svn export --force not used for externals

I am trying to put some of my conf files in /etc under version control, where changes to the repository get propagated to a number of servers. My repository contains a tree for each server, which has a number of external links to several server-class trees that contain general config files. When I first run svn checkout --force on a new server, the tree specific to that server checks out correctly, but externals do not. Instead, the externals complain that 'object of the same name already exists'. It appears to me that the --force switch is not used when checking out externals. My servers run Fedora 10, and have svn 1.5.4. To duplicate, please see the following:

cd /tmp
mkdir -p wc1/foo wc2 wc3/foo
echo "svn" > wc1/foo/bar
echo "orig" > wc3/foo/bar
svn import wc1 svn://svn.server.com/wc1 -m "Import wc1"
svn import wc2 svn://svn.server.com/wc2 -m "Import wc2"
rm -rf wc1 wc2
svn checkout svn://svn.server.com/wc1
svn checkout svn://svn.server.com/wc2
svn propset svn:externals "foo svn://svn.server.com/wc1/foo" wc2
svn commit -m "Added external" wc2
svn update wc2
svn checkout --force svn://svn.server.com/wc2 wc3

Output from the last command is:
U wc3

Fetching external item into 'wc3/foo'
svn: Failed to add file 'wc3/foo/bar': object of the same name already exists

Is this expected behavior, and if so, why?

Jonathan DeHaan
Linux Systems Engineer
Nexstar Broadcasting Group
972-409-8261 Office
[cid:image001.jpg_at_01C9B783.56583570]

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