Amtrac troops go high-speed
Corps’ riverine force prepares to cover for Navy

By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — It’s like Miami Vice — just exchange the white poplin sport coats and Gucci T-shirts for cammies and Kevlar.

Ripping across the calm, cold waters of Mile Hammock Bay near Camp Lejeune, N.C., at 40 mph in their souped-up speedboats, these Iraq-bound leathernecks are every bit as cool as Sonny Crockett or Rico Tubbs ever were.

And they’ve got a lot more firepower, too.

During the past three months, Reserve Marines of the Jacksonville, Fla.-based Bravo Company, 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion, have been training to serve as a provisional small-craft company bound for Iraq. The gator-drivers-turned-coxswains have been boning up on their infantry skills and expanding their raid and patrolling acumen — except with boats instead of amphibious assault vehicles.

Despite the deactivation of the Corps’ sole Small Craft Company at Lejeune last year, the service still needs to patrol the Euphrates River and Haditha Lake and dam in Iraq. Though the Navy was due to take up some of the slack and assume Corps duties on Iraq’s waterways, delays forced the Corps to press into service provisional units to man the force, requiring Marines to adapt to a different way of working. They leave in April for a seven-month deployment.

“It’s high-speed, and there’s a lot to learn,” said amtracker-turned-boat-captain Cpl. Joseph Merritt. “They’ve been pounding a lot of stuff into our brains.”

Despite the steep learning curve, these part-time leathernecks have fallen in love with their new ride — a recent replacement for the unarmored and lightly armed Rigid Raiding Craft — which sports a pair of 440-horsepower turbo engines and three heavy machine-gun mounts. The boat, known as the Small Unit Riverine Craft, or SURC, is so hot, the reservists are having almost too much fun.

“Because it’s a lot sexier than tracks, you have to reel them in a bit,” said Capt. Shane Cote, Bravo Company commander.

Reshuffling forces

The nearly 120 men of Bravo Company started their training in December, when the amtrac platoons’ senior noncommissioned officers were sent to special training courses at the Lejeune-based Special Missions Training Center — a Coast Guard-run boat training school — to learn how to drive the SURCs and navigate them through coastal and inland waters.

Meanwhile, Marines with the headquarters unit and other track crewmen were put through an abbreviated machine-gunner’s course and other heavy weapons instruction to help them man the SURC’s impressive weapons suite, which can include M2 .50-caliber machine guns, MK19 40mm grenade launchers and rotary cannons.

The former amtrackers also will be responsible for combat operations ashore, launching raids, searches and patrols during their seven-month deployment to Iraq.

“A lot of it is basic grunt tactics,” Merritt said. “Just take squad tactics and expand it.”

The training, which usually takes place over six months, was compressed into a little more than three. But the amtrackers have taken to it well and adapted to the new vessel.

“Amtrackers are maintenance-based, they understand waterborne tactics and they understand how to work together as a crew,” said Gunnery Sgt. Brian Vinicguerra, the top NCO of the small-craft cadre at Camp Lejeune that taught the SURC newbies.

“This training is easier for them because they came as a cohesive unit,” he said.

Despite the Corps’ stand-down of the Small Craft Company, about 30 Marines from the unit were retained to train new small-craft units should the need arise. The Corps deactivated the company as part of a sweeping Corps-wide reorganization last year recommended by the Force Structure Review Group.

The reshuffling shifted manpower out of jobs deemed less essential for the war on terrorism and into newly formed reconnaissance platoons, infantry battalions and light armored-vehicle companies, for example.

But ever since, the Corps has been forced to send small-craft Marines, or their provisional brethren, back to Iraq to patrol the meandering waters of the Euphrates — which snakes its way through some of the most dangerous towns in Iraq, such as Ramadi and Fallujah — and to interdict insurgent supply lines along the banks of Haditha Lake near the Syrian border.

A recently formed Capabilities Assessment Group will evaluate the Corps’ needs for the war on terrorism, taking the earlier Corps-wide reorganization a step further, Corps officials have said.

Whether the group will suggest that the Small Craft Company be reinstated is unclear, though the Navy recently has taken on a greater role in riverine combat.

And if the Corps decides to bring the coxswains and boat captains of the Small Craft Company back for good, there’ll be a cadre of veteran small-boatmen ready to hit the water running.

“If they call us back, we’ll be here,” Vinicguerra said.

Run and gun

Gunning the twin-turbo engines to 3,000 rpm, Lance Cpl. William Sessions, a boat captain with Bravo Company’s 1st Platoon, sliced his SURC through the glassy North Carolina waters at a smooth 40 mph.

The hum of the water-jet engines sounded more like a fighter plane than a souped-up motorboat.

Hunkered down in the 38-foot vessel’s forward deck, a squad of amtrackers loaded for combat shielded themselves against the stinging wind and salt spray kicked up as Sgt. Brian Wilson, another boat captain with 1st Platoon, ordered the boat to pull into an insertion point for a mock raid on “enemy” forces holed up in a building near the Special Missions Training Center.

As soon as they were in position for the Feb. 16 exercise, Sessions slowed the boat to a crawl, coasting into a wooden dock scarred by similar maneuvers run afoul. The grunts removed their bulky life jackets and jumped out of the bow ramp, pushing toward the hangar to execute their raid.

The other SURCs escorting Wilson’s assault force were ordered to “hold water” and stay in place with their heavy machine guns trained toward shore for supporting fire in case it all hit the fan.

Then, it did.

“We’re taking contact! We’re taking contact! We’re getting out of here,” came the frantic call over the radio from the assault force, the sound of blank-fed rifle fire popping through the ether.

“I see movement off in the bushes to the right,” said the crew of another SURC, call sign “Alpha One,” its stern-mounted M2 and bow-mounted M240G machine guns firing loudly above the tinny radio signal.

A few minutes later, the grunts came running back into the boat, its engines primed for an escape. With a quick swipe of the hand, Sessions gunned the throttles into reverse, forcing the SURC away from the dock and out to the safety of open water.

This encounter may have been practice, but these Marines are champing at the bit to do the real thing when they deploy to Iraq this spring, and many of them say they’re willing to trade in their gators for these sleek watercraft permanently.

“This is definitely a little more high speed than running around in amtracs,” said Lance Cpl. Mitchell Sorrells, a tank mechanic attached to Bravo Company for the deployment.

“I’ve been around boats all my life,” the 21-year-old said.

“I worked at a marina, so this is great.”