thedrifter
10-04-06, 08:25 AM
Actors help train Marines
Training helps Marines prepare for duty, combat
BY PETER BACQUE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
BLACKSTONE Reham Majeed pushed the sodas on the young Marines standing in the road.
"No money! No money!" she said, holding the cold cans out to the young men.
Her husband drove up in a beat-up car and joined in the shouting, gesturing, arguing little crowd, a babble of Arabic flowing around the stone-faced Marines.
The Americans had already lost one Marine and seen two others wounded by a roadside bomb yesterday. They were edgy and skeptical.
Still, "Let's make peace," offered 2nd Lt. Mark Holyfield. Then he turned to spit juice from his chew on the ground.
The shouting started again.
Holyfield and his Marines were getting a lesson in life in the explosive Middle East from natives of the region, training packaged with Hollywood professionalism by a California movie studio.
"It was a big cultural learning experience," the 28-year-old officer from Nashville, Tenn., said. "I was spitting tobacco juice on the deck. Come to find out . . . it's insulting."
About 2,200 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., have been training in a round-the-clock exercise at Fort Pickett this week to operate in the kinds of places they might encounter overseas.
The Marines also sortied from their razor-wired Forward Operating Base Warlord on Fort Pickett into Blackstone, Petersburg and Hopewell for practice operating in urban terrain.
Tomorrow, the unit will wrap up the exercise, part of its training before deploying with the Navy's Norfolk-based Bataan Strike Group early next year.
Besides conducting short-notice op- erations such as attacks on terrorist targets, the Marines have been thrust into vexing puzzles they may face in the Middle East during the training exercise.
The leathernecks negotiated with aggrieved farmers from the "Aziz family," dealt with pushy roadside vendors like Majeed, confronted locals who may present threats and reacted to mortar attacks injuring civilians outside their camp.
The more than two dozen role players -- some professional actors, some Middle Easterners, and some both come from Strategic Operations Inc., part of San Diego's Stu Segall Productions.
The firm creates detailed scenarios for military training using actors and state-of-the-art effects from the cinema industry.
"It's kind of run like a movie set without the cameras," said role player Michelle Rae, a 36-year-old stunt woman and former police officer.
Strategic Operations hires amputees -- though none lost limbs in combat to give scenarios built around casualties a gruesome true-to-life effect.
"You can lose sight of the fact that it's training," said actor Juan Urista, a former Marine working with Strategic Operations, "and for a moment, you're there."
The chance of American warfighters becoming casualties within their first five experiences of combat is about 50 percent, said retired leatherneck Russ Cannon. Cannon is the training company's director of operations.
But after those first contacts with the enemy, the chance of being killed or wounded drops to 10 percent to 12 percent, said Cannon, who has "Death Is Certain -- Life Is Not" tattooed on his left arm.
"This will shorten the reaction time there, because they've seen it here," he said. "We call it stress inoculation."
Capt. Shawn Rickrode, one of the exercise's controllers and a veteran of the current war, agreed: "The dollars we spent to have [Strategic Operations] come out here is money well spent."
For the company's Arab employees, the work has a special value.
"We do this for our country and for our freedom," said Iraqi-born role player Zaidan Aqrawi, 32, of San Diego. "We want a country like this country."
Majeed, a 47-year-old Iraqi woman who now lives in San Diego, feels her way through English to put her thoughts in words.
"I help Marines, I help my people in Iraq," she said. "And I like the job."
She tries to teach the Marines about Iraqi culture, how to interact with women and work with children.
But "the Iraqi people need something like Marines' tough," the Shiite woman said. "The bad people need [someone to be] that tough with them."
Saddam Hussein killed her father, she said, and terrorists in Iraq killed her brother a year ago.
Standing by the rough gravel road in a grassy field, she started to cry. She wiped the tears from her face.
"Oct. 27, I make test for American citizenship," Majeed said. "This my country, USA. They save me."
"My life is good in America."
Contact staff writer Peter Bacqué at pbacque@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6813.
