Camp Pendleton

Living in Minnesota, we knew people in the military, and there were quite a number of individuals from our little town deployed to the warzone, but ours was not a “military community.” Living a stone’s throw away from Camp Pendleton in Southern California, this is definitely a military community. The main gates to the base open up into Fallbrook and Oceanside, and those cities are intrinsically intertwined with Camp Pendleton. Even living in Murrieta, more than a 30 minute commute from the nearest gate into the base, we know we are in Marine country. In our neighborhood, Marine families live in three of the first six houses of the block. Half of our closest friends have at least one spouse who is in the Marines.

Camp Pendleton covers almost 200 square miles, has 5 elementary schools, hundreds of acres of training terrain, shops, restaurants, and beautiful beachfront. The Marines stationed there number 40,000, but 80,000 people are on the base on any given day, including family members, vendors, visitors, and contractors. Tens of thousands of people, who are not Marines, count on the base for their livelihood.

I knew this. I knew the base was big. I knew there were lots of people who lived on the base. I knew that 80% of the Marines stationed here live in our communities instead of on base. I knew they trained there because we can sometimes hear the booms of the artillery and see the smoke in the distance. And I knew these Marines went off to fight wars with the community praying for their safe return. Yet even though I knew all this, everything I imaged Camp Pendleton to be was nothing compared to the reality of the place.

As part of Leadership North County, I had the opportunity to spend an entire day on the base (along with the other members of Leadership). We learned the history of the base, heard the statistics of all the people who are assigned to the base or work on the base, and the impact they have locally and globally. We learned about the increased efforts of the Marine Corps to ensure their soldiers are prepared for civilian life when they finish their enlistment (not when they “finish being a Marine,” because once a Marine always a Marine). But the two parts of the day that were the most impressive to me were having a chance to hear from some Marines about their careers and their hopes for their future, and then touring a training facility.

Four Marines, two women and two men, spent nearly an hour telling us their stories and answering our questions. They were candid, realistic about the pros and cons of the path they had chosen, and proud of the positions they held. All joined the Marines for different reasons and served in different capacities. One young woman joined the Marines after finishing law school because she wanted to use her profession to give back to her community and her country, so she passed up a lucrative career and a big paycheck with a law firm to become a soldier-lawyer. She can hold her own in a courtroom, and she’s fully prepared to march into battle if needed. The other woman had a husband (also a Marine) and three children, but she’s also been deployed twice to the warzone. She said she’s seen things she hopes her children will never have to see, but she’s proud of the role she played in making a difference. She said the press likes to cover the exciting stories but she wishes they would write more of the “boring” stories, the ones that show people living and working in places in Iraq and Afghanistan that were once devastated by war. Both women spoke openly, but not bitterly, of some of the obstacles and prejudice they encountered as females in a world that has traditionally been for men. 

One of the men on the panel had been with the Marines for over 30 years, and now his son is a Marine following in his footsteps. He joined the service as a means to get out of Detroit, and never left. The other young man hopes to attend college to pursue a degree in English when he finishes his term, but first he plans to make the most of his enlistment. For the next four years, he will be serving one year terms at four different United States Embassies around the world as a security guard. He had no idea where his first assignment would be, or where he would go after, but he was excited and ready for the adventure and the challenge.

After lunch in one of the mess halls (which was great – I wish the college cafeteria where I work offered just half of what the mess hall did), we were off to tour a training facility. My husband was in the Army during the first Gulf War in 1991, and prepped to be deployed as part of an armored division (that war was over so quickly that it ended before his unit could get there). When I told him about the training available to the soldiers at Camp Pendleton, he just shook his head in disbelief. His words echoed the words of our tour guide – a retired Marine who kept saying none of the technology used today was available when he was deployed and the training wasn’t nearly as realistic and intense. Not to say they didn’t train hard, because throughout history, the military has never been known to be slackers, but the level of technology and the complete immersion into battle scenarios for soldiers today is way beyond anything their predecessors had access to.

