. I was looking for people who needed some kind of help.
At one stop, for example, I learned that a man with a large dairy operation was having a rough time getting his cows milked on time and was way behind getting his crops in, mainly because his wife was in bad shape with cancer.
I went to see him, explained who I was, and told him about the training exercise that was about to take place. Though he'd heard of it, he told me, he hadn't participated in the past. I also told him that I grew up on a farm in Tennessee and was well aware of the challenges he was facing working a farm and taking care of a sick wife.
"In a couple of days," I said, "I'm going to have about 150 soldiers, all wearing civilian clothes, who're going to serve as my guerrillas. I'll be glad to pick four or five farm-raised boys out of this group and let them live and work with you. You can let them bunk in chicken houses, or the dairy barn, or wherever you want them, and they are yours to work to help bring in the crops and to help with the milking, or whatever.
"All I ask is for you to protect them if the counterinsurgency force" — the 101st Airborne, in this case—"comes around trying to police up my guerrillas. If they do, I just want you to say, 'I don't know anything about that. I don't fool with these things. And I don't want you running over my fields with your trucks.
"All I ask in return is for you to let me use one of your trucks, maybe a couple of nights a week, to haul fifteen or twenty of my guerrillas over to simulate blowing up a bridge or some similar target."
"That's fine with me," he told me. "And I appreciate very much the help."
"That's wonderful, I said. "But how about talking to some of your friends to see if some of them also need some help?"
He told me he'd do that, and he did.
I then reminded him about how important it was for us to trust each other. "If we don't," I said, "we stand to lose all of our guerrillas and then we won't be able to help you or your friends."
He told me he understood that, and he did.
And so, with this farmer's help, I was able to establish other contacts that ultimately became a key part of my infrastructure throughout the community.
I also contacted local pastors to find out who in their congregations might need some help, and they offered me good sources that provided protection and support for small groups of my guerrillas.
It's amazing how you can organize people for our kinds of causes. They all want to get in there and support — sometimes more than you really want. I USUALLY brought my guerrillas out a week before the Special Forces students jumped in, in order to allow time for blending with the local people and getting our operating base set up properly. On the day they arrived, I selected those who'd be going out to work for and live with the contacts I'd made, like the dairy farmer.
But before they did that, I laid down the law about standards, principles, and conduct: "There is to be absolute integrity," I told them. "Respect for the human dignity of each and every person; respect for property; no abuse (verbal or otherwise); no hanky-panky; and no incidents that would degrade your morality and our ability to live and operate among the people. We are here to help them, and they will help us if we do. We cannot survive without their protection and support. One bad incident from you, and you are gone — and so is your career. And by the way, no alcohol!"
I would also tell them, "Co to church, sing in the choir if you can, and get to know everybody in that church. If you blend into that community and cause them to respect you, they will protect you and we'll have their cooperation in everything we do."
1 always tried to put my guerrillas in key parts of the community. They and the people that support them were my intelligence network. That way I always knew what was going on all over the county.
A couple of days before the A-Detachment was to jump in, my guerrillas would come together in order to organize our "base camp" and develop plans for the linkup and reception of the A-Detachment. There was also a rehearsal for securing the drop zone.
After the jump, the assistant guerrilla chief (a Special Forces NCO) usually made the linkup and guided the detachment to the base camp. Once there, they were told they would meet the guerrilla chief the next morning. The A-Detachment spent the rest of the night in the base camp, usually guarded by the guerrillas.
At the morning meeting, which usually took about an hour, the guerrilla chief always played hardball. He made his initial demands as tough as he could, so it would be close to impossible for the A-Detachment commander to meet them. We did this in order to evaluate the A-Detachment commander's ability to establish rapport and gain enough of the confidence of the guerrilla chief to accomplish the mission.
After the meeting, the guerrilla chief presented a list of the supplies and materials he wanted and gave a rundown of the capabilities of his force and the training assistance they needed.
The A-Detachment commander, having done his homework during the detachment's isolation back at Bragg, then presented his training plan for the guerrillas.
The initial phase of formal training usually started the next morning. While this was under way, the A-Detachment assessed and validated the training readiness of the "G" (guerrilla) force for conducting operations. Meanwhile, the detachment commander and the guerrilla chief formulated an operation plan together, with specific targets for accomplishing the overall strategic objective.