CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - The smell of animal feces and putrid flesh emanate from machines as Marines patrol Compound G.
Dressed as an insurgent, Cpl. Doug Brown, an operator at the Infantry Immersion Trainer with Training Support Division, crouches behind a low wall and takes aim.
“Pop!”
Pink paint splatters across the wall, narrowly missing a Marine’s Kevlar helmet.
Scenarios like this occur regularly, as Brown helps train Marines preparing to deploy to Afghanistan.
The Infantry Immersion Trainer, remodeled and expanded in 2010, is made to look like an embattled Middle Eastern town through use of sets, and special effects such as projections, pyrotechnics, sounds and smells. Marines dress as insurgents and hide in the compound, waiting to take aim at the training Marines.
“I get to teach Marines by shooting them with simunition rounds,” said Brown. “Who wouldn’t want this job?”
Brown, from Virginia Beach, Va., said this job came naturally to him since he started playing paintball more than seven years ago.
Now, he gets to hone his skills and help teach his fellow Marines, Brown said.
“We are giving them the experience of knowing what they need to do to take care of a casualty when they go down,” said Brown. “By the end of the day, they know they’re combat effective, or they realize they aren’t.”
“The fact that we know the surroundings and the Marines don’t, makes it more realistic to being in country,” said Sgt. Andrew Hammet, an operator at the IIT with Training Support Division, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.
Getting to know the finer details of the compounds took time, said Brown.
“Mostly getting used to all the alley ways, dead ends and remembering which walls I can get over if I need to,” said Brown. “This gives me the home field-advantage.”
But with any job, there are good days to balance out the unpleasant.
“Today, when they said ‘Range Hot,’ I immediately started firing,” said Brown. “Usually there’s a long period of about 20 minutes where they’re walking into the town, but I was already in position firing at two guys pinned down as soon as we started.”
“Having the rest of their team come up behind trying to get those guys out was probably one of the most fun scenarios I’ve done so far,” said Brown.
Getting to practice his tactics every day in scenarios like these is one of the best things about his job, said Brown.
“I get to learn from the mistakes other people make, as well as getting the benefit of experiencing how different units work,” said Brown. “Each day is different, so we don’t have the chance to get complacent.”