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New barracks ‘just like home’

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Life for the infantrymen here is a routine of days spent in the field and a return to the barracks, to clean away the dirt and grime of training and to rest with a few days of liberty.

For the men of 1st Marine Regiment in Camp Horno, home is a nondescript barracks built when their parents were born. It’s not exactly home sweet home. But that’s about to change.

Officials at Camp Pendleton marked the grand opening May 13 of the newest addition to the landscape: a four-story, 170-room, bachelor enlisted quarters at Horno for up to 340 single junior Marines and noncommissioned officers.

The red-roofed building rises above the trees from a former football field and makes a notable presence at Horno. The $21.4 million barracks — built with energy and water efficiency in mind — was completed two months early and is the first of 29 new BEQs coming to the base in the next two years, in what’s called the “Best of Breed” design.

While a handful of barracks have been built here in recent years, the surge of new buildings at the base and at others around the Corps are designed with the single Marine in mind.

“This is a change in mind-set here. This is home,” Col. James Seaton, Camp Pendleton’s base commander, told the audience during a short ceremony to unveil the new barracks. “They can come home here in between their tours overseas.”

Seaton said the new barracks provides a “21st century living experience, rather than a 1960s living experience that our Marines here at Horno have endured for so long.”

In 2005, the Corps’ top enlisted leaders who were gathered at the Sergeants Major Symposium offered this recommendation: Give quality of life issues for single Marines the same priority given to family issues. Top officials folded those concerns into the Corps’ broader goal and a $1.7 billion plan to build new barracks and close the gap in shortages by 2012.

Officials continue to collect ideas and feedback from single Marines.

“We’ve really paid a lot of attention to bringing people together,” said Maj. Gen. Michael Lehnert, who commands Marine Corps Installations-West at Camp Pendleton. “This is being replicated throughout the Corps.”

Two dozen BEQs will be built here, plus five barracks for Wounded Warrior Regiment, officials said. And renovation continues on some existing barracks.

The new rooms are built for two junior Marines, sailors or corporals, or one sergeant. The first residents, members of 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, were slated to begin moving in May 17.

Pfc. Herbert Hartfield, 20, glanced at the barracks and was all smiles.

“This is amazing, actually. You’ve got your barbecues here, your nice basketball courts there, a kitchen,” said Hartfield, a machine gunner with Weapons Company.

Hartfield won’t be joining his fellow infantrymen in the first residents’ weekend move, though: He’s marrying his girlfriend that day.

But he won’t miss life in the really old barracks. For months, he and his single buddies have been living in squad bays at Camp San Mateo’s overflow barracks while the new barracks was being built.

“They are well worn,” Hartfield said of the old, flattop buildings, where he’s shared a space with three other junior Marines.

The newest barracks at Camp Horno answers one of the single Marine’s biggest gripes: ample storage. Wooden beds, each with three storage drawers, have “coffin racks” that lift to reveal deep storage beneath the mattress. Extra drawers and two separate walk-in closets, with lights and built-in shelves, provide residents extra room.

Rooms feature a private bathroom with a separate sink and vanity area, window blinds, ceiling fan, heater and insulated metal door with transom windows; mini-refrigerator and microwave; wooden furnishings, including computer desks, lightweight chairs and one or two beds; and color-coordinated bedspreads and carpet, blinds and double-paned windows.

And Marines may notice something new: Gone are the bare cinderblock walls of the old barracks, and the harsh glare of overhead fluorescent lights. These walls are painted in warm neutral colors.

The ‘great room’

The biggest hit, though, might be the “great room” that anchors the 5,500-square-foot building and outdoor recreation plaza.

The cozy, carpeted, air-conditioned room features movie-house seating surrounding a 50-inch flat-screen TV and DVD player.

Framed artwork and tropical plants add color and life to the large room, which has several card tables, two pool tables and a gaming area, with nine individual video game chairs and a large, flat-screen monitor. Officials plan to add Wi-Fi so Marines can access e-mail, surf the Web or take online college classes anywhere from their own laptops.

A kitchen off the entry features cherry cabinets and black GE Profile appliances. Across the room, near a computer center with eight computer stations, a duty room has a set of wooden bunks with coordinated bedding and a large double desk and work station.

Inside the ground-floor laundry room, just off the rec room, sunlight floods bright walls lined with washers and dryers — 42 washers and 84 dryers in all — and folding tables and shelves for baskets. The laundry addresses a common complaint of single Marines: Too few or inadequate washers and dryers in the barracks.

Help is on the outside, too. A half-dozen or so spigots let Marines rinse off their dirt-caked boots and sweaty utilities before they go into their rooms.

The L-shaped barracks includes parking for 270 vehicles, 17 motorcycles and six handicapped spaces. There’s a pair of stainless steel gas barbecues in a built-in cooking area and patio, a pair of lit basketball and sand volleyball courts for nighttime games, and the required pull-up bars.

The outdoors recreation area and the great room likely will become popular communal areas, much more inviting than the parking lot or busy outer corridors of existing motel-style barracks.

“It kind of brings them together ... but at the same time they can close their door and watch TV,” said Sgt. Maj. Jeffrey Dixon, the base sergeant major. “The Marines will enjoy living here.”

“If you think about what the Marines do and what they are asked to do,” noted Lehnert, “they deserve this.”