NEW RIVER SCENE OF MOCK BATTLE

CAMP LEJEUNE - From a distance, the boat zooming across the New River
looked like any other powerboat out for a spin until it suddenly
wheeled around in a quick turn, kicked up a white wash and stopped
dead in the water. Then the sound of gunfire crackled across the water.

"It's definitely not pleasure boating," said Maj. Phillip Woodley, a
Marine Corps officer, as he watched from a distance.

Not when the 35-foot vessel is what the Marines call a RAC, short for
Riverine Assault Craft. No fishing reels sat on this gray-green
speedboat, just a crew of armed Marines and two .50-caliber machine
guns capable of spraying the shoreline with deadly fire.

This time, the gunfire and fancy boating were part of a training
exercise at sprawling Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base near
Jacksonville. Dubbed Rivex 01, the exercise was the largest river
exercise on the base in several years and brought together about 3,400
Marines and sailors, as well as some Army and Coast Guard units.

Amphibious assaults are nothing new, especially for Marines who
regularly deploy on Navy ships. What made the exercise different was
the size and the push way up a coastal river with hundreds of troops,
their equipment and supplies.

Woodley, commander of a small-craft unit at Camp Lejeune, said Marines
traditionally come in on the ocean, land on a beach and push inland.
Moving up a river gives the forces another option, he said.

"Instead of a river becoming an obstacle, we've actually made it an
asset to us," Woodley said in an interview on his floating support
base. "We've used it as a form of transportation."

Woodley said Marines need the training so they can adapt to countries
where they are likely to be assigned. His units will spend six weeks
this summer practicing in Argentina and Paraguay.

For five days this week, a small fleet of military vessels swarmed
over the New River in a mock campaign to oust revolutionaries from a
coastal country with few roads.

In this scenario, the Republic of Onslow was beleaguered by insurgents
in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Onslow who controlled the
countryside. The insurgents financed its activities with illegal
narcotics that were smuggled out on the river. The Marines'
assignment: Wipe them out.

The initial assault began from the USS Wasp, a Navy ship off the
coast. Troops and equipment moved ashore aboard large landing craft
and established a mobile base for river operations.

The riverine force then moved up river and set up a forward support
base near Rhodes Point, complete with a floating headquarters atop two
large Army barges from Fort Eustis, Va.

Two floating bridges tied up alongside the barges provided docking
space for RACs and nearly a dozen 18-foot open boats that have one-man
crews and can carry eight to 10 Marines. The smaller boats, each
powered by two 70-horsepower outboards, zipped along the shoreline to
discharge infantry or to stop boats operated by the revolutionary forces.

"We have a great time, even though it's serious," said Sgt.
Christopher Bailey, a Lakewood, N.J., native who has served in the
small-craft unit about a year and half.

Riding around on the water may not be pleasure boating but it beats
tramping through tick-infested woods or sitting in a dirty foxhole for
hours at a time. That duty went to members of the 2nd Tank Battalion
at Camp Lejeune, who played the bad guys.

The opposing Marines ran patrols, staged ambushes and set up defensive
positions. Some were stationed at the mock narcotics production
facility near Holly Ridge, and 48 others guarded a site near Ragged
Point where a tent represented a distribution point for illegal drugs.

The cool water of the New River was only a few hundred feet away
through the woods, but it may as well have been in another country for
all the good it did Lance Cpl. Nate Hansen. He sat in a hot dirty hole
beside a gravel road near Ragged Point, waiting for an attack through
a scrubby field baked by temperatures in the 90s.

Hansen, a mechanic, had a ready answer when asked what he got out of
the training exercise. "A lot of bug bites," he joked.

The final attack, which was expected about daybreak, finally came
about 11 a.m. By mid-day Wednesday, the last firefight was over and
the revolutionaries had been routed. All that was left was the cleanup
by the troops and an evaluation by commanders.