Marines run desert decon drills

CAMP TARAWA, Kuwait — As the echo of live-fire exercises rumbles across the desert, mobile Marine Corps decontamination units are practicing for a job none of them hopes to do.

Just outside a Marine Corps command base in the northern Kuwaiti desert, Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons decon teams from Camp Pendleton, Calif., drill almost daily, rushing to sanitize equipment and troops hit with simulated chemical attacks.

“Our senses are heightened. Everyone knows that the threat is more real than they’ve ever faced before,” said Gunnery Sgt. Brad Craven, a decon expert from the 1st Force Service Support Group.

“Part of this is to get the fear out of the equation. Most of the younger guys are more afraid of the idea of chemical weapons than they are of actually being hit with them. That’s why we practice.”

Last week, units from Command Support Service Battalions 10 and 12, both based in Camp Pendleton, ran vehicles through the “thorough decon station,” which looked much like an elongated, impromptu carwash in the desert.

Marines, in gas masks and chemical weapons suits and perched on elevated metal walkways, used high-pressure hoses on a row of vehicles driving slowly along a gravel road carved into the sand.

At each cleaning station, a Marine went over a long set of procedures attached to a clipboard before instructing the drivers where to move their vehicles.

“This whole set-up is designed to be highly mobile and can be staged forward wherever units might come into contact with a chemical agent,” said Staff Sgt. Darren Dukes, the NBC officer for the 1st FSSG.

“We can set this up day or night. If we were doing it for real, the whole process would take about an hour per vehicle,” he said.

Once a vehicle is determined to be free of contaminants, it is either sent to the rear or rerouted back with its unit.

Similarly, if any U.S. soldiers are hit with chemical weapons, they are decontaminated by special units, switched into a new protective suit and returned to their unit.

Chemical weapons are a major concern for the more than 100,000 U.S. troops building up in the Gulf for a showdown with Iraq over weapons of mass destruction.

Soldiers and Marines are constantly roused by calls of “Gas! Gas! Gas!,” signaling they should don masks and protective suits. As the desert weather heats up, the charcoal-lined, airtight outfits become more and more uncomfortable to wear.

“In the States, we do something like this at least once every three months,” said Sgt. Ricardo Mar-quez, a 23-year-old NBC team member from Long Beach, Calif.

“But here, it’s continuous. We’re all prepping for the big day,” he said, sitting in the driver’s seat of a Humvee and dusting off its interior with a special decontamination glove. The process produced a furious cloud of silver, charcoal-like dust.

Later, as he stripped off the protective suit, he let out a huge sigh of relief.

“Feels like someone just turned on the air conditioning,” he said.