Marine Unit Is Wave of the Future : Military: Urban training exercises prepare the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit for quelling regional crises around the world.

This is a spooky place to glimpse the future of the U.S. Marine Corps, and if the situation were real, it would be a desolate place to die.

In a forsaken wharf area, the ghostly shapes of battered old canneries stand with their frail tin sides torn. The sickly light of a meek moon glows through the stained, filthy windows that remain. The night air seems to gag on the stench of a dead, rotting seal lying nearby.

Here, somewhere along the coast of Los Angeles County, the young men of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit are learning to fight a special kind of war, coached by trainers from Camp Pendleton.

The men, looming like ninja warriors, with blackened faces, Buck Rogers helmets and flame-resistant jumpsuits, sneak in from the sea. They creep up and surround a dark and abandoned cannery where pretend American hostages are being held by pretend terrorists.

Illusions of make-believe end with an ear-splitting blast as the Marines actually blow down the doors with explosives, then burst into the building firing live ammunition in this tense, precision exercise to deliver troops, free the hostages and escape by helicopter to awaiting ships.

“This is not adventure training. It’s not a game,” said the unit’s gray-haired commanding officer, Col. Jerry Humble, a Marine for 23 years.

Ten days ago, the Naval Service, of which the Marine Corps is part, fundamentally changed its approach to armed conflict and put units like Humble’s in the forefront of modern warfare.

Instead of fighting a superpower’s ships at sea, the Navy and Marines, with the Soviet Union now shattered, will team up more closely than ever to forge an “expeditionary” force to quell regional crises around the world.

Operating from the sea, expeditionary units with ground troops, backed by air power and logistic support, can strike within six hours of receiving orders. It is a self-sustaining force for up to a month, but can be resupplied when necessary by the ships.

Among an expeditionary unit’s jack-of-all-trades skills are counterintelligence, airfield seizure, liberating hostages, rescuing downed pilots, amphibious raids and engaging an enemy on offshore oil platforms.

As one Camp Pendleton-based expeditionary unit demonstrated last month, the military’s job in the post-Cold War era sometimes has little to do with weapons and tactics. The 2,100-member unit drew international attention as it arrived in Somalia to safeguard aid shipments to the strife-torn nation.

“If all of a sudden we didn’t have this (kind of unit), we’d have to invent something just like it,” said Col. J. R. Pruden, assistant chief of staff for the I Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton.

Pruden presides over the training of expeditionary units, usually numbering between 2,100 and 2,400 Marines and Navy corpsmen. Three such units are based at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and three at Camp Pendleton, plus the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit from Okinawa.

The 31st is undergoing a 26-week training cycle that will take it from the mountains to the sea, from isolated areas to urban areas. In the seven years since expeditionary units were created, training has often been conducted under the noses of unsuspecting civilians.

Camp Pendleton has practiced a noncombatant evacuation from San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium. Marine helicopters on mock missions have swooped among the high-rises of San Francisco’s financial district.

This particular night, Pruden is overseeing the hostage release raid on a lonely wharf area in Los Angeles County. Marines, who notify local authorities of such activities, asked that the site’s exact location not be disclosed.

It is blighted, dirty and depressing, but to Pruden, this is a thing of military beauty, a place that could pass for any coastal venue of a Third World nation, a place the young trainees don’t know, a place that will make the young Marines just scared enough to learn and remember.

“Look at that bridge over there, those cranes over there,” Pruden said with enthusiasm. “The guys don’t have that at Camp Pendleton.”

Expeditionary warfare--which until now has never been a Navy priority--is the way Marines seek to keep jobs as shrinking defense budgets force generals and admirals to define vital roles for the different military services.

The Corps’ top brass believes that being a fast, sea-based strike force makes the Marines indispensable to the nation’s defense.

“We are the prototype,” said Brig. Gen. Tom Wilkerson, director of plans for the Marine Corps.

How much funding and manpower the Marines receive to fulfill their mission will be debated by the Department of Defense. The Corps is under pressure to downsize from 196,000 to 159,000 Marines.

As the different services advocate their programs and vie for resources, “let’s face it, we know there’s a budgetary brawl on the way,” Wilkerson said.

Such considerations were far from the minds of the Marines on the wharf. They moved silently, their hearts pounding, their colonel watching on and real ammunition in their magazines.

After the raiding party blew down the doors, Marines hustled into the building and clambered up the creaky stairs. It was black inside, so they cleared the rooms with flashlights and fired rifles at lifelike cutouts of terrorists.

The cutouts were backed with heavy metal so rounds wouldn’t penetrate and stray into a populated area.

When the raid was over, the pretend hostages were released and Col. Humble assessed his men’s performance. He was pleased, but wondered whether they had moved too slowly. But when he examined their marksmanship, he beamed.

Fingering the bullet holes in the terrorist targets, he nodded approvingly and noted “double taps.” That’s when a Marine fires two quick shots through the heart and a third--for insurance--to the head.

But outside, a “wounded” Marine was placed on the ground for corpsmen to stabilize for evacuation. It was a serious chest wound, and the fresh-faced Marine was wailing in mock agony, clutching at a comrade. The trooper “died”; if for nothing else, he should be posthumously decorated for his acting ability.

Huge helicopters were landing loudly nearby to evacuate the raiding party and the freed hostages. Following the exercise, the participants agreed it had been no kid game.

Lance Cpl. Caron Ray said fright hit him when he stormed through the door. “You go from being quiet to straight force, at all costs,” he said.

Corpsman Jason Campbell was shaken by the Marine “casualty.”

“The Marine who died, could I have done something different to save him? Was there a mistake?” he wondered.