‘It’s Not a Game’ : Revised Training Takes Marines Into Real-Life Locales

This is a spooky place to glimpse the future of the Marine Corps, and if the situation had been real, it would have been a desolate place to die.

In this forsaken wharf area, amid the ghostly shapes of battered canneries, the young men of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit learned 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, sneaked onto the Los Angeles County coastline from the sea on a recent night. They crept up and surrounded a dark and abandoned cannery where mock terrorists were holding hostages.

Illusions of make-believe ended with an ear-splitting blast as the Marines blew 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 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 equipping themselves to fight a superpower’s ships at sea, the Navy and Marines will now team more closely 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.

Among such a unit’s jack-of-all-trades skills are counterintelligence, airfield seizures, the freeing of hostages and rescue of 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 less to do with warfare than with solving regional conflicts. 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 the 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 Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton.

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

The 31st is undergoing a 26-week training cycle that will take it from the mountains to the sea, from isolated areas to cities. 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.

On a recent night, Pruden was overseeing the hostage release raid on a wharf area along the Los Angeles coastline. The Marines, who notify local authorities of such activities, asked that the site’s location not be disclosed.

It is blighted, dirty and depressing, but to Pruden, the location is a thing of military beauty: a place that could pass for any coastal venue of a Third World nation, a place the trainees do not 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. “The guys don’t have that at Camp Pendleton.”

The concept of expeditionary warfare--which until now has never been a Navy priority--is one way the Marines seek to keep their jobs as shrinking defense budgets force generals and admirals to define roles for the various 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 staffing the Marines receive to fulfill their mission will be debated by the Defense Department. The corps is under pressure to reduce personnel from 196,000 to 159,000.

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

Such considerations were far from the minds of the Marines on the wharf. They moved silently, their hearts pounding, their colonel watching, 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 dark inside, so they lit the rooms with flashlights and fired rifles at lifelike cutouts of terrorists.

The cutouts were backed with heavy metal so rounds would not penetrate and stray into a populated area.

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

Fingering the bullet holes in the terrorist targets, he nodded approvingly and noted “double taps.” That is 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,” and if for nothing else, he should be decorated for his acting ability.

Huge helicopters landed nearby to evacuate the raiding party and freed hostages. After the exercise, the participants agreed that it had been no kids’ 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, and even though it was only an act, Campbell was troubled.

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