First U.S. Troops Share Compound With Saudi Forces : Military: The move is a step toward joint training. But Marines learn they must be on their best behavior to avoid offending their Muslim comrades.

The first U.S. combat unit permitted to set up camp with Saudi Arabian ground troops moved into a shared compound Saturday, ending what has amounted to two months of rigid military segregation.

But the move came with some unwelcome restrictions as anxious U.S. commanders, wary about still-fragile talks over future joint operations, sought to ensure that the Americans would not offend their Saudi counterparts.

In preparation for the move, enlisted Marines laboriously ripped open 92 boxes of military meals to seek out and purge every pork patty, ham slice and other trace of the meat, forbidden and offensive to Muslims. Others buried playing cards deep in their packs, under orders to strictly obey Islam’s prohibitions on gambling. And under guidance from experts on Saudi standards of modesty, the Americans were admonished to clean up their language and to avoid using the desert for a toilet.

U.S. commanders, troubled by slow progress toward joint training with Saudi forces, said they hope to avoid missteps that might cause further postponements in what they regard as operations crucial to resolve problems of command and control in Operation Desert Shield.

Among the grunts on the ground, however, the demands for deference prompted reactions that left little doubt that cultural gaps remain an obstacle to closer collaboration among the multinational forces assigned to protect Saudi Arabia from possible Iraqi aggression.

“I don’t see how the Marine Corps can ask any man to hide his religious faith,” said Corp. Michael Collins as he stood up angrily at a company-wide briefing here to ask about rumored prohibitions on the wearing of Christian medals in Muslim Saudi Arabia.

“We’re here defending them,” the Camp Pendleton-based corporal told the division chaplain. “Why are we kissing their butt?”

The company commander, Capt. Michael Callaghan, quickly interceded to assure the corporal that any officer who told him he could not wear his medals had given him a “bum rap.”

Across the sandy compound, however, the corporal’s challenge already had been greeted with an audible chorus of assent from young Marines of 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, a number of whom murmured, “Hear, hear.”

Most said later that their main frustration has been the banishment of most Marines to the desert, deliberately out of sight of Saudi society. They said they welcome a mission that now, after two months, will provide many with their first opportunity to talk to Saudi citizens.

But after two months of insulation in the American compounds, some seemed surprised by the sudden need to go beyond what already are regarded as onerous restrictions against the use of alcohol and contact with Saudi women.

Navy Chaplain Stanley Scott prompted particularly vocal groans by warning that any Marines living with the Saudis during the Muslim feast of Ramadan should expect to adhere to a daylong fast. The monthlong holiday begins in mid-March.

In beginning its five-day stint with the Saudis’ King Abdulaziz Brigade, the Marines from the battalion’s weapons company became the first American combat unit to be even temporarily based with Saudi troops since the U.S. military buildup began in August.

Until now, only American liaison officers had been permitted in the Saudi camps. There has been no real joint training between the forward-based Saudi forces and the American units arrayed immediately behind them. Brig. Gen. Tom Draude, deputy commander of Marine ground forces here, reiterated in a conversation Friday that holding such “combined operations” is a U.S. priority.

In interviews, commanders involved in planning for the joint mission said it is unclear whether the Marine weapons company, equipped with mortars and a variety of anti-tank missiles, will actually train with Saudi forces.

But the battalion commander, Col. Michael Maloney, nevertheless described the operation as a “big first step . . . just getting our Marines up there next to them, co-located with our Saudi allies.”

Reporters were not permitted to accompany the Marine unit to its new forward position. But the open-air briefing from Chaplain Scott, a 22-year veteran who was based in the Persian Gulf region in the late 1970s, served as a primer to the circumstances that the Marines might face.

At one point, taking a young Marine by the hand, Scott demonstrated to the more than 100 others sprawled in the sand the kind of hand-holding and cheek-kissing they might expect to see at the front as signs of Arab friendship.

The chaplain instructed his well-muscled audience: “It means (we’re) friends. Do not impose on this culture your indicators of homosexuality.”

He later reminded impatient officers that Saudi etiquette means they will be drinking “a lot of tea, a lot of coffee” before trying to get down to business in any discussion with a Saudi official.

And in preparing Marines for the spectacle of rows of Saudi soldiers bowed in prayer as often as five times a day, the chaplain urged them to heed a doctrine calling for Marines to walk around such troop formations.

Finally, he said: “You don’t whip out your camera and say, ‘This would make a nice shot for Mom.’ That would not be cool.”