A team chief and later executive officer of 2nd Battalion, 305th Field Artillery Regiment - part of 3rd Brigade, 87th Division (Training Support) at Camp Shelby, Mississippi - from 2003 to 2005 Major David Pierce was responsible for the mobilization of enhanced brigades from the Mississippi and Florida National Guards. Among the issues discussed in this interview are the condition these units were in upon arrival, the range of training provided, the validation process and generally how Pierce and his fellow trainers went about making Mississippi, as much as possible, resemble Iraq. "Obviously, you don't cut down all the trees and bring in sand," he said. "Your scenarios are built around real-world stuff that happened in those environments, and we would get feedback from the theater directly, from sources within theater." His work involved building forward operating bases (FOBs), checkpoints and mock cities; bringing in Iraqi-Americans to play the role of civilians on the battlefield; creating an “insurgency” out of the opposing force; and building convoy routes and live-fire ranges. As Piece explained, “Anything that was happening in theater, within no later than seven days, we were implementing in that particular training event…. By the time they left Camp Shelby,” he added, “they weren’t going into any type of scenario for the first time, that’s for sure.” Pierce also discusses the training plans/models he helped develop concerning FOB operations, including a battalion-level Army Training and Evaluation Program (ARTEP), as well as his authorship of a First Army training manual that focused on common tasks, perimeter defense, and quick reaction force and checkpoint operations.

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