Manmade pond in Kuwait helps test boats

CAMP PELELIEU, Kuwait — It could be a mirage: a dozen green and tan Marine boats, V-shaped hulls resting on trailer beds in the middle of the desert.

Another rests beside a pond created out of a hole in the ground and lined with sandbags and plastic sheeting. Behind the boat is, well, nothing.

The barren Kuwaiti desert stretches as far as the eye can see, and the manmade, 20,000-gallon puddle is the only water around.

Boats are probably the last thing anyone would expect to need in the desert, but Marines from the 8th Engineer Support Battalion plan to use them farther north, in the marshes and rivers of southern Iraq.

Any American push toward the strategic city of Basra would force troops to cross through the fertile and boggy area bounded by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

“They look kind of strange sitting here now, but if we are called upon to go into that area, they’ll get good use,” Lt. Col. Rick Nelson, commander of the 8th Engineers, said about the boats.

Nelson’s is one of four Marine engineer battalions training at camps in northern Kuwait. One of their critical missions will likely be helping American ground forces across water obstacles; to that end, the battalions have deployed with both dry-span and floating bridges.

The floating bridge segments, which when folded up resemble giant green camouflage toasters, sit next to the boats in the desert. Together they make for an incongruous equipment depot.

But when placed in the water, the floating bridge segments can serve as both ferries and as a firm span for ground forces. While engineers float and connect segments of the bridge, the other segments are used to move troops and supplies across the river.

The boats, meanwhile, would be used as tugs, pushing and pulling the bridge segments into place.

“It gives you a capability to move large numbers of troops and equipment very quickly,” Nelson said.

And that is no mirage.