Being prepared essential to surviving
in harsh environment
Carlos Bongioanni / Stars and Stripes
Pfc. Sabree Hardy checks communications equipment on a hill looking over his camp. |
TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. — While the battle rages, the pace is
frantic inside the command operations center. Radio operators take feeds from all fronts.
Garbled voices crackle over static-filled lines. Officials call out information to the
commander on every aspect of the battlefield. Troops mark new information on the battle
maps. Orders flow out.
The communications network for this Combined Arms Exericse is vast
and incorporates many different media to transmit information.
“There are many redundancies,” said Capt. Gregory Rhoden,
communications officer for the Marine Air Ground Task Force, so if one system goes down,
the commander can exercise his command and control through other avenues.
As much as the war centers around the battlefield, the commander also
must keep combat support services flowing from the rear.
Those services provide the technical expertise to fix tanks, vehicles
and artillery that break down, Jackson said.
Medical personnel care for the wounded. Motor transport personnel
move troops and supplies.
“The key to our survivability, logistically, in this austere
environment, is getting fuel, ammunition, food, water where they’re needed,”
Jackson said.
The combat training grounds lies just north and east of the city of
Twentynine Palms and encompasses 932 square miles of the southern Mojave Desert. World War
II commanders trained their troops here for battles in North Africa and in Europe, Jackson
noted. Then, the training area extended to the Colorado River.
“This is now just a very small slice of what used to be a very
large training area.” But it serves its purpose, he said.
Because the terrain and environmental conditions resemble conditions
in Afghanistan, Marines who overcome the obstacles here will enhance their ability if they
deploy there, Jackson added.
Apart from the dangers inherent in live-fire training, just being in
the desert can be treacherous. In the summer, temperatures soar above 110 degrees. Without
a sufficient water supply troops would die.
Also predators lurk.
One captain, who asked not to be identified, confessed he abhors all
the desert critters.
“I don’t mind hiking 20 … 30 miles, but sleeping out
here with all the creepy crawly things running around really bugs me.”
Other Marines don’t mind so much.
Pfc. Jason Cortez said he awoke one morning and found a tarantula as
big as his hand crawling next to him. He and his foxhole mate, Lance Cpl. Edwin Rios,
“evicted” the fussy varmint by shooing it out of their space.
They didn’t kill the spider, because “he’s a living
creature, too,” said Cortez. “If you leave them alone, they’ll leave you
alone.”
One Marine said he encountered three rattlesnakes coiled on rocks as
he went to chow.
Getting in and out of the desert poses threats, too. It’s easy
to get lost, even with good maps and tracking devices, such as the satellite global
positioning system.
And it’s tough driving around at night with no lights on, as
Lance Cpl. Moran discovered.
“This is a really dangerous place to navigate at night,”
Moran said earlier in the day, as he crossed a narrow strip of road that ran along a
cliff.
Sure enough that night, a large vehicle rolled over the cliff he
pointed to.
Marine Corps public affairs officials did not immediately know if the
accident resulted in death or injuries, but there were numerous vehicles and personnel
inspecting the crash site the next morning.
As the CAX exercise wrapped up Sunday, participants said it took on
added significance.
“It certainly never really hit home before,” said Lance
Cpl. Daniel Ursini, a crewmember of an amphibious assault vehicle that fires rockets armed
with high-explosive C-4 charges to clear mine fields.
“They always told us to be prepared, because in a combat
scenario, you’ll have to be doing this or that,” Ursini said. “You kind of
blow it off a little bit. But now that this has happened, we’re more focused and have
a better idea of what it takes to be prepared.”
Ursini and his unit had deployed to the desert just before the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks. His section leader, Sgt. Donald Tyler, said the first thing he
thought when he learned of the attacks was, “when are we going?”
“I went down and briefed the platoon and said this is what just
happened and be prepared to do something. I hope you brought all your gear, because you
may leave straight from here. Keep your mind in the game and take advantage of all the
training you can get out here because you could be putting it into use very quickly.”
– Carlos Bongioanni
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