ELIZABETHTOWN, N.C. - Marine Staff Sgt. Erick Hodge shot one final question at the 30 sailors slumped on the bank of Cape Fear River after an eight-hour training exercise.
How many had left blank ammunition in the chamber of their guns?
Groans. About one-third of the sailors raised their arms.
When you're in Iraq, using live bullets, that's a good way to accidentally shoot your buddy, Hodge barked. "That's a bad day."
More groans from the Navy men.
It's one thing for sailors to climb the learning curve toward becoming a combat-ready unit. They're finding it's quite another to hump it with the tough and aggressive Marine Corps.
Since early June, about 100 Virginia Beach-based sailors have trained at Camp Lejeune to transform from a collection of fleet sailors and specialists into a tight river patrol force. It moves regular sailors closer to combat than anytime in a generation.
Lt. Cmdr. Mike Egan, executive officer of Riverine Squadron 1, based at Little Creek, nodded along with the Marine's blunt debriefing on a recent weekend morning.
"It's not personal; i t's business," Egan said. "Their sole purpose and dedicated interest is to get us to come back alive."
The U.S. Navy has a long history in riverine combat, but little since waging war in the Vietnamese delta in the 1960s and early ' 70s.
The Marine Corps has handled the bulk of river patrol missions in unstable nations, particularly in Latin America. In Iraq, the infantrymen established river patrols along the Euphrates near Baghdad shortly after the 2003 invasion.
Hodge, a 12-year Marine, was with the first deployment to river duty in Iraq in 2004. Two years later, he was in Fallujah. "We broke the brush for the rest of the platoon," he said.
They returned home with valuable battle experience. Now, Hodge is training sailors on tactics and experiences learned along the Euphrates. The Navy unit worked through ways to move its 36-foot boats across land, repair jet engines in the shallow waters and spot ambushes.
After months of initial training at Little Creek, the new generation of river rats now face Marine instructors and their habit of telling the unvarnished truth.
Marines "take for granted being infantry," Hodge said. "They're learning that."
And for sailors, it's been an adjustment.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Matthew Freeman, a lanky redhead from Modesto, Calif., said he joined the Navy two years ago "so I wouldn't have to go to combat."
Yet after spending his short career in the fleet, working as a firefighter aboard the destroyer Bainbridge, the Navy tapped the 20-year-old for its new force.
Among the perils of being on a Marine base, Freeman has discovered, sailors were scolded for acting up in the chow line - while the Marines waited quietly at parade rest for their food.
"You get a lot of weird looks," Freeman said.
At the start of infantry training, he and several buddies shaved their heads. He's since let it grow back out to sailor length. Still, he's adopted the infantry ethos for his gunner job: "Make sure my gun fires and take care of my boat crew."
Petty Officer 3rd Class Josh Holder spent four years in the Army before switching to the sea service. He wanted to join the special warfare community but did not make the cut on his first attempt.
Holder, 25, worked his way into the riverine force, where he serves as a boat driver. Some sailors haven't shed their less formal, blue-water attitude - but the Marines are trying to break them, he said.
"They all have that gung-ho mentality," he said. "I've absolutely got to see what the other side is."
During the recent training, two squadrons of sailors and their Marine handlers converged on the swollen banks of the Cape Fear River.
They bivouacked on a state park with a boat ramp and a lock, about a mile from small downtown Elizabethtown.
The sailors left behind air-conditioned berthing and hot chow lines. They deployed for the weekend in nylon tents and ate MREs, or meals ready to eat. They split into groups and ran night and day missions.
The first group piled into four patrol boats at dusk and plied the muddy waters.
Gunnery Sgt. Tom Scudder, who led his infantry unit into the bloody second battle for Fallujah, waited and watched for action from the opposite bank, under a full moon.
The riverine sailors sensed an ambush and stopped short around a bend. They slipped off the boat, crept through the woods and took the enemy by surprise.
The woods glowed underneath a drifting flare and cracked with practice M-16 rounds.
Scudder nodded in approval. "Exactly how I would have done it," he said. "Exactly."
The morning proved more difficult for the four-boat patrols.
The three-hour mission began smoothly enough, until a loud improvised explosive device blew up along the river bank less than a mile from camp. Mock insurgents opened up on the surprised and confused unit.
Down went the boat captain and starboard gunner on the six-man crew aboard one of the lead boats. Chaos and profanity reigned.
Cpl. Jeff Raider, a riverine vet training the sailors, said later that the crew handled the mission well - until the shooting started.
"When they got into contact, they lost their minds," Raider said.
Marine training means working hard under stress and respecting a strict chain of command, he said. "These guys," he added, "joke around too much."
At the debriefing, Scudder offered some advice to the weary squids. Move toward the fire.
"You sat there and did nothing," Scudder said. "You have weapons. Use them. Violence. You need to shoot."
Egan said the Navy understands the squadron is still learning. They are scheduled to relieve a Marine reserve unit in Iraq in March.
"You can't question orders," Egan said. "Sometimes you can, on an aircraft carrier 500 miles off the coast of Pakistan."
Some are beginning to grasp what combat means.
"I have great respect for what they do," said Petty Officer 2nd Class Tyrone Cole, a gunner. "When you get here, it has to be that way." By LOUIS HANSEN,
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