Marines stage training exercise

| Sunday, April 28, 2002 10:00 PM PDT ∞

Hayne Palmour/Staff Photographer
Marine Staff Sgt. Chad Gard, left, and Lance Cpl. Stephen Bent stand in front of a Humvee where a small sign attached to the inside of the front windshield warns Marines to be on the look out for the desert tortoise, which is an endangered species in California. Marine Cpl. Paul Menor works on setting up his tent at the command post area during the Desert "Scimitar" training exercises in Palo Verde, located in north east Imperial County, on Sunday.

Gidget Fuentes
Staff Writer

PALO VERDE ---- Two thousand Marines in combat helmets and flak vests assembled at verdant farm fields and desert towns Sunday, halfway through a training exercise testing how well they communicate and move combat forces across vast, desolate areas.

The Marines will bridge the Colorado River today in a major effort to get 2,000 troops and 600 military vehicles across a 450-foot span of the river and to the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona this week.

In all, units with the 1st Marine Division, based at the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, will cover 500 miles during the 10-day training exercise dubbed "Desert Scimitar" that began April 22. In the exercise scenario, the 20,000-member division is part of a U.S. force ordered to help push an invading force from a U.S. ally in the Middle East. No "real" infantry units or enemy forces are participating in the exercise, but they are factored in the computer simulations.

Units assembled at the Marines' desert training base at Twentynine Palms in San Bernardino County before fanning across paved and dirt roads in eastern Riverside County. They reached this sliver of Imperial County's northeast corner 20 miles south of Blythe on Friday.

While the Marines are moving across lands once used for desert training by Army troops during World War II, today's war games require more bureaucratic red tape to get various state and federal permits. The Marines are operating with far more restrictions than Army Gen. George S. Patton's forces had to answer to five decades ago, before environmental laws took hold.

Now they must abide by environmental laws that prevent contamination of water and soils, so drivers must place small mats under their vehicles to catch any leaking oil and fluids. Before they move any vehicle, they must first check underneath it, just in case a desert tortoise ---- listed as an endangered species in California ---- found refuge in the cool shade of the vehicle. Every military truck, Humvee and light-armored vehicle has a small sticker affixed near the driver's seat as a reminder.

As of Sunday, Marines came across only two desert tortoises, said Rhys Evans, an ecologist with the Marine Corps Air-Ground Task Force Training Center at Twentynine Palms.

The tortoises, one full size and one hatchling, were found during site surveys ahead of the larger movement of vehicles and personnel, said Evans, who is certified by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to handle and move the tortoises.

"Neither of them were in the way," he said.

Marines helping plan and complete the training exercise have had to keep an eye out for any historic or archaeological sites, as well.

Barb Giacomini, an archaeologist at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, said historic rock art exists along the Colorado River banks, long a home to farming communities. However, the likelihood that Marines would uncover historic artifacts is remote, since many farmers have already combed through their fields, Giacomini said.

In fact, the Marines sought out disturbed lands like landfills and farm fields to use as assembly areas and camps, working with local officials and residents to quell concerns and explain their short-term presence.

On Sunday, the division's command post was set up for 420 Marines and Navy personnel on a 20-acre plot, courtesy of the Ulmer farming family.

"We didn't have anything growing on it," said Jim Rodkey, a former Marine who works for Ulmer Farms, which owns 2,000 acres. "This is strictly a donation."

Rodkey, who also is the city of Blythe's public works director, said the Marines used family land last year and "left it cleaner than when they found it."

As they leapfrogged from the different assembly areas, the division units muscled through the breaking down and rebuilding of camps, which Marines said provide good training for "shoot and move" operations like in the exercise.

Normally, the division sets up a command post for five or six days before moving it as combat forces make headway on the battlefield. During the exercise, the camp of camouflage nets and drab tents is moved every two or three days.

"This is more than we have ever moved before," said Master Sgt. Jeff Schwilk of Oceanside, the division intelligence chief. "It's good training, because we're getting better at it."

In its first week, division leaders already are testing how well they respond to unexpected glitches, as well as to the combat missions they receive from the Camp Pendleton-based Tactical Exercise Control Group controlling the progress of the war games.

"You learn more when you lose than when you win," noted Marine Col. James R. Howcroft, the division's intelligence officer.

The desert mountains have also posed a real challenge to the division's ability to communicate with units spread across the rough battlefield terrain. Marines said the combination of high mountains and hills doesn't allow for the easy travel of high-frequency radio waves that are the basic means of battlefield communication for most of the combat forces.

So they have had teams setting up re-transmission sites on high ground to push information, from digital photographs and maps to battlefield orders, between units and the higher division command.

"It makes a big difference when you're fighting" across large areas, Howcroft said.

The division's communications teams also had to find alternate places in their search for high ground that had no environmental restrictions.

"We were limited to where we could go," said Marine Gunnery Sgt. Shawn Lane, a communications chief and Gulf War veteran. "It made our job a little bit more difficult."

The information gathered and sent to the division is used for intelligence briefings and analysis, so any interruptions in collecting that information and sharing it with combat forces become major problems.

High-level commanders get the big picture of what's happening on the battlefield in a combat operations center, a large tent with high-speed computers, a plasma screen TV monitor and reinforced radios.

"It allows us to sit back and see what's going on in the battle space," said Marine Col. Mark Callihan, the division's operations officer.

For the exercise, the division is using a Web-based secured Internet to connect its regiments and subordinate units. It also is a key link for the division's smaller command post, which is placed ahead of it with the main body of combat forces as they move across the desert.

On the command post's computer screens, maps show enemy forces in red and the Marines and other U.S. or allied forces in blue moving across the terrain.

"It's very close to real for us," said Marine Master Gunnery Sgt. Bennett Woods, operations chief in the combat operations center. "Five years ago, we would't have a digital map up there. We'd be doing it at the maps." Although large numbers of combat forces aren't involved for real, the Marines say the exercise is important to test how well the division can manage its forces and fight the enemy.

"What you see isn't close to what we've got," Callihan said.

However, it's close to real for many of the Marines who must react to quick-changing events and respond appropriately.

"We are the (general's) weapon," said Master Sgt. Bradley Lee, who as fire support chief helps coordinate and order strikes on enemy targets using artillery, aircraft or heavy weapons. "If he sees a target, it's our job to make sure they get destroyed."

Contact staff writer Gidget Fuentes at (760) 901-4072 or gfuentes@nctimes.com.

4/29/02