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So there I was, going off to war on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday morning in April.
Overcast skies and a light breeze would keep daytime desert temperatures somewhere in the vicinity of the mid-70s. Theoretically, it was a mild-mannered spring day. Except that on this particular day I was destined to find myself surrounded by M16s and machine guns in a Live-Fire Exercise at Range 400, with 150 Marines from the Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Command aboard the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (MCAGCC), Twentynine Palms, near the start of a 22-day training mission at Camp Wilson in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Sheesh.
It all started innocently enough. A chance remark to Brenda Weber (Mrs. General--wife of our former base commander, Brig.Gen. Joseph F. Weber) at a social event. She had been recounting the story of her
first trip out to Range 400 to witness the live-fire exercises. In all her years as a military wife, she’d never experienced anything like it. “It was all so real,” she said.
“Now I know what my husband does out there, what they all do out there, what it’s all about.”
Enamored by the detailed description of her adventure, I said I would love to experience that myself sometime.
I had no frame of reference for combat in my civilian existence, no comparable experiences. My writer’s curiosity was piqued.
Many weeks went by, then one afternoon I received a phone call from Jesse Allen in the Public Affairs Office. “So, Vickie,” he said, “I understand you want to go to Range 400.”
I was caught off-guard for a moment. “Err, yes,” I said, then laughed. “Oh, this must have come from my conversation with Brenda, right? I loved her story about going to Range 400, and I told her I
really wanted to experience it, too. She said she’d try to arrange it. Does this mean the time is coming for my excursion?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Oh, good. When?”
“How about 0700 Wednesday morning.”
I gulped. “So soon? You mean … TOMORROW?” (That Jesse, what a dry sense of humor, I thought. Surely he’s kidding.) “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” he said. “Report to the general’s compound. You know where that is, right? 0700, Operations & Training, ask for Major Teitzel. He’ll be your escort.”
“Uh-huh, okay.”
I wrote it all down, then hesitated. “Jesse, let me ask you this … it’s awfully short notice and if for some reason I couldn’t make the trip tomorrow, this opportunity might not pass my way again for, say, quite a while … right?”
“Vickie,” he said, exhaling audibly into the phone, “if you don’t make it tomorrow, this opportunity will NEVER pass your way again.”
“Oh. I got it.
I’ll be there,” I said quickly. When the call to duty comes, one must be ready. I wasn’t really ready, but I could fake it. Considering the high-level of security on the base since Sept. 11th, I felt privileged to be invited aboard. Public access had been limited. There was no way of telling how much tighter security would get in the future, depending on the world situation. I must go. Seize the day.
“Can I bring my camera and notepad?” I asked as an afterthought.
“You’re not going as a Journalist, are you?” he asked abruptly. I couldn’t tell whether he was smiling or not when he said that.
“Who me? No. I’m going as a writer.”
“Okay, then,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”
And that was that.
Well, not quite.
After hanging up the phone, I realized I was nervous about going out into a field of battle--simulated or not. And how could I handle taking photos and notes while I was also trying to “experience” the experience. I needed a traveling companion, one who could rally to the cause on short notice--less than 18 hours. I called Jesse back and asked permission to bring a friend. Then I called my photographer buddy Dana Bowden. She said she’d be at my house at 6:30 a.m. sharp.
In the morning a truck pulled into my driveway, but it was Larry Bowden, not Dana. Dana was sick, so he had jumped at the chance to take her place. When he was Mayor of the City of Twentynine Palms back
in 1998 he had been invited out to the range, but had missed the experience when the maneuvers were suddenly canceled. Now was a chance to make up for that missed experience.
“Are you good with a camera?” I asked.
“Hell, no,” he said. “That’s Dana’s department.”
“Swell,” I said. “Well then maybe you can help be my eyes and ears and help me understand what’s going on out there. Listen for any details I might miss.”
“Can’t promise anything,” he said. “I’m no military expert, ya know.”
Swell, I thought. Now we had two novices heading off to war.
We arrived on base, endured a 10-minute delay for security checks at the main gate, and made it to the general’s compound at 0700.
The office of the aforementioned escort was eventually located--the Operations Officer--Major Dennis Teitzel, a 25-year Marine with 14 years training experience at MCAGCC. (He knows every square inch of the 935 square miles of this base like the back of his hand, Capt. Crum of the PAO later commented about him.) Teitzel greeted me warmly, noting the water bottle and camera clutched in my hands.
