Mountain training gets Afghan war twist - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Mountain training gets Afghan war twist

PICKEL MEADOW, Calif. — They invaded Iraq, fought pitched battles with insurgents in Fallujah, operated in the jungles of Southeast Asia and raided beaches from amphibious ships with Republic of Korea marines.

By next spring, Marines and sailors with 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines will be on new terrain in a different combat zone, this time with counterinsurgency as their primary mission. So before they step into Afghanistan, their commander brought them here, to the Corps’ Mountain Warfare Training Center, an isolated camp in the eastern Sierra Mountains.

In specialized classes and a three-week field exercise called “Mountain Warrior,” the Marines learned the intricate skills of surviving, operating and fighting in mountainous terrain and high elevations. Afghan men and others speaking Pashto, brought here under military contracts, joined in scenarios meant to mirror complex situations leathernecks have encountered for real in Afghanistan.

Lt. Col. Ben Watson, 3/1’s commanding officer, said preparing for Afghanistan means pushing Marines’ skills beyond conventional warfare “to shaking hands and kissing babies.”

But unlike “Mojave Viper,” the month-long desert training exercises at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif., Mountain Warrior isn’t on the Corps’ required Predeployment Training Program, the to-do list for units readying for a combat tour.

“There is a very intense debate about what is Bridgeport’s role in the PTP and how are we best utilized,” said Col. Norm Cooling, the MWTC commander. Mountain warfare “is one of the skills, like amphibious operations, that we can’t have a generation of guys without that, because that is our role for the nation.

“You’d be crazy if you didn’t go here.”

This year, eight battalions will train in Bridgeport’s mountains and meadows, and 4th Marines from Japan-based III Marine Expeditionary Force will do “Mountain Viper,” a shortened hybrid of the two programs.

But Mountain Warrior, the center’s primary unit training program, isn’t mandated because the Corps considers it “elective Block III” training, Cooling said. It also gets a fraction of the training dollars the Corps allots for Mojave Viper, he said, so units doing Mountain Warrior must pull together different funding sources to pay for costs such as aggressors and cultural role players.

Cooling wants to see Mountain Warrior and MWTC taken more seriously, he said, to better prepare Marines for the threats the Corps sees on the horizon, in places he calls the “arc of instability.”

“All of these places have thousands and thousands of miles that looks like this,” he said.

A focus on counter-insurgency

With 3/1’s focus on Afghanistan, the presence of small groups of role players make the training scenarios a bit more realistic. By next summer, Marines and sailors will be dealing with real Afghans, in tactical situations alongside Afghan soldiers or police, and participants were paying close attention.

“In order to win the fight, you have to come in and work with the locals,” said 1st Lt. Michael Chand, 25, executive officer for Lima Company, 3/1.

That’s the part of counterinsurgency — the softer side of building bridges and winning hearts and minds — Marines say takes work.

“Any patrol we go out, we always tell them to be ready to interact with the locals or take interest every time,” said Lance Cpl. Ricardo Villalobos, 20, a team leader with Kilo Company. “After a while, seeing people, how they react and what they are doing, gives you a heads up.”

Shifting from trigger fingers thwarting a threat to breaking bread with an angry village chief doesn’t always come naturally.

“The average Marine wants to be in the third block of the war. He wants to be in the fight,” acknowledged Gunnery Sgt. Darin Wink, Lima’s company gunny. “It sometimes can be a little bit more difficult to be on the softer side.”

Mountain Warrior tested 3/1’s ability to operate across a larger area, putting sergeants and corporals on a large battlefield, having to operate away from Watson’s command post, or even their company commander.

“Here, the terrain is unforgiving,” said Sgt. Maj. Scott Samuels, 3/1’s top enlisted man. “We have to have confidence that the NCOs can do all these things.”

Roughing it

MWTC trainers expanded the battlefield for 3/1, crafting missions so the battalion would send convoys tactically to Hawthorne Army Depot in Nevada, where they conducted live-fire exercises. The route wound through “Lucky Boy Pass,” at times “mined” with roadside bombs and opposing forces.

Some convoys had overhead cover from UH-1Y Huey helicopters. Training meshed with real life: Drivers had to haul through rutted, steep roads, while mechanics had to deal with overheated engines.

Throughout Mountain Warrior, the Marines — most bearing 70 to 80 pounds of weapons and packs, plus body armor, through forests and on trails in two-day hikes at 8,000- or 9,000-foot elevations — learned the formidable nature of high-altitude mountains.

“The land here will get you winded,” said Lance Cpl. Kevin DiMedeiros, 24, a Kilo squad leader.

Marines realize they will rough it in Afghanistan, trading the established bases of Iraq for field conditions.

“It puts us back into the green side of training. We have been urban for so long,” Wink said. “A lot of the young Marines don’t have that field craft any more.”

At MWTC, Marines forded creeks and drew water from intermittent streams. Longer tactical hikes and heavy packs will mean less bottled water, so finding other sources is important. “plays a role when you’re planning your movement,” said Chand, Lima’s XO.

Staff Sgt. Willis Davis, who deployed to Afghanistan as well as Iraq, said MWTC forces units to return to the fundamentals of combat and small-unit tactics.

“Technologies don’t work here,” said Davis, 35, of Alabama. “You have to go back to things like the compass, since GPS doesn’t work here.”

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