Tonight on 48 hours.
How many people saw Rambo?
Are you ready for war?
I'm going to be thinking about my gas mask and my rifle because I think those two are going to be my best friends.
Join a young Marine Sergeant at this squad.
Come and show that now. Team.
From the home front to the front lines in Saudi Arabia.
Some of them are going to get hurt, some of them get wounded, and some of them will probably die.
We need to get this wire. Let's go.
Hopefully everybody make it back alive.
Meet those they left behind.
I miss him. I love him.
We don't have a date to know when he's coming back or anything. That's what's the hardest part.
Daddy!
You ever get scared?
Everybody's scared.
We have a job to do.
To the dogs!
To the dogs!
Men for men, we will kick ass and paint names.
Okay.
Good evening.
Dan Rather reporting tonight from Geneva, Switzerland.
Will it be war after all?
Today's six hour meeting here between Secretary of State Baker and Foreign Minister Aziz raised hopes of a possible diplomatic solution.
Only to have those hopes dimmed at the end of the day when both sides said they had found no common ground.
Aziz wouldn't even accept the letter of his
to Saddam Hussein from President Bush.
In and around the Gulf, nearly 400,000 American troops stand now on the brink of history, ready for the worst if in the end the worst comes.
Tonight, join the last wave of Marines on a harsh journey from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina to the Saudi Desert.
Their mission, as with every other American in the region, to force a peace or fight a war.
If you go to Saudi Arabia, you find yourself in a shooting mat.
At Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, U.S. Marines aren't playing war games anymore.
They are preparing for real war.
Everybody is going to be challenged by the operation that we're conducting in Saudi Arabia.
It's just that big and the desert is just that tough.
Members of Alpha Company of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, are next in line to join Operation Desert Shield.
You will certainly have the every opportunity to defend yourself while you're in Saudi Arabia.
You're being paid imminent danger pay for a reason.
We're there to get the job done.
It would be a lot better brief if I could stand up here and tell you when you're coming home, you're coming home when the job is done.
I'm an infantry squad leader.
He's Sergeant Curtis Thompson.
I've got 10 people counting my corpsmen.
I'm all green, all color is blue.
I've got some real good people I think.
Let's go people, max effort.
Max effort, let's go.
Thompson is 25 years old.
He joined the Marine Corps when he was 19.
What kind of a relationship do you have with your squad?
I take care of them.
I don't want anybody to mess with them.
Help each other out.
Don't run off and leave each other.
I try to train them to the best of my ability.
Hey teamwork, get over the bar and help your buddy.
The only thing we're trying to get our guys to do is build teamwork.
Come on man, it's all in your head.
That's it, there you go.
You know, strong ones help the weak ones and so on.
You ain't going to do us no good if you can't be what we got to be.
You got to be able to do this doc.
It's not going to do any good if you just have one man that makes it.
You know, if you leave the other nine or ten behind.
You can do it, for real.
Thompson is part of a new generation of soldiers.
You've never been in combat.
No.
Does that make any difference?
The biggest worry that I have personally is that because of the lack of combat experience,
I want to make damn sure that when we do this that I don't make any mistakes.
It's going to get my people killed.
The major thing was the training.
If you can have time to rehearse, that's a major deal.
Newton, what's your job?
Near-side security.
Dutch.
Near-side security.
What's your job?
I'm staying with you.
Radio man, right?
Here's what it is.
We're going up, we cut the wire.
Boom, boom.
You cut the wire.
Right there, second team.
They cut the wire.
Clip, clip.
They cut the wire, they pull it back.
Two men go through.
Boom.
As soon as you get on the other side of that wire, you drop.
The one thing you don't want to lose is momentum.
You don't want to lose momentum.
If you ever stop, you're screwed.
Your buddy gets zapped.
You cannot stop what you're doing.
All right?
And go back and say, hey, man, are you all right?
All right?
You can't do that.
Marines don't leave her dead and they don't leave her wounded.
But when you're assaulting through there, that's for afterwards.
What do you think the people in your squad are expecting?