“Good. You brought water,” he said. We waited while he finished some business, hustled down the hall to answer an email in person, spoke to an assistant and signed out. He introduced us to Lt.
Meskimen of the Naval Hospital who was joining our impromptu tour group. Then he gathered up a water bottle, a cell phone, an armload of helmets and flack jackets, and ushered us out the door.
“Oh, we have to wear helmets? I didn’t know that,” I said. “I guess I won’t be needing my sun hat then, huh?”
He shook his head, quoting something about regulation gear. “You won’t have to wear it until we get out to the range.
And you’ll have a good case of helmet-hair by the end of the exercise,” he said with a short laugh.
By 0800 we were headed out across the Mojave in a Hummer 6.5L Turbo Diesel (white, no less), one of three commercial Hummers on the base. They were used, I presumed, for officers and visiting dignitaries and/or
occasional observers like me, an arts and entertainment writer and magazine editor who didn’t have a clue what she was doing out here on her way to a simulated war on a Wednesday morning.
I had expected an old jeep or a stripped-down Humm-V with open windows and metal floorboards, something that rattled and bumped and made your back hurt, something like they used in the movies. This was stylin’,
for sure, with carpet and air-conditioning. I didn’t feel so out of place, riding along in my floppy sun hat and shades, camera bag strapped over my shoulder. At least I’d had sense enough to wear jeans,
but those Birkenstocks … well … and after about a mile I began to regret the rose-oil perfume I’d dabbed behind my ears before I left the house.
I had done it out of habit; now it reeked in my nostrils and filled the close quarters of the military vehicle. I suddenly felt like such a “girl.” A girl out here in the world of no-nonsense big boys. It reminded me, mercilessly, of what a novice I am in the war games of life.
At about two miles out we passed a giant rock quarry, where they make their own raw material to cover and maintain the 400 miles of gravel roads across the desert terrain. Major Teitzel navigated the
Hummer expertly through gullies and around the twists and turns, until, a few miles later, we finally arrived at a designated parking area on the edge of Range 400.
“This is it,” I said to myself.
I stepped outside the vehicle, left my hat and sunglasses on the front seat, and donned my assigned helmet and flack jacket. They were heavier than I had expected, adding at least an extra 20 pounds to my body weight. By the time I strapped on my camera bag again, over the bulky vest, I felt truly awkward. Novice, indeed. Then Major Teitzel issued me a set of official earplugs. Earplugs? Oh, of course, the sound from the gunfire.
“We’ll hike from here. We’re heading for that ridge up there,” he said, pointing to a rocky cliff in the distance.
He hadn’t told me about the hiking part.
I glanced down at the Major’s boots, then at my own feet--polished red toenails sticking out of my Birkenstock sandals. “I want you to know,” I announced to the major (in self-defense), “that I go everywhere in my Birkenstocks. I’ve hiked all across the desert in these and I don’t even own a pair of closed-toed shoes. I wear them year-round. I’m a true desert rat.” Well … okay, an old hippie. Funny how I felt the need to defend myself in case he might make some snide comment about my lack of proper attire. Here he was, concerned about combat training, and I was worried about the appropriate dress code for observing a day at war.
He smiled politely. “If it works for you, it works for me.”
Off we went. I dawdled along the path, enjoying the early morning sun, looking around and snapping photos, as if we were out for a leisurely morning walk.
After about a quarter mile Major Teitzel stopped. “There will be plenty of time for photos later,” he said. He surveyed the surrounding terrain and checked his watch.
“We have 10 minutes to get up that hill.”
It didn’t sink in right away.
I looked up at the hill in front of me, then looked around at the spent casings and the burned rocks from mortar blasts on the ground beneath my feet, and understood. Oh. He meant we had to keep moving … Now! … or else we’d be in the line of fire. Sheesh. Up the rocky cliff I went in my sandals (good desert rat that I am), and by the time we got to the top of the hill, my chest and legs were hurting like hell. Okay, I'm out of shape, but I'm a good sport. Much to my credit, I only complained once--making reference to the added weight.
“You’re carrying about an extra 20 pounds,” he said. “Imagine carrying a full pack, M16, ammunition … in the field you might be carrying as much as 60 to 100 pounds.”
Again I gulped.
We reached the ridge. I found a rock to sit on, readied my camera and waited.
