by Jolene Toves

Guam - On Guam since February, roughly 350 Marines and sailors from Okinawa continue their training as part of Exercise Guahan Shield. Servicemen from the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force based out of Okinawa are on Guam until May.

The exercise facilitates multi-service engagement, sets conditions for bilateral and multilateral training opportunities and supports rapid response to potential theater crises and contingency operations in the Asia-Pacific Region. On Tuesday they participated in military operations in urban terrain training, which focuses on simulating combat situations that they might face during real world operations.

3rd Platoon Lima Company Second Lieutenant Nick Peltier said, "The training here on Guam is actually very unique because this is abandoned housing. It's not a complex designed to be used in training but this opportunity allows us to see buildings as it would be in a country that we would go into that isn't set up for training its set up for people to live."

The exercise allows Marines to use the fundamentals they have been taught and apply them in an urban environment. Marines were armed with M-16s fitted to shoot special high speed paintballs called seasms and blue body grenades, which simulates M-67 fragmentation grenades used in combat.

"As well as ability to use the seasms gear out here which allows target feedback on those who get hit and allows our core men to do combat life saving on them depending where on the body the injury occurs as well as it lets guys know when there hit it lets them do their actions to let their core men know they've been hit," said Lieutenant Peltier.

MOUT training gave way to many learning opportunities for the marines even unexpected ones. "The training here with the rain the guys hate it but at the same time it offers really good adverse training with the masks that we use you can't always see makes them learn to adapt and overcome adverse conditions," he explained.

No conditions on a battlefield are ideal. Prepared for anything, Marines must continue with their mission. "The squad leaders were given a task to clear and zone their zone of action was these three buildings here they start in the tree line move out through the tree line clear through the buildings to make sure there aren't any enemy forces in here," said Peltier.

Today's MOUT training is just one of many opportunities the Marines are excited to be conducting, opportunities that they say can only be found here.