They understand that they're going over there and there's a possibility they could have to go to war.
And when the word finally comes down and they say, yes, your unit is leaving and here's your time frame that we think you'll be leaving.
On one hand, it's like, what happens if something happens, we have to go into combat or people are going to get hurt?
Are you going to die?
Are you going to make it back?
And on the other hand, it's, hey, I've been training for this.
I've been sitting around waiting for this for years.
Let's go.
But it will be later in our 48 hours before Alpha Company gets its call to go to Saudi Arabia.
Go one more time.
Hidden in the Saudi desert.
Let's go.
Go.
Go.
The tip of the spear.
Watch out on the right flank.
Move out on the left flank.
These Marines hit the Saudi sand back in August.
We first found out we were coming here about a week or so after the invasion.
Hey, just keep pushing through that obstacle.
Hey, if you don't f----- wake up, I'm going to come and knock your f----- skull in, all right?
Sergeant Antonino Shamimi's squad.
I don't want to prom in that minefield.
Searches for dummy mines on an infiltration course.
Roger, Alpha, one, five, minor troops attacking from the south.
Marines fighting on the ground will be supported by Harrier jets.
We've got two Harriers on station right now.
Captain Houston, nicknamed Dallas Mills, guides the jet fighters from a position on the ground.
What I'll be doing is talking their eyes onto the target south.
Accuracy is critical.
I can direct them to within 300 meters of the troops.
Coming down behind them.
This is probably going to be the most critical phase for us as a light armored infantry force.
Our ability to mass our fire support in support of the infantry troops.
You got dash one? Excuse me.
Okay, there's dash one and two. Okay, one and two, I've got you.
Continue to.
And, Lee, you've got a good target soft, you know, you're cleared hot.
How accurate are the bombs are going to be dropping?
The systems in the aircraft are such that it's going to get there within 100 feet, even if it's dropping 10,000.
Okay, good hit. One, two, one, two.
Elbows feel like hamburger meat right now.
I love it.
A lot of the guys back in the States, they're getting washed once a day, eating three hot meals,
and thinking they're going to accomplish great wonders when they come over here.
And it's just not that easy. It's just about hard work.
Sergeant, Mimi, where you at?
A lot of practice.
We're going to put you down in the hole down here, and I'm going to have the tank commander direct the treads,
so the treads come right over the top of your hole.
Show your confidence that you can withstand a tank running over the top of your hole.
Come on, Sergeant, maybe.
You're going to see this thing probably won't cave in on these guys. I swear.
Track right over that bad boy.
A one-man fighting home. It's not going to cave in on them.
Did you get a mouthful of sand though?
Yeah, I did. I got a mouthful, earful, everything full.
That wasn't that bad.
Wasn't that bad?
No.
You see that thing starting to crack right here? You notice that?
You ever get scared?
Oh, everybody's scared. Everybody is. I'm scared too.
If it comes to it, could you kill somebody?
I'll do my job, and that includes having to shoot at someone, and we shoot the kill, and then I'll do it.
You have family back home, wife and two sons.
One's 20 months old and one's a month old.
So you haven't seen the...
No, I haven't seen him yet, no.
How'd you get to work?
Red Cross Message said that baby was doing fine, all the parts were attached and everything worked properly, so that was the best news.
I couldn't change the situation I was in, so I was happy for what I did have and hopeful for the future when I can see him.
Everybody back off now.
You worry that if it comes to a war, whether or not people are going to be behind you?
Mr. Fox, Fox got another one.
I don't really worry if some people are protesting us or against us.
I mean, that's why we're here, to make sure people remain free and they have that right to say whatever they like.
Did you ever think in your wildest dreams that you would be doing this?
I never thought that we would actually get the call.
22-year-old Corporal Karen Sralazzo got the call just a few weeks before Christmas.
For the first time since the Korean War, a U.S. president called the reserves into action.
I think everyone's lives were very disrupted.
Some 30,000 Marines are rolling out of Camp Lejeune on this latest deployment.
