Navy-Marines' amphib mission has reptilian name

VIRGINIA BEACH

For months, Navy and Marine Corps brass have talked up a massive training exercise with a funny name - Bold Alligator - and a serious objective: revitalizing amphibious warfare.

More than a year of preparation went into the two-week exercise that began Jan. 31, involving 20,000 sailors and Marines, 15 U.S. warships and nine allied nations.

Those figures mattered little to the 120 Marines and sailors who left the amphibious transport dock New York aboard two hovercraft on Monday night.

The vessels exited the ship's well deck shortly after sunset as the New York steamed off Virginia Beach. The mission of these Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit: raid an inland terrorist training camp, separate enemies from noncombatants, gather intelligence, blow up bombmaking equipment and high-tail it back to the New York, hopefully in time for midnight rations served aboard ship.

About 30 minutes later, under a smudgy winter moon, the hovercraft approached a deserted beach at Joint Expeditionary Base Fort Story. As shipping traffic moved in the channel nearby and headlights streamed across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, a telltale hum filled the air: the roar of the hovercrafts' engines, which propel them atop the water and onto the sand.

The Marines unloaded the equipment they'd brought for the job: Humvees, armored vehicles and 7-ton trucks they'd drive to a makeshift training village two miles away.

Gunnery Sgt. Issac Sweeton, who works with the Special Operations Training Group at Camp Lejeune, N.C., led a group of observers from the beach to the training village, where 17 fighters and 25 villagers waited to be found.

"I think the unknown is probably the trickiest piece," Sweeton said of the raid.

Operating on information gathered by a 10-man reconnaissance team that swam ashore on Saturday, about 50 Marines made their way to the village - 10 buildings, including a mosque, behind a plywood fence in a deserted wooded area of the base.

About 90 minutes after coming ashore, the raiding Marines silently approached the village on foot. Their shadowy figures breached a gate, a hail of bullets and screams piercing the quiet night.

Moments later, the thud of rotors: two helicopters, a Huey and a Cobra, circling low.

The Marines went from building to building, searching for human targets and bombmaking materials. Role players who'd been "killed" in the raid lay where they fell; a green glow-stick signified that their bodies had been checked and cleared of explosives.

Two Marines took fictional gunshots and had to be evacuated on stretchers. And following the rules of engagement in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the village mosque - its crescent moon silhouetted against the sky - was guarded but untouched, and noncombatants were allowed to remain inside.

"Overall, it was a pretty good raid," said Sweeton, who has 16 years in the Marines and three deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan under his belt. His one complaint: the Marines were on the objective a little longer than he would have liked.

"The idea of a raid is to come in, do what you need to do and leave," he said.

The Fort Story raid was one of three major offensives in Bold Alligator, billed as the largest Navy-Marine Corps amphibious exercise in a decade.

Earlier Monday, a few thousand Marines came ashore from Norfolk-based ships at Camp Lejeune. Tuesday featured a sea-based assault, with Marines aboard the Gunston Hall and Iwo Jima flying MV-22 Ospreys and CH-53 Sea Stallions to Fort Pickett, 150 miles inland.

The exercise is overseen by the Navy's Fleet Forces Command and Marine Forces Command, both based in Norfolk.

While no one expects a return to amphibious assaults on the scale of Normandy or Iwo Jima during World War II, military brass cite the humanitarian response to the Haiti earthquake two years ago and Marine airstrikes in Libya last year as examples of important amphibious capabilities.

"The Navy/Marine Corps team can't be a cute catchphrase we throw around to make ourselves feel good," Adm. John Harvey, the head of Fleet Forces Command, said in a briefing last week. "It's not just a slogan. Ships can't operate ashore, and Marines can't walk on water."

Kate Wiltrout, 757-446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com