thedrifter
09-08-03, 09:50 AM
Beyond the beach
U.S. Marines are shaping their training to prepare for a new type of military role.
By RUTH FINCH
Date published: 8/31/2003
The Marines who secured an airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan, during the early days of the war on terror might have had an idea their mission would someday make the history books.
But they probably didn't know that just two years later their work in Afghanistan would completely change the way Marines think about their wartime role.
Kandahar is 500 miles from the Arabian Sea. It was the first time in history Marines had ever been so far away from their ships.
But military officials don't think it will be the last.
In Iraq, the Marines have again gone several hundred miles inland from the Persian Gulf to conquer the capital city of Baghdad.
"We're not the Marines of World War II," said Lt. Col. Asad A. Khan, commander of a Battalion Landing Team scheduled to deploy next year. "Now we are establishing sustained combat power inland."
Khan's team is part of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. It is set to deploy to the Mediterranean Sea for a routine assignment next February.
To prepare for the deployment, the unit recently spent a month training at Fort A.P. Hill. In its final week at the Caroline County base, the unit invited a reporter and photographer from The Free Lance-Star to spend two days living at its camp and observing its work.
The reporter and photographer served as both a training tool to help acclimate the troops to the reality of the media's presence on a 21st-century battlefield and as correspondents to shed light on the training Marines undergo to prepare for a military conflict.
Miles from ship
The trip to A.P. Hill kicked off a six-month period of intensive training that is traditional before a deployment.
The Marines spent the month practicing basic skills such as becoming proficient with their rifles, setting up and securing their camp, and taking basic safety precautions.
They also got a chance to experience some of the realities of life on deployment. They slept in crowded two-person tents and awoke at 5 a.m. each day to a Marine shouting "Reveille! Reveille!" Before breakfast--usually eggs scrambled with sausage, grits, waffles, canned fruit cocktail, dry cereal, juice and coffee--the Marines brushed their teeth and washed their faces in the woods with water from their canteens. They tried their best to get a clean-shaven military look without the aid of hot water or mirrors.
Lt. Col. Ben Braden, commander of the MEU's Service Support Group, said he wanted his troops to practice operating in their own sweat and grime, as they would during wartime, so he refused to allow them to shower until halfway through the training month.
Now the unit is back at Camp Lejeune, where it will continue pre-deployment training with creature comforts such as air conditioning and indoor plumbing. But Khan said getting to unfamiliar territory such as A.P. Hill was important since leaders are stressing the possibility that the unit may have to once again push hundreds of miles inland, leaving behind the familiarity of their ships--often their most important source of support.
Khan said the trip gave the troops confidence that they could be self-sufficient during deployment.
"If you look at Camp Lejeune as our home base, we've been operating 300 miles from ship for more than a month with very little support from Camp Lejeune and we're doing fine," Khan said.
Getting it right
Typically, MEUs such as the 22nd are deployed for six months every two years. Sometimes they seize ports and airfields or conduct tank raids. Other times, their mission involves humanitarian aid or peacekeeping efforts.
While at Fort A.P. Hill, the 22nd MEU practiced all three.
Drills such as a helicopter rescue of a downed pilot, an amphibious assault-vehicle raid and an explosion to safely clear a path through a minefield prepared Marines for some of the situations they might encounter if they are called to war.
And to practice humanitarian aid, the MEU's top commander, Col. Frank McKenzie, agreed to have some dental work done at the field clinic that will be traveling with the MEU. The work was supposed to be done during his two-day visit with the troops at A.P. Hill. But he backed out at the last minute, saying he'd prefer his regular dentist back at Camp Lejeune.
The MEU's dentist, Navy Lt. Amy Plant, and her team had no trouble finding another willing volunteer to sit for a routine cleaning and exam.
The medical staff also practiced their peacekeeping skills during a mass-casualty drill. A team of medical corpsman arrived at A.P. Hill's Longstreet Camp to find more than a dozen of their fellow Marines lying in a field, moaning and wailing. For the drill, they were acting as though their vehicle had overturned, injuring and stranding them among hostile people.
Immediately the rescuers went to work, finding a suitable landing pad for a rescue helicopter, removing weapons from the injured and checking for booby traps. Then they assessed the injuries and expertly lifted the wounded onto stretchers to wait for the chopper.
It looked as though the officers in charge were in complete control. They breathlessly barked orders to one another on their radios and monitored their corpsmen's speed and safety while helping calm the panicked and unruly wounded.
But Braden, in charge of assessing their performance, was not happy. Local traffic wasn't adequately cut off from the accident scene, he said. The security forces were wasting time checking on the condition of the wounded when they should have been making the scene safe for the medical corpsmen. And some of the corpsmen began treating injuries before the security team had given them the all-clear.
Braden gave his team a lecture and then asked them to do it all over again.
"That's what we have to do," Braden said. "Train them till we get it right."
Each training exercise was planned days in advance, even though on a real-life battlefield the Marines would have to respond to most situations with little or no warning.
McKenzie said the scenarios were set up that way to give the Marines a chance to exercise specific skills they will need most.