Ten thousand of them are reservists, policemen, college students, stockbrokers, mothers, ordinary Americans now facing the possibility of war.
The practice has been...
Yeah.
Do I have your attention, all of you?
We told that we were going to Saudi Arabia.
We were leaving almost within a week and that we were going to be pretty close to the action.
This day of instruction will be the most important you will have while you're here at Camp Lejeune.
Short jerky pulls to the rear.
Four years ago, Sralazzo joined the Marine Reserve's 6th Communication Battalion, headquartered near her home on Long Island.
I didn't think I'd be getting into conflict.
It seemed like a pretty good deal at the time.
Yeah, I thought that I was going to take the money from the G.I. bill, graduate college,
make hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and instead we've been activated and we're going to do what we've been trained to do.
How many people saw Rambo? If you care it like the movies, you're going to come back in a pine box.
I was trained as a communications operator. Everything that I do is basically in the middle of the field.
You find a target, you shoot it, and the target goes down.
By law, women cannot go into combat, but there's no law saying they can't be attacked.
The target drops dead.
Ready!
They told us years ago when I joined, you know, women, oh, don't worry, women will never be put in a combat position, but that's not the way it is.
Get your strong hand to weapon, girl.
Put a knife in your hand, I'll kick you dead in your butt.
Look down range, go.
What was life like for you before you came here?
The line's hot, let's shoot!
I had just started a new job, and I went into work every day with a business suit and a beautiful blouse and pearls and earrings.
Oh, lady, put your magazine away.
I don't...
Don't fazz out, put your magazine away, put it away. Put it down the couch.
I was looking for a perfume company, which is the epitome of femininity.
Do you feel inadequate sometimes?
No, I was going to be a woman, I was going to be a lady, and I was going to be gentle, and that came to an abrupt end.
You, shoot again. Goodbye.
I hadn't shot a rifle, actually, in a long time.
I'm a C.E.A. The Reserves only shoot one day a year.
That's just useless. Goodbye, shoot again.
And all of a sudden I'm thrown into it, and I'm having this, this mask, and they're yelling at me.
It made me nervous. It got me upset.
In trying to meet the many challenges that it takes to be a Marine, do you ever find yourself trying to be like a man?
At first I thought that that's what you had to do.
I thought that I wouldn't be accepted unless I acted like a man, talked like a man.
I found out a little later, I got maybe a little older and more mature, I realized I was never going to really fit in as a man.
Some people wear earrings, wear earplugs, so I kind of threw that all away one day.
The posters for the Marines say, the few that are proud of the Marines.
I always thought the fewer the prouder, the women Marines.
Well, I could say, but I'm proud also that she feels this way.
On Long Island, a mother and father fear for their daughter.
Our greatest worry is that she'll be hurt or killed.
I'm glad that I don't have a husband right now. I don't have any children, but I feel for the people who do.
And my parents was hard enough.
I'm really kidding.
Karen was engaged just one week before she was called up for active duty.
Her fiance, Jim, came to visit her at Camp Lejeune during our 48 hours.
Just to see the both of you sitting here, it looks like you're out of uniform, Jim.
Yeah, yeah. Well, everyone's made comments about that.
I'm sort of the woman left behind, so to speak.
It's kind of a role reversal.
Supposedly you're a man and it shouldn't affect you as much, but that's not true, at least in my case, I can say.
I mean, it really drives me crazy.
I wake up in the middle of the night and it's just constantly on my mind.
Oh, God.
Take your mask for a seal. If you do not have a seal, raise your hand.
Saddam Hussein has never met a weapon he does not like.
Quickly now, quickly now.
Are you scared?
Of Iraq?
Yes.
Of the nuclear biological chemical threat? I'm very scared.
Thank you, Dorman. Close both doors behind you.
Be confident that the gear you have will save your life.
Hold your breath, hold your arms, and remove your mask.
45, 43, 42, 42, 42.
Halt.
You feel fine until you put this mask on and it pushes all the gas into your face.
You start losing it. You won't remember what to do. You start getting nervous.
