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By Root 1427 0

helicopters emerge from a bank of drifting smoke. With the Abrams tanks continuing to light up individual targets with their turret-mounted .50-caliber machine guns, the Cobra and Huey gunships make pass after cleared-hot pass, slamming the target area with rockets and guns—even an air-launched TOW missile from the Cobra. With the supported Marines now approaching the “danger close” zone of the gunships’ attacks, the birds are called off, and the Marines themselves put rounds downrange onto specific targets with their M16s, SAWs, and M240s. With “boots on deck,” the grunts secure the area—something no bomb, rocket, or missile can do, regardless of its level of technology or how many slam into a target. In an actual combat scenario, double-rotored CH-46E Sea Knight “Phrog” helicopters would soon be hitting the deck, either to extract the grunts or to add reinforcements, as massive CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters pluck the artillery pieces—one per helicopter—from the desert, either to carry back to a ship or to move to another part of the fight.

With the combined-arms training complete, ⅔ traveled four hundred miles north to the Mountain Warfare Training Center, their last—and arguably most important—predeployment destination before heading to Afghanistan. Initially established in 1951 in the wake of the Frozen Chosin campaign to train Marines for cold-weather combat and survival, the Mountain Warfare Training Center today is one of the most important in the Department of Defense because of the ongoing war in Afghanistan. While at the MWTC, the Marines of ⅔ undertook training in cold-weather survival, mountain mobility, steep-earth climbing, high-angle sniper training, even mule packing—and like their combat training at Twentynine Palms, their mountain workup had them immersed in the harsh realities of their environment and tasks. At an adjunct training area in the mountains outside of Hawthorne, Nevada—peaks that bear stark physiographic and meteorological resemblance to those of eastern Afghanistan—the Marines of the battalion learned firsthand just how difficult moving from one mountainous point to another—even just a kilometer distant—can be, burdened with heavy body armor and under the press of a multiday combat load. Navy Corpsmen kept busy with hypothermia victims at night and heat-exhaustion and dehydration during the day, not to mention twisted and sprained ankles.

The final exercise at the center had Marines undertake a five-day field operation that culminated in their meeting with “village elders” played by local role-players in a mock Afghan village erected by MWTC personnel. Instructed by Marines of the training center who had recent Afghan experience under their belts, the role-players gave many in the battalion their first direct taste of the subtleties and frustrations of counterinsurgency work in an austere land. Marines struggled to communicate with the “elders” using their issued language cards and Dari and Pashto phrases they’d already memorized. Then they struggled even harder to get simple answers to what they felt to be the most basic of questions. “How many people live here?” “Where is the nearest village beyond this one?” Stymied throughout all their attempts, the Marines quickly realized that gaining the trust of the locals—a cornerstone of the COIN fight—would be far easier said than done.

As the Marines of the battalion finished their training and looked ahead to the real deal, Rob Scott, Tom Wood, and Scott Westerfield pondered the months ahead and the list of hurdles the battalion would face. They’d undoubtedly be difficult times, not just because of the brutal terrain and deadly enemy, but also for the challenges posed to them by rolling into a combat command structure where they would not be fighting as a component of a MAGTF, but as part of a “combined joint task force.” The Marines’ MAGTF/combined-arms training had them prepared for the most complex and dynamic of combat situations, but while in Afghanistan, they wouldn’t have access to Marine aviation assets or to Marine artillery—and