The Marines Battle for Argos

Armed with sophisticated Communist weaponry, the Yermonian army last week swept across the frontier of its southern neighbor, the peace-loving desert nation of Argos. While the Argosian army reeled back toward its coastal capital, Port of Palms, a U.S. Marine amphibious unit began steaming through the Sea of Bristol...

Every year, some fantasist in the Marine Corps dreams up a scenario like this for the start of training maneuvers at Twentynine Palms, the 932-square-mile Marine base in the Mojave Desert. This year things are a little different. The war in Viet Nam is over, and the Marines must think about where they might be called next--and would they be ready for battle in the Middle East? The Marines are also having trouble meeting their recruitment quotas, so they need to know how their reservists might function in combat. Nine thousand Marines took part last week in the largest maneuver ever, and the temperatures rose as high as 120DEG. From the simulated combat zone, TIME'S David DeVoss reported:

By 6 a.m. on Dday, the sky over the tent city of Camp Wilson, a simulated carrier just off the coast of Argos, was full of HueyCobra gunships, troop-carrying Chinooks and A-6 Intruders making thrusts at the invisible "aggressor" force. The first wave of the attack consisted of reservists from New England, Ohio and New York--most of whom viewed the task mainly as an extra day in the sun. Bedraggled and blear-eyed, they ambled off belching LVTs to the consternation of whitebanded "umpires" who frantically waved yellow flags to simulate a mortar and grenade attack.

"Hit the dirt, men!" one officer yelled--to the relief of Pfc. Willie Wilkins from Akron, who proceeded to lie face down in the sand. "These people can be gung-ho," he muttered, "but I'm just going to play the game. I can give you my opinion of this entire operation in two words: F-- it."

Some 2,000 yards to the east, a crew of "lifers" from Camp Lejeune, N.C., looked disgustedly at the spectacle through binoculars. According to the scenario, they represented a destroyer supplying supportive 175-mm. gunfire.

"Most of us look forward to this," grinned Pfc. Leffie Powell, 20. "We're having a war against the lizards and snakes. But the reservists think of their two weeks as forced servitude."

The reservists have been tested before, but this time they were supposed to be integrated with veterans of Viet Nam combat. The process of integration is not easy.

At Landing Zone Buzzard, when Company M arrived from Columbus, Ohio, the most energetic activity was the application of Coppertone. "It's hard to get decent Marines," complained Corporal Gary Gambill, 26, an exporter for Ashland Chemical. "Thirteen quit the company last month, and only five joined--and three of those have started paper work to get their discharges.

I guess all of us here are just waiting to go home."

The story was much the same at LZ Eagle, where / Buffalo's protectors of peace were digging in. "People coming in now are of pretty low mentality," said Corporal John Fisher, 25, a veteran of almost five years in the reserves. "A couple of guys in this unit can hardly even read. They must have been given the answers to the test so the recruiters in Buffalo could meet their quota."

While enlisted men in the field sought shade from the sun, an assortment of officers ran the war from an air-conditioned control center at Camp Wilson. Actually, the entire war, all its battles and the eventual outcome, had been programmed in advance by computer. But as each situation report came in from field umpires using an experimental "digital message entry system," maps were redrawn, arrows lengthened and air strikes scheduled.

"An aggressor battalion has pushed a company to within three miles of Camp Wilson," said Colonel A.J. Brosco, 43, a criminal lawyer from Providence, R.I. "Give me the file marked confidential," he said to a captain. "Aerial photos taken this morning indicate a SAM location and a rudimentary airfield." "Excuse me, sir," warned a crew-cut major, "we just got a report that something is moving on the left flank. It could be pretty sticky."

Across the room, Lieut. Colonel Richard Dennis was screaming into the telephone. "Goddam!" he fumed as he chewed on a cigar. "This is war! What's the matter?" The "matter" concerned an absent telegrapher in Yuma who had casually "gone to chow," thus preventing Dennis from launching any air strikes. "Doesn't anybody over there take this thing seriously?" he shouted into the field telephone.

Only one man in the camp remained totally calm, and that was Captain Duncan Christie-Miller of Britain's Royal Marines. The English contribution to a two-year, one-for-one exchange program, Christie-Miller spent D-day writing an article on European skiing. "I try to keep out of sight," he said. "Usually, when the press comes about, I take off my beret and insignia. Don't want to let anyone think you chaps are training British soldiers."

On the second day of the invasion, the reserves were reinforced by 4,000 regulars, many of them from Camp Le-jeune's 6th Marines. The war had been made slightly more interesting by the first appearance of 800 "aggressors" --60 of whom had succeeded in capturing two-thirds of Company M. But, like a desert phoenix, Company M had risen with the sun and was ready to move north toward Yermo. "Come on, men," urged Staff Sergeant Greg Anderson, 31, as he climbed aboard his tank. "We're out here to get practice so we can grab the oil."

Nothing Political. Officially, no parallels are drawn between Operation Alkali Canyon and the Middle East. Although most troops were lectured on Middle Eastern desert politics and survival--and the "aggressors" were clothed in khaki shirts and red collar insignia similar to those worn by the Libyan army, no one is supposed to talk about Arabs. "They told us not to say anything political," whispered Buffalo's Corporal Fisher. "We can't even use Israel as a hypothetical example." But, said Colonel Jerry O'Leary, "the Pentagon has a computer plan for the invasion of every civilized country in the world. The Middle East is the obvious powder keg, and we'd be fools if we didn't prepare."

By the end of the five-day war, the Marines had rid Argos of its 800 invaders through a series of helicopter combat assaults, tank sweeps and infantry patrols. Some 700,000 gallons of gasoline had been consumed, but Yermo had been contained and peace returned once more to the placid peninsula jutting between the Sea of Bristol and the Straits of Sardi.

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