But once you start getting that down, you feel much more confident.
Right now, after this exercise, I feel much more confident.
Do not blink your eyes.
Even the brave cry here.
As you're on that plane about to make a landing in Saudi Arabian soil,
what thoughts will be going through your mind? What will you be thinking about?
I'm going to be thinking about my gas mask and my rifle,
because I think those two are going to be my best friends when I'm out there.
At home, a call brings painful news.
You leaving in two hours? You leaving now in two hours?
Hold on, I'm going to speak to you, all right?
I can't believe you're going either.
I can't. Bye.
Like that. Keep that spirit up.
Please help other people around you like you've been doing, okay?
So I hope you're home safe, sound, and maybe have a better world after all this is over.
All right, sweetheart. Love you. Bye-bye.
Our first checkpoint out over the hill here, that's checkpoint red.
Hot dog stands for enemy contact.
Back on the front line in Saudi Arabia.
Make sure any night vision devices are checked.
Sergeant Shamimi is getting ready for night patrol.
Okay, there we go.
About four to six bodies go out.
I got everybody in the immediate area of our position and just make sure that everything is secure.
Go ahead and insert your magazine.
Let's go.
There's two or three patrols going out every night.
Keep them tight. Go up. Check it out. I'm waiting.
You got your men doing what?
We stop here and listen. Make sure everything's fine. If so, we'll call it in.
I'm sorry, of course.
Get sex on the line for me.
This is Bravo 4, over.
Bravo 5 is Bravo 4, be advised. Green, over.
17S3, interrogative. Is your S3 available? Over.
Battalion headquarters, the combat operations center.
This is where my operations officer and executive officer fight from.
This is the battalion commander, Colonel Jim Maddus.
What goes on here?
This is where we coordinate all aspects of the battalion, units, reconnaissance units, scouting units out in front of us.
And if you were to take the battalion into combat, you would direct it from here?
Well, I would certainly be here at least once every few hours.
If it comes to war, have you decided who you're going to send forward first?
We know who's going to lead in certain situations, and we're all rehearsed at it. We're ready to go.
We're going to send somebody first. That is the most dangerous place to be, isn't it?
That's if the enemy can see us. I'm not planning on letting them see my men coming.
Bravo 5, we are reconning the ridge.
Check that out there, was it? It's just trash.
Better with carmine.
Do you have live ammunition in that magazine?
Yes, we do.
If you considered somebody an enemy out here, what would you do?
We would carry out whatever level of retaliation we needed to.
Do you have the authority to do that?
Yes, I can call the shots out here if I had to. Let's go.
But security patrols cannot defend the battalion from every enemy threat.
Stay true to FM 99.9, the OASCAN station on the Desert Shield Network.
I'm NBC, nuclear, biological, and chemical.
NBC officer Larry Snyder's mission is to protect the Marines from Iraq's biological and chemical weapons.
He's used it so much, it's part of his conventional warfare.
What's the first sign that you've been attacked?
Bad headaches, difficulty in seeing, drooling, runny nose, tightness in chest.
Basically all your muscle system is...your nervous system isn't working properly and it stops controlling your muscles and then you die.
You get the mask on quick enough, you're not going to be a fatality.
Can you put the mask on in the insets?
Yeah, it's over there.
That's time you can see.
Okay. You just say gas.
I say gas and you go.
Okay. Gas.
That's it.
Well, it was 857.
Over that?
Eight seconds, 5700.
You made it. And you're allowed to tell about it.
How's your morale?
Oh, always good.
How about when you found out there wasn't going to be a rotation?
My kids are young. I'll get home. I'll be home to them.
And we still got a lot of years left and a lot of things to do.
All these guys out here, we'll all make it home and we'll take care of lost time when we get back.
You believe that and you'll all make it home?
Yeah, you got to.
All right, bring it in real quick. Quickly.
All right, it's the last weekend.
All right, now go out and have a good time.
Go out and see a movie.
Eat a pizza.
Eat a sub.
Go to the mall. Look at the women.
Come back.