"It seems like it's free play, but we really carefully script it to match the objective of training," he said. "As we get more and more into training, there will be a lot less scripting. The tasks will get harder and harder until we deploy next year."
Forward operating base
In between the scripted drills, the 22nd MEU spent time experimenting with all sorts of adjustments they will have to make as they push farther and farther from their ship.
For example, during their last week of training the Marines practiced pressing inland by tearing down the camp where they had lived all month and reassembling it at another location.
Capt. Michael Johnson, who was in charge of the move, said it took 80 Marines about two hours to set up the core of the new camp, complete with self-generated electricity, living quarters, a field kitchen, several communications antennas, an infirmary, a headquarters tent and camouflage netting over every vehicle or piece of equipment.
But other parts of the camp, including the tents where the Marines slept, made their way to their new home more slowly. In their spare time--usually early morning or the last hours of daylight after dinner--the Marines broke down tents and other equipment.
Barely speaking, they slowly and deliberately pulled, pushed, folded, stuffed, tied and untied until the entire camp was leveled and all the equipment ready to be loaded onto 5-ton trucks and taken to the forward operating base.
Those in noncombat support roles had to change the way they operated as well. The field hospital run by the MEU's Service Support Group had to bring along special trauma equipment and extra beds for the first time.
During previous deployments, trauma patients were flown directly to the ship rather than being treated in the field. But this might not be possible if the ship is far away, the unit's medical doctor, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Gary Martin, said.
Though the medical team didn't get a chance to practice using the extra beds or the trauma equipment, they did log plenty of hours treating Marines with minor ailments such as irritated eyes, pulled muscles and bug bites.
And had there been any sort of medical emergency, Martin said, his field office at Fort A.P. Hill would have been the perfect place for real-life practice because the nearest emergency room, at Mary Washington Hospital, is an hour away.
Fixing broken equipment also posed some challenges for mechanics and shop workers who are used to having everything they need available on ship.
When a 5-ton truck broke down during training, mechanics discovered that they hadn't brought the parts needed for a repair. They had to wait more than a day for the parts to arrive from Camp Lejeune.
The unit had brought enough trucks that having one out of service didn't seriously disrupt training, but the monthlong assignment away from Camp Lejeune did help mechanics learn which spare parts they need to have on hand at all times during deployment and which can be ordered from afar, said public information officer Capt. Eric Dent.
Building a team
As training gets more intensive the Marines may have 24-hour missions, but Marines said they considered their time at A.P. Hill to be the "crawl" stage of a "crawl, walk, run" operation. Marines were typically done with the day's exercises by the time the chow tent opened for dinner at 6 p.m.
continued.........
U.S. Marines are shaping their training to prepare for a new type of military role.
By RUTH FINCH
Date published: 8/31/2003
The Marines who secured an airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan, during the early days of the war on terror might have had an idea their mission would someday make the history books.
But they probably didn't know that just two years later their work in Afghanistan would completely change the way Marines think about their wartime role.
Kandahar is 500 miles from the Arabian Sea. It was the first time in history Marines had ever been so far away from their ships.
But military officials don't think it will be the last.
In Iraq, the Marines have again gone several hundred miles inland from the Persian Gulf to conquer the capital city of Baghdad.
"We're not the Marines of World War II," said Lt. Col. Asad A. Khan, commander of a Battalion Landing Team scheduled to deploy next year. "Now we are establishing sustained combat power inland."
Khan's team is part of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. It is set to deploy to the Mediterranean Sea for a routine assignment next February.
To prepare for the deployment, the unit recently spent a month training at Fort A.P. Hill. In its final week at the Caroline County base, the unit invited a reporter and photographer from The Free Lance-Star to spend two days living at its camp and observing its work.
The reporter and photographer served as both a training tool to help acclimate the troops to the reality of the media's presence on a 21st-century battlefield and as correspondents to shed light on the training Marines undergo to prepare for a military conflict.
Miles from ship
The trip to A.P. Hill kicked off a six-month period of intensive training that is traditional before a deployment.
The Marines spent the month practicing basic skills such as becoming proficient with their rifles, setting up and securing their camp, and taking basic safety precautions.
They also got a chance to experience some of the realities of life on deployment. They slept in crowded two-person tents and awoke at 5 a.m. each day to a Marine shouting "Reveille! Reveille!" Before breakfast--usually eggs scrambled with sausage, grits, waffles, canned fruit cocktail, dry cereal, juice and coffee--the Marines brushed their teeth and washed their faces in the woods with water from their canteens. They tried their best to get a clean-shaven military look without the aid of hot water or mirrors.
Lt. Col. Ben Braden, commander of the MEU's Service Support Group, said he wanted his troops to practice operating in their own sweat and grime, as they would during wartime, so he refused to allow them to shower until halfway through the training month.
Now the unit is back at Camp Lejeune, where it will continue pre-deployment training with creature comforts such as air conditioning and indoor plumbing. But Khan said getting to unfamiliar territory such as A.P. Hill was important since leaders are stressing the possibility that the unit may have to once again push hundreds of miles inland, leaving behind the familiarity of their ships--often their most important source of support.
