Winter to the Corps (Cont.)

Outside Magazine February 2002

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	Killer Times: MWTC trainees attack the slopes on telemark skis at Kirkwood Mountain Resort, near Lake Tahoe, California

WE FLEW IN A C-130 transport plane to Alaska, sitting in nylon-strap seats in plane-length rows. The engine was too loud for conversation. We wore earplugs. Several guys played chess. Most of the men read. Andretta: 'Tis, by Frank McCourt. Captain Anderson: The Trial, by Kafka. Culp: The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan.

We landed after dark at Eielson Air Force Base and were bused south to the Fort Greely Military Reservation and its absurdly named Texas Range. It was ten below zero.

The marines unloaded their gear, set up tents in the snow, and began what would become a ceaseless struggle against the cold. Every hour a new shift of sentries would crawl out of their sleeping bags, take up their M-16s, and stand guard in the cold.

The weak dawn illuminated a forbidding landscape. To the south was the Alaska Range, its thousands of peaks and valleys eternally encased in ice. To the north stretched a black, primeval forest. And all of it as silent as Siberia, as if the cold itself had strangled all attempts at communication.

Forty of the 60 instructor candidates were ranked "Tier Two"—experienced, proven men. Twenty of them were "Tier One"—beginners struggling to pass the Instructor Qualification Course. On day two, Tier Ones practiced flat-ground skiing exercises while Tier Twos were trucked up to the Black Rapids Training Site to practice telemarking. That night both groups did long, exhausting, lightless forest recons.

On day three both groups spent the day doing live-fire drills. They practiced skiing and shooting. They practiced snowshoeing and shooting. They practiced wearing 70-pound packs and pulling sleds and breaking through willows and shooting. That night they practiced tracer-fire ambushes.

Everybody camped out in the snow, snatching what sleep they could between night maneuvers, night watches, and the never-ending winter-camping necessity of boiling snow for water and meals. I shared a tent with Captain Andretta and Major K, both of whom brought tiny black electric razors and, every morning, shaved sitting up in their sleeping bags.

Major K does everything his men do. When they ski he skis, when they snowshoe he snowshoes. And when they boot across some endless snaggly creek bottom with a 70-pound pack he follows right behind—bearing his own load, observing, listening, saying very little. General Jones described him as "tougher than a woodpecker's lips," adding, "He's precisely the marine to train our marines."

Major K has been in the Corps for 13 years and has a degree in political science from the University of New Mexico. He has a wife and two sons, and doesn't know what he would do if he weren't a marine. "My mom and my old man were marines," he says. His father lost both legs in Vietnam. "He used to say that he had six good years and one bad day and that he'd still be Ôin the suck' if he could be."

On day four, maneuvers are supposed to begin at one in the morning and include ice climbing, but there have been several "environmental casualties" among the novice instructors.

The men have hardly slept in four days. They've been skiing with a pack and firing their frozen m-16s and moving all day and deep into every night. You can see the fear of the cold in their glazed eyes and rigid postures.

One marine got his hands severely frostbitten and may lose several fingers; one scalded his hand while boiling snow water; one went down with vomiting and dehydration. And another was struck in the eye by an M-16 shell casing and burned his cornea during a midnight live-fire ambush. At 5 a.m. the remaining 16 or so novices, some of whom have frostnip on their fingers or toes, some of whom are obviously hypothermic, are once again standing in the black cold, shivering, waiting for their orders.

Captain Andretta is glowering. He looks furious—it's a side of him you might never know existed.

"What time is it?" he screams.

"0500, sir!" the marines shout, their breath instantly freezing.

"What time were we supposed to move out?"

"0100, sir!"

"I gave you four extra hours to unass yourselves. Why?"

"Safety, sir!"

"That's right. Goddamit, pull your heads out of your asses! You're fucking up! You have to take care of yourselves. You have to take care of each other. You haven't even met the enemy yet, but already, one by one, you're going down!"

These men have hardly slept in four days. They've been skiing with a pack and firing their frozen M-16s and moving all day and deep into every night. They don't have the experience of the seasoned instructors. You can see the fear of the cold in their glazed eyes and rigid postures.

Their orders: to attack an observation post (held by Tier Two veterans), rout the enemy, and consolidate the captured terrain. The observation post is on a bluff above the brush-choked, mile-wide Delta River. With a bare, windswept ridge to its back, birch draws buried in deep snow to either side, and an eagle's-eye view of the entire ice-coated river valley, the post commands a devastating 360-degree view.

The attack takes all day. The marines are exhausted and chilled to the bone and thus extremely slow. Some of them are carrying almost 100 pounds. The snow varies from six inches of powder to thigh-killing crust. The marines trudge up through the hellish deadfall of the forest. They trudge across boggy open meadows. They trudge through pack-snaring willows. By the time they finally straggle up to the observation post, each of them has been "killed" by the enemy a dozen times.

Major K takes pity and allows them into the hut for their debriefing. Too often, he says, they were moving out in the open—directly in the enemy's line of sight—rather than utilizing the microterrain. Too often they were bunched together, ensuring mortar fire from the enemy. They attacked uphill rather than circling around and attacking downhill.

They also made simple winter mistakes. They didn't eat enough. They didn't drink enough. Worst of all, they failed to layer and unlayer properly. Terrified of the cold, most of them wore their heavy fleece throughout the movement. Sergeant Tooby is outraged.

"You know why you're all so foken exhausted? You foken sweated too much! You're totally dehydrated." He picks up one of their fleece jackets and wrings a torrent of sweat out of it. "It's absolutely foken mad!"

That night three more soldiers are pulled out of the squad. All have potentially severe hypothermia and will require warm-fluid IVs and a night in the heated operations trailer to recover.

High winds are predicted for sometime in the early hours. They arrive at 2 a.m. By 3 a.m. the 60-mile-per-hour gale has snapped the poles of many of the tents, including ours. Major K and I dismantle the wreck, pack it away, and crawl back inside our bags.

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