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RAMSEUR With cigarette-stained fingers, he reaches into the right back pocket of his jeans and fishes out a worn black leather wallet. Inside are an N.C. driver's license and some creased greenbacks bearing the face of George Washington.
Now, the other pocket.
The wallet is identical, but its contents are like nothing you've ever seen. The ID card is recognized nowhere in the world. The work permit is for a job he doesn't hold. The wad of cash is bright yellow and, in the U.S., utterly worthless.
He is tall, aging, with a long gray beard that would make a Civil War general proud. His name? That depends. Such is life in Pineland, a country – well, a “country,” really – where who you are depends on which wallet you choose.
Pineland is a contradiction that exists for the best of causes. It is a real place that does not exist, or, perhaps, a fake place that does. It is a military training ground etched onto the landscape itself – a community with a back story hewn from whole cloth that helps real American soldiers stay alive in real American wars. And much like the country that contains it, Pineland is a society founded upon an idea – that freedom and a fire to fight for it are more than slogans.
That is what Pineland means. This is what Pineland is:
A fictional country created five decades ago, made up of 16 counties in central North Carolina and populated by regular Americans who, eight times a year, spend a chunk of their lives participating in a sprawling role-playing exercise.
The setting for Robin Sage, the Special Forces final exam. In it, students from nearby Fort Bragg parachute and helicopter into Pineland at the end of almost a year of training, organize a guerrilla force and overthrow an oppressive regime on the eve of an American invasion.
An exercise that borrows liberally from actual American missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Colombia.
Bob Snyder – or the guy in his other wallet, known as “Pineland Bob” – is one of many who populate this “place” in exchange for nothing more than the reimbursement of their fuel expenses. “Maybe,” he says, “something I will do will save somebody's life.”
Exciting as it may be, it isn't entertainment. It is, for them, as patriotic as saluting the flag.
Pineland Bob is the first person the students see when they arrive. He starts by slipping the team his business card. “Bob's Transportation Service: Troops moved, roadblocks avoided, packages handed off.” He then sets up a rendezvous, usually along a dirt or gravel track, far from enemy spies.
Snyder plays the province's fire marshal. A veteran who served in Germany during the Vietnam War, Snyder joined the Pineland Auxiliary nine years ago.
When the soldiers arrive in Pineland, Aubrey McKinnon, a 70-year-old widow, takes them in. Bob picks them up the next morning for their first reconnaissance of the town. He shows them the police station, the local diner, the storeroom at the Quick Check food mart where they can hide.
The manager of Sherry's Diner is the team's CIA contact, providing the team with information, money and eventually a mission. Bob also shows the team the hospital, where they meet Meiki Rose, a doctor who can treat wounded guerrillas. An ER doctor in Asheboro in real life, Rose has helped in the exercise for the last two years.
For the students, it is a jarring trip through an American small town where people talk about the United States like a far-off land.
This is a place where you can buy a meal with “don,” a yellow-and-orange Monopoly-like currency signed by Seymour Bombs, the Pineland defense minister (there is even an exchange rate). It is a place where dinner could be a hog captured by Ramseur's mayor and delivered in a garbage bag by Pineland Bob.
Most of all, it is a place where the students learn how to work with people from different cultures in a volatile situation.
How Pineland began
The entire alternate universe of Pineland sprang from one man's vision.
A generation ago, a Green Beret named Ed Brodey “created” Pineland using a set of 1964 encyclopedias as his guide. It has detailed geography (looks a lot like the East Coast), history (mirrors that of the U.S., including Pinelanders fighting on the western front in World War II) and ethnicity (Iraqi refugees flooded Pineland after the Gulf War).
From the outside, Ramseur resembles a small town going about its business. But it's like one of those old, black-and-white episodes of “The Twilight Zone”: Behind the scenes, everyone is playing a carefully calibrated role.
Cheryl Lake, the Quick Check manager, donates Gatorade, water and coffee. Ramseur police set up checkpoints. And the main character? The town itself. At almost every business there are certificates of appreciation from the Special Forces; providing Fort Bragg with a place to help its soldiers has become part of the community identity.
“Ain't no one else can claim it,” says James Parrish, a 54-year-old Pinelander with a beard that rivals Snyder's.
Like other families in Ramseur, the Parrishes have made Pineland a tradition that crosses generations. Parrish's son, Craig, volunteers as a driver, and the Pineland uniform will eventually go to his grandson, an 11-year-old aspiring Special Forces soldier.