Khan said the trip gave the troops confidence that they could be self-sufficient during deployment.
"If you look at Camp Lejeune as our home base, we've been operating 300 miles from ship for more than a month with very little support from Camp Lejeune and we're doing fine," Khan said.
Getting it right
Typically, MEUs such as the 22nd are deployed for six months every two years. Sometimes they seize ports and airfields or conduct tank raids. Other times, their mission involves humanitarian aid or peacekeeping efforts.
While at Fort A.P. Hill, the 22nd MEU practiced all three.
Drills such as a helicopter rescue of a downed pilot, an amphibious assault-vehicle raid and an explosion to safely clear a path through a minefield prepared Marines for some of the situations they might encounter if they are called to war.
And to practice humanitarian aid, the MEU's top commander, Col. Frank McKenzie, agreed to have some dental work done at the field clinic that will be traveling with the MEU. The work was supposed to be done during his two-day visit with the troops at A.P. Hill. But he backed out at the last minute, saying he'd prefer his regular dentist back at Camp Lejeune.
The MEU's dentist, Navy Lt. Amy Plant, and her team had no trouble finding another willing volunteer to sit for a routine cleaning and exam.
The medical staff also practiced their peacekeeping skills during a mass-casualty drill. A team of medical corpsman arrived at A.P. Hill's Longstreet Camp to find more than a dozen of their fellow Marines lying in a field, moaning and wailing. For the drill, they were acting as though their vehicle had overturned, injuring and stranding them among hostile people.
Immediately the rescuers went to work, finding a suitable landing pad for a rescue helicopter, removing weapons from the injured and checking for booby traps. Then they assessed the injuries and expertly lifted the wounded onto stretchers to wait for the chopper.
It looked as though the officers in charge were in complete control. They breathlessly barked orders to one another on their radios and monitored their corpsmen's speed and safety while helping calm the panicked and unruly wounded.
But Braden, in charge of assessing their performance, was not happy. Local traffic wasn't adequately cut off from the accident scene, he said. The security forces were wasting time checking on the condition of the wounded when they should have been making the scene safe for the medical corpsmen. And some of the corpsmen began treating injuries before the security team had given them the all-clear.
Braden gave his team a lecture and then asked them to do it all over again.
"That's what we have to do," Braden said. "Train them till we get it right."
Each training exercise was planned days in advance, even though on a real-life battlefield the Marines would have to respond to most situations with little or no warning.
McKenzie said the scenarios were set up that way to give the Marines a chance to exercise specific skills they will need most.
"It seems like it's free play, but we really carefully script it to match the objective of training," he said. "As we get more and more into training, there will be a lot less scripting. The tasks will get harder and harder until we deploy next year."
Forward operating base
In between the scripted drills, the 22nd MEU spent time experimenting with all sorts of adjustments they will have to make as they push farther and farther from their ship.
For example, during their last week of training the Marines practiced pressing inland by tearing down the camp where they had lived all month and reassembling it at another location.
Capt. Michael Johnson, who was in charge of the move, said it took 80 Marines about two hours to set up the core of the new camp, complete with self-generated electricity, living quarters, a field kitchen, several communications antennas, an infirmary, a headquarters tent and camouflage netting over every vehicle or piece of equipment.
But other parts of the camp, including the tents where the Marines slept, made their way to their new home more slowly. In their spare time--usually early morning or the last hours of daylight after dinner--the Marines broke down tents and other equipment.
Barely speaking, they slowly and deliberately pulled, pushed, folded, stuffed, tied and untied until the entire camp was leveled and all the equipment ready to be loaded onto 5-ton trucks and taken to the forward operating base.
Those in noncombat support roles had to change the way they operated as well. The field hospital run by the MEU's Service Support Group had to bring along special trauma equipment and extra beds for the first time.
During previous deployments, trauma patients were flown directly to the ship rather than being treated in the field. But this might not be possible if the ship is far away, the unit's medical doctor, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Gary Martin, said.
Though the medical team didn't get a chance to practice using the extra beds or the trauma equipment, they did log plenty of hours treating Marines with minor ailments such as irritated eyes, pulled muscles and bug bites.
And had there been any sort of medical emergency, Martin said, his field office at Fort A.P. Hill would have been the perfect place for real-life practice because the nearest emergency room, at Mary Washington Hospital, is an hour away.
Fixing broken equipment also posed some challenges for mechanics and shop workers who are used to having everything they need available on ship.
When a 5-ton truck broke down during training, mechanics discovered that they hadn't brought the parts needed for a repair. They had to wait more than a day for the parts to arrive from Camp Lejeune.
The unit had brought enough trucks that having one out of service didn't seriously disrupt training, but the monthlong assignment away from Camp Lejeune did help mechanics learn which spare parts they need to have on hand at all times during deployment and which can be ordered from afar, said public information officer Capt. Eric Dent.
Building a team
As training gets more intensive the Marines may have 24-hour missions, but Marines said they considered their time at A.P. Hill to be the "crawl" stage of a "crawl, walk, run" operation. Marines were typically done with the day's exercises by the time the chow tent opened for dinner at 6 p.m.
continued.........