FORT POLK, La., Oct. 18 (UPI) -- The woman in jeans jumped off her rickety bicycle and shook her fist at the soldier who had crossed her path.
"See that," she asked everyone and no one. "He almost made me crash. Women mean nothing to them. Women mean nothing in this town. He'll even probably shoot me tonight."
The soldier laughed. The people in the square laughed, and in the end so did Beate Gautsch-Lyons.
Another day, another dollar in Shughart-Gordon, a $12 million mock community of 29 buildings and 30-100 temporary residents located in Fort Polk, where thousands of soldiers each year receive high-stress, realistic training in a "contemporary operational environment" before shipping out to America's far-flung outposts.
It could be Bosnia. It could be Kosovo. It could even be Central Asia given the events of Sept. 11 and U.S. military action in the region.
"The mission profiles we do are right out of our mission checklists -- attack, supply, combined arms, you name it," said Army Special Forces Maj. Mark Lewis, of Twin Falls, Idaho. "... And in the future, you're going to see a lot more criminal, terrorist elements (in the training), things more relevant to today.
Gautsch-Lyons, originally from Austria, is central to part of that training. She's a professional role enactor, one of sometimes 1,000 civilians who earnestly play the hostile/friendly foreign populations the soldier will encounter abroad on duty in areas of conflict, even on the battlefield itself.
The wife of a retired U.S. serviceman and living near the base, she says she originally took the job simply because of the money, a common attraction for enactors who live in an area where employment prospects are slim, especially for part-timers and retired people.
"It (Fort Polk) was the only place you could get some work," she said. "Everywhere else, you fill out an application and nothing happens.
"Its fairly easy. Its just like, 'hey, you can play your games again, be a kid. You can say what you want -- within limits -- and get away with it."
The enactors work 15 days a month. Work entails staying overnight in the Spartan town, named after two award-winning Army snipers who died while saving others in Somalia, where crisp nights can quickly turn freezing when there is no heating available.
"It's not bad at times, " said Don Lewis, a retired, 62-year-old welder. "The most difficult time is when there is nothing going on and you're just waiting.
"It can be pretty interesting though if you really get into it."
Regular enactors each have designated roles as citizens of the town and the country designated as Cortina, which has been invaded and occupied by soldiers from Atlantica, and indigenous guerrillas.
Lewis, for instance, is a factory worker. Others are farmers, vegetable stall workers, pastors, police, hotel owners and city workers. All wear electronic sensors that light up and beep if the laser from a rifle strikes it, signifying being shot.
During exercises, in which occupiers must defend the town against attacking troops, enactors play out their roles amid noisy gun battles, complete with pre-set explosions and swooping helicopter gun ships.
Some, of course, become casualties as they flee for safety or cower in buildings in which the invasion force searches room-by-room for their enemies.
During special Military Readiness Exercises -- immediately before units are shipped out to Kosovo or Bosnia for peacekeeping duties, the regular enactors' numbers are augmented by as many as 500 others. In addition, another 500 or so enactors -- many immigrants from the Balkans or people who are fluent in the languages and culture of the area are recruited nationwide through a contractor for role playing.
Other temporary towns and villages, complete with livestock, already built on the 200,000-acre training site then come into play.
Brig. Gen. Charles Swannack Jr., commanding general of the Joint Readiness Training Center and Fort Polk, said role players are given general behavior guidelines and role profiles, and are then free to cooperate, resist, react in any way that feels natural given their ethnic-national profiles, the described political scenario and the behavior and policies of the troops they are dealing with.
A car bomb explodes in the town square, people feign injury and are evacuated by occupiers. Are the townspeople grateful, or are they suspicious the explosion was actually set by occupiers or their terror cells to try to shoulder the blame on attacking forces so they can win civilian supporters by their humanitarian help to the victims? It's up to the role players to decide and act out their conclusions.
Is the demonstration over the jailing of a thief or suspected enemy infiltrator legitimate or the work of agent provocateurs? They decide. They react, and occupiers cope with it.
The soldiers, either in roles of occupiers or peacekeepers, learn to handle the decisions and their consequences. One response could win friends., another could swell the ranks of fifth columnist recruits.
Attacking troops, meanwhile, must cope with civilians in the battle area and their demands for safety or food or other aid, while fighting opposition forces and guerrillas.
"Its not hard. It can be fun," Gautsch-Lyons said. "And it's better than being a waitress."