And we're getting ready to roll.
Now Alpha Company Marines know they leave in a few days.
So this is the last weekend of liberty for Sergeant Thompson and his squad before they head to Saudi Arabia.
Hey, listen up.
You get in trouble, you get busted, you call me up, I come get you.
Now you're going to hate me when I come get you, but I'm going to come get you.
All right, it's better me come get you than them.
I don't want nobody getting drunk, getting stupid, getting in trouble.
Let's go over to those swings, okay?
Sergeant Thompson spends his last weekend at home with his wife Angie, son Joshua, and the family bulldog Max.
How is he while he's waiting?
Grumpy.
Grumpy?
Yes.
What have the two of you done to get ready for this departure?
Argue.
Well, we have because everything's got to be done, but like he was telling me, he needs time to himself.
And I think, well, we should be preparing.
We shouldn't be spending as much time together as a family and everything, but.
I think mentally, to keep it from being such a shock that both of us tend to draw it into ourselves a little bit.
We're still together and we still try to have fun, but you're trying to prepare yourself for that mental shock of all of a sudden the person you really care and love being totally out of your life except for letters and mail.
Now how about Joshua?
Is he aware of what's?
We've tried to tell him and try to prepare him that every time you mention that daddy's gone away, he gets upset.
And he starts whining because I don't want my daddy to leave me.
To me, that's one of the hardest things to do because, you know, all of a sudden one minute he's there and the next day he treats you, you know, like it's like he's almost afraid of you sometimes because you're going to have to leave.
How many of you are going to be leaving this week for Saudi Arabia?
For many of the Marines on their way to the Arabian desert, it's last call for cold beer.
And a patriotic syndrome.
What do you think about what's going on over there?
Personally, I don't think we should because the way I look at it is that we rushed right over there as soon as all this started going on and we backed this guy into a corner.
Saddam.
Saddam, he has either got to come out fighting.
I would much rather fight this guy today than have my son who's sitting over watching TV fight him 10 or 15 years down the road.
I think they should have at least tried to work it out.
Now we are we're stuck.
We can't pull back.
He won't pull back.
So, you know, nobody's going to give.
Neither side.
I don't I don't think we're going to resolve this argument here.
No, we never do.
We always end up getting huffy and puffing mad.
Because I feel that I'm right because I'm a civilian and he's a Marine and he always talks in Marine talk, you know, like they're supposed to talk.
You know, Marines have to say certain things.
They have to think certain things.
Oh, lonely.
As you know, some of us are going to be leaving tonight and the rest of the battalion will be following very quickly.
Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Gombar, commander of the First Battalion, eight Marines, addresses his troops at the last formation.
I've talked about the Iraqi threat in the past.
I don't want anybody to be under any illusions about the threat that we're facing over there.
The Iraqis have a very powerful army.
It's well equipped.
They have lots of their soldiers who have seen combat recently.
But I don't want to let any of you build up the threat to be something that it isn't.
I want you to take the threat seriously, but he ain't ten feet tall.
He's got a lot of weaknesses.
I want to wish each of you the best of luck, godspeed, and semper five.
Take care of one another now.
That's what it's all about.
We'll continue.
It's really hard to explain to her, you know, that I've got to leave, I'm going to be gone for a certain amount of months.
Nobody knows how long you're going to be gone.
Of course, nobody knows if you're going to come back.
She is 17. He is 19.
Now Ray Nolan is about to have a baby.
Lance Corporal Michael Nolan is about to leave for Saudi Arabia.
We're high school flea hearts. I never thought we'd be married and have a baby.
Yeah, yeah.
We have a big boy over there.
Do you have a boy's name?
Yes.
What's his name?
Michael, buddy.
Michael?
Yes.
Okay, Michael. Yeah.
There we go.
You got him?
I don't know. I think it takes more of her than it does after me, but that's fine with me.
Are you holding on to him, dear, ma?
You always have the feelings of how you're going to raise it.
You know, I've got to base my future on his future.
That thing over there is going to make a special tar heel out of you.