When the bus stopped, we were in the middle of one of the more remote areas of the base at the bottom of the foothills on the edge of what looked like a Middle Eastern village.  Short, boxy, sandstone colored buildings spread across the terrain, and hanging on the side of one of the taller buildings was a huge poster of Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai. The site consisted of this mock village, and of an indoor setting that replicated a variety of buildings from market stalls to cafes to living quarters.

Our guide at the facility brought us first to a classroom to explain how the simulations work and the technology involved, then brought us to another room where we watched a live training session going on in the indoor facility. Actors, other Marines, and even avatars are used to portray the different people the soldiers will encounter in the simulations. The avatars are projected onto the walls of the rooms, but triangulating software is used to make the avatars track the soldiers with their eyes and weapons as they enter the rooms. The avatars are programmed to respond to certain sounds and verbal commands, and behind the scenes programmers are also used to create other real-time responses.

We watched on large screens as soldiers patrolled through the indoor village, with actors mulling around and going about their business as they would in an actual Middle Eastern market.  The training sessions are videotaped for the units and commanders to review and use for learning tools. Some of the training scenarios simulate entering an area that is completely hostile, and other scenarios simulate civilians going about their everyday business, with only a few hostile forces interspersed. In these cases, the soldiers don’t know who is out to get them, where it will happen, or when the situation will turn bad. Depending on the current scenario being played out, the facility hires actors and extras of specified ethnicities to take part in the simulations. 

These actors are vital in helping to set the scene and lend to the cultural realism of the situation. The sets also include animatronics from the same designers as those who built many of the animated characters at Disneyland. Scents are piped into the facility to replicate the smells that soldiers will encounter when in different settings. These included everything from market place foods and spices to sewage, burning tires, and decaying bodies (fortunately, we were there during the market place scent).  

Interestingly, the soldiers are not just there to learn how to navigate the settings and pick out the bad guys; they are also there to learn about the cultural mores and to gain a better understanding for the impact they have. As an example, there are mock gardens and livestock pens interspersed throughout the village that the soldiers are warned to be aware of and to avoid whenever the situation allows as trampling on gardens or carelessly killing livestock could be taking away a family’s only means of eating. The guide stressed that whenever possible, it’s important for the soldiers to remain on the good side of the innocent people caught in the middle. Taking away a family’s livelihood could mean the difference between the villagers supporting and trusting the American soldiers, or despising them.

A “bomb” went off in one of the village buildings as we were watching the training session, and a man stumbled out, injured from the blast. The soldiers jumped into action securing the area and lending assistance to the injured man. Even knowing that something was going to happen at some point, the blast made most of us jump, and watching the action was intense. But that was the thing, all we had to do was watch. The soldiers in the training were being pushed to the limits of the real intensity they will face when deployed to the warzones.

The detail and care that goes into creating the sets, scenes and scenarios for the soldiers to train in is mind-boggling. The facility even has the ability to be changed into a variety of different settings and cultures from around the world depending on the current demands being placed on the Marines. The goal is for the soldiers to leave the facility already exposed to the worst they might see when deployed to the warzones. Every sense is stimulated during the training from hearing the languages and sounds native to the region, to being exposed to the (sometimes overpowering) smells that will be encountered. Makeup artists are on hand to add to the realism, and soldiers are shot at with paintball guns during the battles. It’s one thing to target practice and be in the best shape possible to prepare for the battlefield, it’s another to be submerged into the setting, navigate the narrow passageways of the village, see the people, hear the sounds, smell the scents, and deal with a simulated attack or raid. Touring the facility was unnerving, but it was also reassuring to know that our soldiers are being given the best training possible to prepare them to do the job we ask them to do.

I pass by the entrance to Camp Pendleton every day on my way to work, and I’ve always felt the presence of the base in our community, but the opportunity to spend the day there gave me a greater appreciation for what happens there on a daily basis, and the extent that our communities are intertwined with the Camp Pendleton communities. Whether you agree or not with what the Marines do and our involvement in the conflicts overseas, Camp Pendleton is a huge part of our economy and our society in Southern California, and hopefully here to stay. 

Our friend Linda welcoming her Marine husband
home from his deployment to Afghanistan.