A radio operator announced a 20-minute delay and Major Teitzel checked his watch. I resisted the urge to make a sarcastic comment about all that hurrying for nothing, then watched as several late-arriving observers escorted by a visiting general climbed up the same hill we had just traversed. They settled into position near us.
Suddenly the ground shook with horrendous force and a gigantic boom echoed through the air, like a crescendo from the 1812 Overture--for real. My heart stopped.
Once, then twice. The second blast hit barely 300 yards away. It was a Bangalore torpedo (vintage WW II) from a torpedo launcher, Major Teitzel explained, shouting into my ear-plugged left ear. The huge plume of acrid brown smoke rose slowly and majestically several hundred feet into the air in front of me.
I brought my camera up and tried to focus a shot. My hands were shaking. Through the lens I saw a lone Marine crouched on top of a rock outcropping in the foreground, the smoke rising ominously behind
him. It was a perfect shot. I took a deep breath and clicked the shutter.
Larry Bowden yelled from somewhere behind me, “Vickie! Did you get that shot?!”
“Yes,” I shouted. “I saw it.
I got it!” I knew already that it was the photo I was after--the photo of the day. It was the ultimate poetic statement. A picture worth a thousand words. I felt exhilarated. Had I been a reporter in Afghanistan, that shot could have made the cover of Time magazine!
That arrogant thought sobered me up.
I remembered the first casualties in the recent war in Afghanistan--eight foreign journalists killed--weeks before U.S. ground troops landed, long before Geraldo Rivera arrived with his film crew, and months before the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Perhaps that was the challenge, the thrill of a real journalist … being on the frontlines before anyone else, capturing the action.
My attention snapped back to my immediate surroundings. Marines appeared from nowhere. They scrambled up the rocks, took their positions within 50 feet of me, mounted their machine guns and prepared for
battle. Troops began flooding into the wash below, snipers on the hill above. Distant blasts became louder, and puffs of white smoke appeared in the valley floor.
I put my eye up to the camera again and panned the horizon. Everywhere I looked, it was the same.
No sign of civilization, only desert and mountains and battle smoke. I could have been in the middle of Afghanistan, for all I knew. No wonder this was such a perfect training ground.
Everything after that was almost a blur.
It was a day at war. U.S. Marines scrambling up the hills, running through trenches and washes, ducking machine-gun fire, throwing grenades, breeching lines, attempting to capture an enemy hill 1000 meters away. The photos I took could have been shot anywhere in the world.
An hour into the battle, I realized they were actually using Live Rounds. I mean, it was Real ammunition.
I don’t know what I had expected. Blanks? Everybody was shooting everywhere, over everybody’s heads, with blasts coming in from guns all around me. I felt disoriented from time to time, so much happens so fast.
The hills echo from the sounds of mortar blasts. The rat-tat-tats of .50-calibre machine guns resonate through the valley. Providing a staccato accompaniment are constant live-fire rounds from the M16 rifles.
The M240-G’s, M249-SAWs (squad automatic weapons) … I tried to identify the sounds, the sites. Tracer bullets streaming out in front of me, every fifth round trailing a blue and silver phosphorus tail in a speeding arc towards the distant target. Practice grenades exploding on the ground, dotting the desert landscape with their orange powder puffs as if in comic relief to the battle scene.
The art of war--it was a discordant symphony in flashes of light and color and sound, played against the background of a silent arid desert. My senses went into acute overdrive.
My eyes tried to track the movements in all directions and my ears were ringing in spite of the ear plugs. Gun powder began to permeate my nostrils. Wake up and smell the cordite.
“It’s all mortars and below today,” I remember the Major saying.
“This is Day 3--the final assault. The 1000-meter assault.” Objective: overtake a hill 1000 meters away, a hill full of old tires signifying the enemy. “This is called Block 1 training.” Light artillery and ground troops. Squads to platoons to companies. Out of all the ranges, Range 400 is specifically used for “Company Live-Fire Maneuver.” No air support, no flares, no Light Armored Vehicles and heavy artillery today--not the Full Monty, not like some of the night defensive maneuvers.
I tried to remember all that he was saying, to understand the tactical maneuvers and technical terms, but I was getting overloaded.
I glanced up at one of three video cameras mounted on the surrounding hills to record the training mission. Maybe I can watch the video later, I thought, like a re-run. Map out all the offensive and defensive plays so that I could better comprehend this war game I was witnessing. That might have been a funny thought, except for the current state of the world. This was serious training, for potential real battle.