Amazing, isn't it?
I already miss you.
It's Wednesday evening now, and Michael thinks he's going to have to leave on Saturday.
Be right back, okay?
Okay.
Is this your first?
Yes, ma'am.
Of course, everybody wants their son to be a lawyer or a doctor or, you know, that type of deal.
We're going to call it 714.
I guess you've got to follow in tradition.
My father was a Marine.
I'm a Marine.
I guess he's going to be a Marine.
What about the thoughts of having to leave here so soon after the baby was born?
That's a killer. That's really a heartbreaker.
Twenty-one years of luck.
I'm proud that Michael's a Marine.
Sometimes you've got to do things you don't want to do.
I guess this is one of those times.
LaRae, are those tears because you don't want to leave?
Yeah.
We get hurt more than having a baby.
Hey, Barbara, this is an emergency real quick.
Miss LaPoole in room 205 does not have a ride home, and she said she was going to drive herself,
but you know she did have surgery, and that's not recommended.
Do you know if maybe you all can make some arrangements?
Her husband left about two days ago.
She's supposed to leave at before 1 o'clock, okay?
Okay, they're going to get you a ride home.
Lena LaPoole is 19, and she's just given birth to her third child, a girl.
She has a four- and a two-year-old at home.
I'll make it. I'll do it.
You know, I believe in myself, so I've got to do it.
We can't make it better for them.
We cannot tell them everything's going to be okay.
We can't give those kind of reassurances because we don't know any more than they do.
I'm strapped here.
Lena, you're thinking about your husband right now?
Yeah. If only he was here to pick me up.
Yeah.
What are your thoughts about him now?
How much I miss him and love him.
The military has a support system to solve many problems, but they can't bring the men home,
and there are families which fall through the emotional and economic cracks.
It's unbelievable. Some of them are only like 17 and 18 years old.
I think right now the thing that most women are going through is financial difficulty.
Leslie Giat's husband, Stephen, has been gone since August.
Okay. Do you want me to come to New Bern?
She's part of a network of wives working to help each other.
In fact, many wives here now receive less in meal allowances since their husbands were deployed,
making a tight budget even tighter.
Military families have even turned to food stamps.
These women have no money. They have children.
They don't even know how they're going to put the next meal on the table for them.
They have no heat. I have seen it all, this deployment. If it can happen, I've seen it.
Leslie Giat herself has been balancing money problems while caring for two-year-old Ann Clair and three-year-old Elena.
Want to come up here? Yep. Okay.
Oh! Oh! Now show me what you've got there. What's that?
That's a boat.
Whose boat is that? Daddy on there.
Your daddy's on that boat? Yeah, in the helicopter.
He's a crew chief on a helicopter. That's pretty exciting, isn't it?
Oh! So they can crash any time. I mean, I live with that every day.
The last time he called, he told me that I needed to prepare myself for the worst, and I tried to do that.
If he should die while he's over there, we will make it.
I mean, I don't know. I just pray that I'm never one of those that the military car pulls up out front and comes in and says,
I'm sorry, you know, I just, I hope I'm never one of those.
Yeah. Remember how it was swinging on me? Yeah.
What did he miss most about him? Just his presence. It's comforting. His presence is just comforting.
Come on, pick up your teeny-shoes, nearly. But they miss their daddy.
They really do. The phone rings, and Elena wants to talk to her daddy.
And if somebody knocks on the door, she says, is that my daddy?
And when she goes to bed at night, she says, is my daddy coming home tomorrow?
And it's questions like that that I don't have an answer for.
I'm just fortunate, because at least I have my children every day, and he doesn't have that.
When did you get this tape? About a week or so before Thanksgiving.
Okay, here we go, girls.
Elena, get my ham. Well? Pretty dasty, go for it, Elena.
Good job. Hi, daddy. Hi, daddy. Hi, daddy. Hi, daddy. Hi, daddy.
Hi, daddy. Hi, daddy. Hi, Elena. Hi, Claire. I'm going to get a mermaid.
