New Jersey Marines train in the high desert

by Wayne Woolley/The Star-Ledger

Tuesday August 12, 2008, 12:05 AM

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. Marine Reserve Staff Sgt. John Tacopino invaded Iraq in a Humvee with no doors.

Now, five years later, the Freehold Township police officer and more than 200 of his fellow members of Golf Company, 2nd Battalion 25th Infantry, are preparing to return to the war zone.

And this time, things will be different.

Members of the Picatinny Arsenal-based unit will be taking along such high-tech gear as a 40-pound robot that can help identify roadside bombs. They will be patrolling Anbar province in armored Humvees and new bomb-resistant trucks known as MRAPs.

And theyll have the latest body armor which, for Tacopino, will be a departure from his first Iraq trip, when he was issued one armor plate for a flak jacket that should have had two.

"They told me to just put the plate in the front," Tacopino, 29, said recently. "They told me that if I got shot in the back, that would mean we were losing. .¤.¤. Weve come a long way since 2003."

The high-tech gear is just one of the ways the Marine Corps is trying to better prepare the forces it sends to Iraq. Since 2005, the corps has also required every infantry unit it sends to Iraq or Afghanistan to take part in Mojave Viper, an intensive three-month training exercise at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms.

The base is two hours east of Los Angeles in the high Mojave Desert, a desolate stretch of sun-beaten sand and rocks. Anyone expecting palm trees will be disappointed. The New Jersey reservists and the rest of the 1,100-member battalion, which also drills from Garden City and Albany, N.Y., and Harrisburg, Pa., arrived here in early June.

"No distractions here," said Cpl. Carlos Gonzalez, a member of Golf Company who is a Perth Amboy firefighter in civilian life. "Its Groundhog Day every day: All you do is train. I guess the plan is to get you so sick of this place that you actually look forward to going to Iraq."

That day is fast approaching.

The Marines are scheduled to ship out in early September. They know they will be stationed somewhere in Anbar, the large province west of Baghdad. But their exact mission remains uncertain.

"Wed love to know, but it hasnt been worked out yet," said Maj. John Fitzsimmons, the Golf Company commander. "Weve got to be ready for anything. And we are."

Fitzsimmons, an executive with a real estate management firm in Manhattan, said the most likely assignment his Marines could draw would be either guarding an American base or having total responsibility for a portion of the battlefield.

In any event, many of the Marines will be no stranger to Iraq. About one-third have been there at least once and many of the senior leaders are making third and even fourth returns to the combat zone.

Many of the Marines say theyve come to grips with the fact they spend nearly as much time at war as they do at home.

Two previous Iraq deployments and smaller operations have taken Gunnery Sgt. Jay Hunter away from his job as a Clinton police officer for large blocks of time.

"Since Sept. 11, Ill have been on active duty more than Ive been at the police department," he said. "My chief has been good about it, but he always tells me he wants that time back before I retire."

It will be 1st Sgt. Clark Rhiels third Iraq deployment. But the 42-year-old Secaucus police officer said deployment will be harder on his wife and two children than anything he faces.

"Were Marines and we train for this," he said. "Our families, theres no way they can train for this."

PEP TALKS WITH AN ACCENT

Despite the repeated deployments and having to spend the summer in a place with three varieties of poisonous snakes, two kinds of poisonous spiders and daytime highs that approach 110 degrees, the Marines say morale is high.

Their chaplain, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Kobena Arthur, might be part of the answer. Hes an ordained Methodist minister and a psychology professor at Essex County College in Newark. He lives in South Orange. And when he talks to the Marines, it often sounds less like a sermon than like a Knute Rockne halftime pep talk. Thats if the legendary football coach had a Ghanaian accent.

On a recent day, Arthur stood beneath a swath of camouflage netting, streaked in sweat and urging the Marines to give it their best on an upcoming live-fire training exercise.

As the Marines began their grueling day on the assault course, Arthur gave a little talk.

"When youre hot, think cool. When youre weak, think pumped up," he told them. "You dont quit. You keep on keeping on. Youre Marines."

The Marines of Golf Company are an eclectic group to be sure. In addition to large numbers of law enforcement officers, there are a handful of lawyers, a political consultant and a financial executive with a math degree from Harvard.

The financial executive would be Lance Cpl. Moses Bloom, 30, of Summit. He graduated from Harvard in 2000 and enlisted five years later. He said his decision was a mix of "patriotism and curiosity."

Although Bloom holds one of the lowest enlisted ranks, he has emerged as one of the best intelligence analysts in Golf Company.

"Having a lance corporal with a Harvard degree ... thats among the reasons were not exactly an average Marine unit," said Fitzsimmons, the company commander.

The Marines say theyre also counting on their abundance of experience in the combat zone.

Gunnery Sgt. Keith Hanna, 47, a platoon commander in Golf Company, will be making his fourth trip to Iraq. In civilian life, hes a corrections officer in New York state. Hes also a grandfather. And hes got a specific wish for this deployment his last, hes promised his family.

"A nice quiet tour, thats all I want," Hanna said.