Marine Corps News Room

http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_5104559

Andrew Silva, Staff Writer
San Bernardino County Sun
Article Launched:01/28/2007 12:00:00 AM PST

As the Marines split around the house, one was "killed" when he didn't notice an armed "insurgent" at a window, and a second died when he hesitated before kicking open the door.

Others rushing toward Klyn up the narrow stairs didn't see 40-year-old Manuel Blanco of Anaheim sitting just out of sight near the top of the steps with a plastic AK-47.

"Bang, bang, bang," he yelled as the first startled Marine got to the top of the stairs.

"Bang, bang, bang," as the second Marine tried to swing his M-16 rifle around.

"Bang, bang, bang," at a third who met the same fate.

Sgt. Michael Taylor, 23, wearing the orange vest of an instructor, pointed down at the Marines on the steps, shouting, "You lay down! You lay down! You lay down! That's what happens."

The heart-pounding, 20-minute scene played out at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Training Center last week makes up just one of numerous realistic scenarios the monthlong "Mojave Viper" training program uses to prepare Marines for the streets of Baghdad, al-Anbar province, and elsewhere in Iraq.

Such training could intensify in coming months as the military gears up to meet President Bush's call for an additional 21,500 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Since the conflict in Iraq began, its evolution from classic desert warfare to nation-building and anti-insurgency tactics meant that military training had to evolve, too.

Back at the training center, the scene played on.

Another Marine started up from the bottom of the steps, shouting, "Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!"

Taylor lit into him.

"Hey, Rambo! You're going to come up here shooting like that? Who could be up here? Marines," he said pointing to the three lying on the stairs, and then in the next room to Klyn, who still hadn't been rescued. "Use your head."

(The Marines don't use blank rounds because in such close quarters there would be a real chance of injury, not to mention hearing damage.)

Blanco, playing the insurgent at the top of the stairs, in real life trains law-enforcement officers on weapons and use of force.

He heard the Marines needed people to portray civilians or insurgents so he participates in a couple of exercises a month. Klyn also does the role-playing to help out.

Blanco finally got "killed," and when the Marines rushed into the room where Klyn lay, they found his intestines "poking out" and a "grisly wound" on his collar bone.

As the two knelt over him, Klyn squeezed a bulb hidden in his hand, sending a strong spurt of "blood" out of the "neck wound."

Taylor had explained earlier, "It freaks Marines out. You have to set all that aside to work on the individual."

In the room, 22-year-old Cpl. Paul Horn leaned in with a fierce critique of how the Marines were dressing the "wound."

"What did I tell you? If you wrap it around his neck, you're cutting off his breathing and you're not stopping the bleeding," he said.

When the medics finally arrived, Horn demanded that the first Marines paint a "photographic picture" of the "injuries" so the medics knew what they were facing.

A few minutes later, about 40 sweating Marines stood between the buildings as the instructors calmly went over what they had done well and what mistakes they needed to learn from.

Old-fashioned live-fire training, which continues to be a mainstay at the 932-square-mile base, was rolled into Mojave Viper the first two weeks of the program.

Urban warfare training was added in the newly created fictional towns of Khalidiyah and Wadi al Sahara in October 2005.

Using hundreds of large shipping containers, the Marines added windows, doors and interior walls to create a sprawling village, complete with a mosque, a market street, wrecked cars and street signs in Arabic.

There are several "lanes" through the city, each used for a different type of training.

Taylor on Thursday sported two nearly dime-sized bloody welts on his neck from Simunition, paint pellets perched on 9mm cartridges that are fired from modified M-16s.

Those are used for street battles with "insurgents" in another part of the "city."

Another lane has a wire running between two buildings used for a simulated rocket-propelled grenade shot, which includes an exploding pile of soft rubber hidden inside a tire leaning against the building.

The urban warfare training starts with steel rails laid out in the outline of various rooms on the dirt soccer field. There, the Marines learn the basics of working in teams to enter and clear rooms.

The level of complexity is consistently raised. The final exercise is 72 hours of free play throughout the "city" in which anything can happen.

Capt. Allen Lapinsky runs the "cordon-knock" drill, in which Marines must look for "insurgents" by asking "locals."

Roughly 100 Arabic-speaking Americans of Iraqi descent don traditional clothes to play roles throughout the training scenarios.

"In this exercise they expect nonkinetic interaction, talking to locals, establishing relationships," Lapinsky said.

"Kinetic" is jargon for lots of shooting.

As one drill began, Marines set up on the corners of nearby buildings to provide cover, while others with a translator knocked on a door.

Eventually, a man dressed in long robes answered, and a Marine calmly began asking questions.

"We're here to help you, to make sure your children can go to school and be safe," the Marine explained at one point.

The man spoke in Arabic, and after a long conversation through the translator, he agreed to allow the Marines to search his home and revealed he knew of a house where suspicious men were operating.

"We know they are not good guys," the man said through the translator.

The reaction of the "locals" depends on how the Marines treat them.

Capt. Chad Walton, a base public affairs officer, had watched a previous exercise in which the Marine in charge had started bullying the "Iraqi man."

The situation quickly deteriorated, with women in the house wailing and the entire family angry, refusing to cooperate, just like real life, he said.

By not getting the intelligence they needed, the Marines didn't learn there was a "sniper" in the next building, leaving them exposed to an ambush.

Lessons learned in Iraq are constantly incorporated in the training.

"It's definitely a work in progress," Walton said.

Back at the debriefing following the rescue mission, one instructor went over some of the mistakes that could be fatal in Iraq, such as not paying attention to windows.

He concluded simply: "I know each and every one of you want to come home."