Nowhere else in the U.S. could the Marines and soldiers train like this. Range 400 is less than a square mile, but today it felt like a microcosm of the entire Middle East and Asia.
“It feels like Afghanistan,” I said.
“Yes,” Major Teitzel responded, “It’s similar--the terrain, the training. What you see here today is like Operation Anacanda, except that it’s 8000-feet base elevation in Afghanistan.”
By the time the Marines had captured the enemy hill, Major Teitzel gave us our exit line.
“Seen enough?” he said. “We might as well head back now.” With that, we navigated our way back down the path, leaving the troops to capture the remaining two strongholds, which they would undoubtedly accomplish within the hour.
I removed my earplugs and was startled to hear real sound again.
The echoes rang in waves across the face of the mountains as we walked back to the Hummer. Surround-sound stereo. You have to focus to recognize where the sound is coming from, to identify the source of the gunfire. This was probably an important part of the training, too. I walked away with new respect for the ground troops … for the alertness they have to maintain, never knowing where the enemy will pop up or where the next shots are coming from … for the weight they carry, the training, the fitness … for the shape they have to be in to carry loads, walk, run, hike, climb, sneak, duck, shoot, all at a moment’s notice….
Just wearing the heavy helmet, my neck was sore by the time we returned to the vehicle. I’m pathetically out of shape.
“I suppose you’re going to write about all this in The Sun Runner,” Major Teitzel remarked, giving me a knowing smile. “If you have any questions or need some technical help, be sure to let me know.”
Once again I was caught off-guard. I hadn’t expected the comment. I didn’t remember mentioning The Sun Runner, nor had I come prepared for an official interview with a list of questions and a crib sheet of military jargon.
“Ya, well…” I said, preferring to think more about the photos I shot than the intimidating prospect of having to write some intelligent words to actually try and describe the training exercise. I was suddenly
afraid of what he might be expecting me to write.
“Whatever it is, it won’t be a serious story,” I said. “It will be a light piece, maybe with an art twist, maybe a catchy title like ‘Vickie goes to war in her Birkenstocks’ or something. I’m a writer. I don’t claim to be a journalist.”
“Not like some people who claim to be journalists, huh?”
We both laughed. He’d let me off the hook.
We started up the Hummer and drove quietly across the gravel roads and washes as Major Teitzel described the various designated ranges, the 25 miles of roads lost in last August’s rains and flash floods, and a recent
trespassing episode, which we’d heard about in town. “Bill and Ted’s Not So Excellent Adventure” they had dubbed it. The night a motorhome from Lake Lavic wandered onto a back range during a night
defensive maneuver. They were within minutes of firing, tanks-LAVs-mortars-the works. Somebody had spotted headlights in the distance; the maneuver was halted and a squad armed with M16s was sent to investigate.
“They were either the luckiest guys on earth, because they were within minutes of getting killed, or the unluckiest guys on earth, because they got caught,” said Teitzel. The motorhome turned out to be full of booze, marijuana, methamphetamines and drug paraphernalia. On Federal property. Trespassing alone can get you seven years.
We returned to Mainside on the base and said our goodbyes.
By noon I was back at my little house, three miles as the crow flies from the main gate of the base. By 12:30 it started to rain. I went outside and stood in the rain, letting the water wash the smell of cordite off my skin. I looked over at the base and the hills beyond, gauging the direction I had traveled and marking the distance to the precise hill where I had observed the live-fire exercise at Range 400.
Finally I had experienced a bird’s-eye view of what has been going on in my backyard all these years. All those booms in the mornings and flares in the night. I can recognize the sounds now, the
locations, the intervals between blasts, the patterns of smoke clouds. When the ground shakes and the loudest boom echoes through the valley at about 8:30 in the morning every few weeks, I can look out my
window and pinpoint the second ridge, due northeast of my house, and see the gigantic smoke cloud rising from the Bangalore torpedo blast. The same one that hit barely 300 yards from me that morning.
The one I had captured in a photo, while my camera was shaking in my hands. The day I went off to battle in my Birkenstocks and rose-oil perfume, to watch the U.S. Marines prepare for war.
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Wednesday, April 24, 2002
Vickie Waite, Editor
The Sun Runner Magazine, Twentynine Palms, CA
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