Ellie
Training helps Marines prepare for duty, combat
BY PETER BACQUE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
BLACKSTONE Reham Majeed pushed the sodas on the young Marines standing in the road.
"No money! No money!" she said, holding the cold cans out to the young men.
Her husband drove up in a beat-up car and joined in the shouting, gesturing, arguing little crowd, a babble of Arabic flowing around the stone-faced Marines.
The Americans had already lost one Marine and seen two others wounded by a roadside bomb yesterday. They were edgy and skeptical.
Still, "Let's make peace," offered 2nd Lt. Mark Holyfield. Then he turned to spit juice from his chew on the ground.
The shouting started again.
Holyfield and his Marines were getting a lesson in life in the explosive Middle East from natives of the region, training packaged with Hollywood professionalism by a California movie studio.
"It was a big cultural learning experience," the 28-year-old officer from Nashville, Tenn., said. "I was spitting tobacco juice on the deck. Come to find out . . . it's insulting."
About 2,200 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., have been training in a round-the-clock exercise at Fort Pickett this week to operate in the kinds of places they might encounter overseas.
The Marines also sortied from their razor-wired Forward Operating Base Warlord on Fort Pickett into Blackstone, Petersburg and Hopewell for practice operating in urban terrain.
Tomorrow, the unit will wrap up the exercise, part of its training before deploying with the Navy's Norfolk-based Bataan Strike Group early next year.
Besides conducting short-notice op- erations such as attacks on terrorist targets, the Marines have been thrust into vexing puzzles they may face in the Middle East during the training exercise.
The leathernecks negotiated with aggrieved farmers from the "Aziz family," dealt with pushy roadside vendors like Majeed, confronted locals who may present threats and reacted to mortar attacks injuring civilians outside their camp.
The more than two dozen role players -- some professional actors, some Middle Easterners, and some both come from Strategic Operations Inc., part of San Diego's Stu Segall Productions.
The firm creates detailed scenarios for military training using actors and state-of-the-art effects from the cinema industry.
"It's kind of run like a movie set without the cameras," said role player Michelle Rae, a 36-year-old stunt woman and former police officer.
Strategic Operations hires amputees -- though none lost limbs in combat to give scenarios built around casualties a gruesome true-to-life effect.
"You can lose sight of the fact that it's training," said actor Juan Urista, a former Marine working with Strategic Operations, "and for a moment, you're there."
The chance of American warfighters becoming casualties within their first five experiences of combat is about 50 percent, said retired leatherneck Russ Cannon. Cannon is the training company's director of operations.
But after those first contacts with the enemy, the chance of being killed or wounded drops to 10 percent to 12 percent, said Cannon, who has "Death Is Certain -- Life Is Not" tattooed on his left arm.
"This will shorten the reaction time there, because they've seen it here," he said. "We call it stress inoculation."
Capt. Shawn Rickrode, one of the exercise's controllers and a veteran of the current war, agreed: "The dollars we spent to have [Strategic Operations] come out here is money well spent."
For the company's Arab employees, the work has a special value.
"We do this for our country and for our freedom," said Iraqi-born role player Zaidan Aqrawi, 32, of San Diego. "We want a country like this country."
Majeed, a 47-year-old Iraqi woman who now lives in San Diego, feels her way through English to put her thoughts in words.
"I help Marines, I help my people in Iraq," she said. "And I like the job."
She tries to teach the Marines about Iraqi culture, how to interact with women and work with children.
But "the Iraqi people need something like Marines' tough," the Shiite woman said. "The bad people need [someone to be] that tough with them."
Saddam Hussein killed her father, she said, and terrorists in Iraq killed her brother a year ago.
Standing by the rough gravel road in a grassy field, she started to cry. She wiped the tears from her face.
"Oct. 27, I make test for American citizenship," Majeed said. "This my country, USA. They save me."
"My life is good in America."
Contact staff writer Peter Bacqué at pbacque@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6813.
Ellie