Hey, dad, I'm going to get a mermaid doll. Daddy, I'm coming. Daddy?
Daddy can't sleep tonight.
Hi, daddy. Hi, daddy. Hi, daddy.
Don't worry. I love you. I miss you so much. Take care of yourself.
I know every one of you does not want to go to war any more than I do.
You've got to get it. You've got to get it.
But I'm proud of the fact, number one, that you're standing out there ready to do what has to be done.
I'll be back. I'll be back, too.
And I'm proud of the fact that if we did have to go to war, we're ready.
Finally, Alpha Company and others from the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, are heading to Saudi Arabia.
I think they're well aware of the dangers that potentially lie ahead.
Battalion Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Gombar.
One of the most difficult things that I have to deal with is facing the possibility of sending these men into combat.
And as I look through these faces of these young 18- and 20-year-old Marines,
I have to think that if we go to combat, a lot of these guys aren't going to be coming back,
or at least they're not going to be coming back in the same shape that they went over.
And that tears at me. That's a real sobering thought.
It's a long, tiring trip for Sergeant Thompson and the other Marines aboard.
7,000 miles, 24 hours after departing Camp Lejeune, they arrive in Saudi Arabia.
Well, now the real fun begins.
So you're here? First impressions?
Glad and sandy.
Before this deployment is over, the entire 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force,
some 30,000 men and women, will make this trip.
What do? Whistle. What more?
I've got to make sure all the troops got all their gear. I've got to make sure I've got all my troops.
I've got a lot of work to do tonight.
Line up along here in 2nd and 1st and face it that way.
I've got to make sure that we place the sleeves and take care of the night before we kick off
whatever we're going to have to do tomorrow morning.
He's got the crowbar.
First day in Saudi Arabia and their first mission, pitching tents.
F1 on the left side.
Apparently something not included in combat training.
Anybody here got any collars?
All this horse s*** is on here, you've got to move it over in the sand.
You've got to stretch everything down and get it pushed down.
Go that way.
All they've got to do is hold it and the guys on the outside put the poles in.
Just pull that all the way around.
I need somebody to help me pull it back this way.
Teamwork. The only way to go. Marine Corps way.
A few tents away.
For those of you that don't know it right now, we are planning to move north.
Lt. Col. Gombar is with battalion officers preparing for the future.
We're moving up into positions north of here where we will conduct training
and we'll go into a defensive perimeter.
Do you expect to be on the front line before it's all over?
There's not a doubt in my military mind.
If the shooting war starts, if it gets down to blows being thrown,
I expect to be having tea somewhere in Kuwait by the middle of June.
I would bet on it.
Commander in Chief, give me the word.
Give me the word. Saddam. Saddam.
I'm meeting his maker. Meeting his maker.
Allah. Allah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
But for now, Sgt. Thompson's enemy is the desert.
What are you saying? I'm not messing around.
It's so fine. It gets into everything. You can't keep it out of nothing.
It's like powder.
You walk in and it blows up. The vehicle comes by and it blows up.
You've got to face the facts. Anything that has moving parts, like a weapon,
that sand gets in there and it's going to clog it up.
So in order to keep the weapons where they can fire, if they have to fire them,
you're going to have to continually clean them.
You're thinking a lot about back home?
It's hard because you have dual jobs.
You're a father and a husband on one side and you're a Marine and a sergeant on the other.
I have responsibility with these guys now.
Do you think about death, dying in battle?
All the time.
I don't know if you're going to make it out alive or not, but I still have a job to do.
But with this platoon here, our team here and all, how can you go wrong?
These guys over here aren't bulletproof just because they belong to me.
Some of them are going to get hurt, some of them get wounded, and some of them probably die.
There's nothing you can do about it. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen.
Are you in your own minds ready to die if necessary for your country?
The way teamwork and everything works, you're really giving your life to the people around you,
the people on your right and your left.
It doesn't come down to one country against another.
It comes down to you and your friends against somebody else.
Two weeks and many desert miles after Phil Jones left the Marines of Alpha Company at their first staging area,
we caught up with them at a bleak and windswept ammo dump in a secret location behind the lines.