Parrish never served in the real-world military. Joining the Pineland “resistance” is his way of compensating.
“It is a passion. It is a chance to pay back the soldiers,” he says. “And maybe we're just a bunch of rednecks that like to raise hell.”
Pineland has bad guys, too. Here, Jose Cuervo, the local strongman, has a reputation for torturing Pineland guerrillas.
Cuervo is played by Dale Needham, a soft-spoken volunteer firefighter. On the night of the team's final mission – the night the Special Forces students get to rub Cuervo out – Needham is late. He is putting out a house fire. A real one.
It isn't easy being the enemy in your own town. For the past two weeks, Needham has stayed away from the team's camp, which sits on his mother's land nearby. Balancing real life and Pineland life can be a tricky deal.
Sometimes, the line between the exercise and reality blurs. In 2002, a soldier was fatally shot by a Moore County deputy sheriff who was unaware of the training exercise. The deputy refused a bribe using Pineland money and then shot the soldiers when they didn't comply with his commands during a traffic stop. Another soldier was wounded.
The students, dressed in civilian clothes, thought the deputy was part of the exercise. Law enforcement officers who participate in the training are now required to wear a distinctive uniform, and auxiliary members, like Pineland Bob, have identifiers on their cars.
But for anyone passing through, Pineland can be invisible. There are clues, though, if you're looking. If you stop at the diner for some persimmon pudding, you might see two younger guys emerge from a back booth and pay the check in Don. Once, a team left a real American $5 bill as a tip. They were pulled over by a cop in short order.
“We know it is make believe, Snyder says, “but we have to treat it like it is real.”
Blank fire, staged urgency
“Go! Go!” Special Forces students and the guerrillas storm out of Pineland Bob's pickup. Inside a dilapidated house, in an attic room accessible only through a staircase tucked behind a door, Cuervo waits.
A burst from a blank-firing AK-47 breaks the silence. Perched at the top of the stairs, both men wait anxiously. Cuervo, a cheap cigar wedged between his teeth, squeezes his rifle and steals a glance at his bodyguard.
Gunfire echoes through the house. The assault team storms into the rooms on the first floor. Cuervo hears the Special Forces students grab Rose and hustle her to safety. Then he hears his name: “Where is Cuervo? You see him?”
They find the staircase. Cuervo is ready. One head peeks up. Boom! Fire from the blanks illuminates the attic as Cuervo fires a burst from his rifle.
“Get some guys up here! There is somebody up there! We've got people up there!”
Another burst. Then, the rattle of a machine gun. The students gather downstairs. Cuervo, in the last few moments of his “life,” girds for the assault.
The soldiers crash up the stairs, guns spitting fire from their muzzles. Cuervo and his bodyguard hold out for a few seconds before falling face down to the floor.
The dead man opens one eye. He gets up on his elbows. Suddenly, Jose Cuervo is Dale Needham again.
“We held them off for a while,” his bodyguard says. “We keep failing you. I think you need a new army.”
Always a new team coming
Cuervo's failures serve a higher purpose – a full-speed practice before the teams go overseas and face real bad guys. But just getting the Pinelanders organized, trained and prepared enough to take on the mission means that the team is learning what the Special Forces do.
Too often people get wrapped up in the popular “Rambo” narrative and forget that the Special Forces were created not to destroy things but to sneak behind enemy lines and turn regular joes – the Bob Snyders of many other lands and cultures – into a functioning army.
That's no small feat when you factor in new languages and unfamiliar customs. But it happens every day in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world. That learning curve starts the first day, when Pineland Bob picks them up and introduces them to Pineland.
Pinelanders don't sit around on porches and wax philosophic about what it all means. Strip away its details and Robin Sage is simply military support – citizens doing things to make sure that if war comes, the United States has the advantage.
Back at Needham's farm, Snyder – Pineland Bob – waits by his truck. Tomorrow, he will pick the team up one more time before they leave Pineland for Fort Bragg and graduation. Two weeks after that, Snyder will greet a new team. And the Pineland simulation will reboot.
Every day, Real Bob carries a Pineland Liberation flag in the back of his truck – yellow, red and gray stripes with a black paw and “1870” printed underneath.
When he dies, he will receive a full military funeral with an American flag draped over his coffin – something he has earned by serving his country. But inside, carefully arranged over his body, another totem of service will be visible. There, the Pineland flag will prevail.
So says Pineland Bob – or Bob Snyder. It depends on the wallet.
