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thedrifter
03-05-06, 06:59 AM
Marines train among friends
Our region is not the Middle East, but for a few weeks, it will be for 2,200 Marines training for deployment.
BY STEPHANIE HEINATZ
247-7821
March 5, 2006

NEWPORT NEWS -- Behind a small stop sign and thin lamppost near the entrance to the Lee Hall water-treatment plant, two Marines lay motionless on the ground, their eyes staring through the lenses of their M-16s.

Several yards away, a half-dozen more Marines detained a man trying to come on the compound. Two searched him. Two examined his car. And two stood off to the side, their weapons ready to fire, should the man do anything suspicious.

He didn't.

But as soon as he was waved through the checkpoint, a senior enlisted Marine hollered to one of them, "You better watch where you stand. God forbid you have to shoot. You didn't this time. But from your angle of fire, you would have hit your buddy."

That was just the type of lesson that troops with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit were meant to learn at their urban-warfare training Saturday morning.

Vehicle checkpoints are just one of the many missions that the 2,200 Camp Lejeune, N.C.-based Marines could be assigned to when they deploy this summer, possibly to the Middle East. The Marines traditionally conduct much of their training at Camp Lejeune and at sea; they are the land component of the Norfolk-based Iwo Jima Strike Group. But they arrived in Hampton Roads last week for another part of their training that will run through March 12.

"We couldn't adequately prepare to operate in an unfamiliar environment without moving beyond our comfort zone," said Col. R.J. Johnson, the unit's commanding officer, in a letter to the community last month.

Some of the Marines' training exercises are taking place on military bases.

At Naval Station Norfolk, for example, Marines patrol mock-Iraqi villages complete with role players - hired actors who speak Arabic to the troops.

Some training will be done in public spaces. On Saturday night, the Marines began conducting raids in local neighborhoods. Capt. David Nevers said he couldn't release the dates and times of the raids because doing so, he said, could affect the quality of the training.

However, residents in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Franklin, and Isle of Wight and Mathews counties are most likely to see the uniformed men moving around.

At the water-treatment plant, the troops are testing and training their abilities to come onto an Iraqi compound, such as a power plant, and guard it from insurgents trying to take it down.

Small groups of Marines constantly walk the property, protecting the water supply from possible contamination. Sensors monitor activity along the plant's border.

"And we also set up a defense around the spillway, which is the big gate that holds the plant's water back," said 1st Lt. Rory O'Connor, a platoon commander.

"We believe insurgents may want to attack that spillway because releasing the water could harm a lot of people."

Just down from the spillway - a damlike structure - sits a small neighborhood.

It's a similar mission, O'Connor said, that he was assigned to during his first trip to Iraq last year.

"We had to protect a dam that was a big target," O'Connor said.

"It wasn't only a major landmark, but it also provided electricity to a fifth of the country."

There weren't any significant attacks then, he said. But because this deployment is a first for nearly half the Marines in the unit, officers like O'Connor are sharing their experiences, techniques that work well and how insurgents are likely to attack.

This training is as real as it gets, but sharing lessons learned helps, Nevers said.

That's because, he said, though "we try to keep the intensity up so that they know what it's like when they deploy, you can only simulate so far."

Ellie