They're here to guard the post and help ready it for war, but word is they'll soon be called north
to where it all will happen, if it happens.
Meanwhile, they're still adjusting to the cruel and capricious Saudi Desert.
We didn't think it'd be down in the 30s and stuff.
This is cold. It's really cold.
It's what, low freezing?
It was about 2099.
Most of the time, these men simply play Desert Shield's number one war game, the waiting game.
And it can be very dangerous when it leaves too much room for every soldier's enemies,
fears, questions and doubts, endless doubts.
Not knowing is, but that's what's really getting to all of us now, not knowing when we're going to do it.
I ain't afraid to say I'm scared. I'm sure a lot of people are, you know,
because there's a lot of different things that could happen.
I myself, I do think about it a lot.
It's not fear. I don't feel fear.
For Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Gumbar, the enemy within has another face.
What I feel is responsibility, I think.
I'm having never been in combat. I'm curious about how I'm going to respond in combat.
I guess my biggest concern is that I can live up to the expectations that my Marines have of me,
because I know they're going to live up to the expectations I have of them.
There's little question that the men of Alpha Company and the hundreds and thousands of other American men and women
serving in the Persian Gulf have the training and the weapons for the battles that may lie ahead.
What's unknown is whether this largely untested expeditionary force,
indeed, whether America as a whole has the temperament for the horrors that could come.
The key question is psychological preparedness.
Back at Marine headquarters, veteran CBS News correspondents Bob Simon and David Martin offered some insights.
I think one thing that Marines are not accustomed to doing is to sit around in uncomfortable defensive postures. Marines want to act.
Being psychologically ready for combat is basically being psychologically ready to be scared out of your wits.
And the overwhelming majority of these Marines have never seen combat.
And whether or not the Marines or whether or not the American public is psychologically ready for war,
psychologically ready to see a casket come home, I'm not so sure you ever can really get ready for that until the moment comes.
Bob, you expect Marines to be gung-ho and to say and to genuinely feel that they're ready to fight at a moment's notice.
But again, compared to Marines you've seen in other situations, do they have a clear vision of being psychologically ready?
I think everyone's very scared. I see these young guys who've never been anywhere close to a shot fired in anger before.
Going up to a...
Ask them, what's it really like? What does it sound like? What does it look like? What does it smell like? What's it going to be like?
Around the fire with Alpha Company, one such master sergeant stepped forward.
Getting rare to find anybody in the Marine Corps who had Vietnam experience, isn't it?
We're getting scarce. We're getting old and scarce.
Well, when these young Marines ask you, what's it like? What's it really like in war? What do you tell them?
I try to tell them in a way that's not going to scare them to death, but in a way that is reality,
that they're going to see some things that they've probably never seen in their life before.
And when this is over they may never see again.
I'd like to be able to take every Marine home with me that came over with me.
And honestly, I know that if it comes to war, I know that's not going to happen.
We're all praying that it doesn't come to war.
But we're resolved that if it does come to war, we're going to do what we have to do.
So with the U.S. and U.N. deadline for an Iraqi pullout just six days away,
Secretary Baker said here in Geneva tonight that the path of peace remains open.
He did not have to add that the road to war remains open as well.
When this crisis ends, however it ends, the consequences will be far reaching for the world's economy,
for international security, and for the young men and women you met tonight at the brink of history.
I'm Dan Radder reporting from Geneva.
Later a special one-hour edition of America Tonight will have more on today's events.
That's 48 hours for this week.
Here's a look ahead to our next report.
I'm an addict.
Young Americans growing up too fast.
We graduated from jumping roofs to fighting people and shooting them.
Dying too soon.
Has become a victim of the times.
On Main Street.
Robbing, stealing.
I got so many traps.
A struggle to survive.
I was killed a pain.
And succeed.
Time to kill him.
The struggle doesn't lie.
This could be your time.
Against the odds.
I guess I was one of the lucky ones or one of the few who made it back.
Next week.