Military Training

Sweating like fat men in a steam bath, the aspiring drill instructors collapsed to the ground, puffing and groaning, unaccustomed to the rigors of a 4-mile trot in full gear through the hilly terrain at Camp Pendleton. A few yards away, some officers fussed over a young sergeant who had virtually swooned about a mile back and had to be carried to the finish in a truck. In front of the group stood Gunnery Sgt.

The trip wires rigged to potentially deadly booby traps in a popular Utah recreation area were so slender they were practically invisible to the average eye. But James Schoeffler's eyes are not average. During his tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was Schoeffler's job to find such trip wires and dismantle the explosive devices to which they were attached. He never expected to find himself doing the same job in a forest in Utah. Authorities are lauding Schoeffler as a hero after he spotted trip wires to a pair of deadly traps just off Big Springs Trail in Provo Canyon.

Looking every inch a governor, the thickset Iraqi, in a pinstripe jacket, sits behind an imposing desk and glares at his American guest. When he drove to work that morning, Bassam Kalasho informed the newly arrived Army colonel, he found the road full of American checkpoints and his office surrounded by American soldiers. "It looks like you took over," he said, his voice growing louder with every word. Sometimes he gets so worked up, he said later, he forgets that his "office" is on an Army base in California and that he is only pretending to be an Iraqi provincial governor.

Some of the most fearsome military personnel in the world train on this rocky, windswept island: Marine infantry and Navy SEALs. But the largest mammal native to the island ? average size, 3 to 4 pounds ? is not afraid of them at all. That's a problem on a 22-mile-long island with a ship-to-shore/air-to-ground bombardment range on its south end, beaches for amphibious assault training on the north and a heavily traveled road down its spine. The San Clemente Island fox ( Urocyon littoralis )

The trip wires rigged to potentially deadly booby traps in a popular Utah recreation area were so slender they were practically invisible to the average eye. But James Schoeffler's eyes are not average. During his tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was Schoeffler's job to find such trip wires and dismantle the explosive devices to which they were attached. He never expected to find himself doing the same job in a forest in Utah. Authorities are lauding Schoeffler as a hero after he spotted trip wires to a pair of deadly traps just off Big Springs Trail in Provo Canyon.

For years, Tiger Woods heard his Green Beret father talk about life in the military and felt the stir of curiosity. After spending four days at this sprawling Army post, the golf great now knows some of what Earl Woods experienced as a soldier 40 years ago. Woods trained with various Army units, fired weapons, awoke early for four-mile runs and twice jumped from a plane.

The Palestine Liberation Organization will hold a one-month course in military training for 1,000 Palestinian children, the United Arab Emirates newspaper Al Ittihad said Thursday. The paper said in a report from Aden that the boys and girls all live in Arab states and include for the first time 100 children from Egypt. The paper quoted PLO sources as saying the course will take place at the Palestinian Al Yarmouk camp in the South Yemeni capital next week.

Military training at Camp Roberts will shrink the area accessible to deer, dove and wild pig hunters and limit people allowed to track game at the base north of Paso Robles. An area called East Garrison is the only section open today through Monday for 50 to 100 hunters a day, says Department of Fish and Game biologist Jeff Cann. Entry is first-come, first-served. The restrictions don't affect anglers, who can fish on Wednesday, the start of the general dove hunting season.

Thousands of Iraqi university students and their professors headed for the Persian Gulf war front today to spend their summer holidays in military training camps. This is the first time since the 5 1/2-year-old war with Iran began that university students have gone near the front. An Arab diplomat said, however, that it was clear from official statements that they would not engage in combat.

A T-38 military training jet crashed in a residential area in the Panhandle, hitting two houses, officials said. The pilot ejected and escaped with minor injuries, and no one on the ground was hurt. The plane crashed in Valparaiso, 53 miles east of Pensacola and outside Eglin Air Force Base at 1:45 p.m., said Lt. Col. Debbie Millett, a base spokeswoman. Millett said the jet was based at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, N.M.

For years this tiny desert town in western Imperial County has been a haven for retirees and others who desire a slow and quiet existence. Howard Kelly, 62, a Vietnam War veteran, moved here to escape the urban noise that triggers his incapacitating post-traumatic stress disorder. Joseph Asciutto, 64, a retired firefighter from San Diego, built a home in this stark landscape he visited as a boy and grew to love, and which he now calmly observes from a lawn chair on his front porch.

Their parachutes were rigged. Their weapons were secured. Three days of food and supplies were strapped to their bodies. In full combat gear, hundreds of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division dropped from the North Carolina sky at 23 feet per second. They hit the ground hard and scrambled to their feet, rifles ready. It was only an exercise, but for paratroopers just back from Afghanistan and Iraq it was a back-to-the-future moment, part of a new training focus that looks beyond America's current counterinsurgency wars.

Actress Shannon Lucio has just overpowered two rogue cops using everything from a pants belt to a shard of glass. She applied the "one mind, many weapons" technique taught to her by former Marine Sgt. Jon Barton, who was watching the action unfold as the cameras rolled inside a former shoe warehouse in North Hollywood on Sunday night. Barton trained Lucio, who plays a CIA-trained assassin in an indie action feature called "Insert," in various combat techniques and the proper way to fire handguns.

As part of an effort to extend the military's "warrior culture" to unmanned planes, the Air Force is overhauling how it trains the crews that operate its rapidly growing fleet of Predators, Reapers and other remotely piloted aircraft. The changes in training will affect hundreds of personnel who fly the unmanned aircraft remotely over war zones from distant bases and control their powerful cameras and targeting systems. The effort is part of a move by the Air Force to put as much emphasis on drones as it does on traditional fighters and bombers, officials said.

The Afghan troops who supported the U.S. Marines in the battle to end Taliban control of this town in Helmand province showed marked improvement over last summer's performance in a similar fight but still need much more training, Marine commanders say. Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, the top Marine here, said that overall the Afghan battalions exceeded his expectations. Nicholson said he would give some Afghan units an A-minus or B-plus but that others, particularly those with soldiers fresh from basic training, would get a C-minus or D. The lead Afghan commander, Brig.

For thousands of U.S. Marines, the road to Afghanistan goes through an isolated training facility here in the Eastern Sierra where they share the rugged Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest with civilian hunters, backpackers and skiers. On a recent weekend, several hundred Marines were on an overnight march to test their land navigation, communication and outdoor survival skills. As they returned to base camp Sunday morning, hunters dressed in orange vests were driving their four-wheel-drive vehicles up the mountain in hopes of bagging deer.

A federal appeals court opened the way Thursday for Shannon Faulkner to become the first woman to take part in military training at The Citadel. A panel of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that South Carolina's all-male military college violated Faulkner's rights under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment in refusing to admit her. The 2-1 decision upheld an order last July by U.S. District Judge C.

Reporting from Twentynine Palms Marine Base, Calif. -- As Marines train to deploy to war zones, there is daily discussion about how to detect and disarm the buried roadside bombs that are the No. 1 killer of Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military researchers have found that two groups of personnel are particularly good at spotting anomalies: those with hunting backgrounds, who traipsed through the woods as youths looking to bag a deer or turkey; and those who grew up in tough urban neighborhoods, where it is often important to know what gang controls which block.

Members of the Maldives' Cabinet donned scuba gear and used hand signals Saturday at an underwater meeting staged to highlight the threat of global warming to the lowest-lying nation on Earth. President Mohammed Nasheed and 13 other government officials submerged and took their seats at a table on the sea floor, 20 feet below the surface of a lagoon off Girifushi, an island usually used for military training. With a backdrop of coral, the meeting was a bid to draw attention to fears that rising sea levels caused by the melting of polar icecaps could swamp this Indian Ocean archipelago within a century.