FARMVILLE – The bursts of heavy machine gun fire made it clear that Friday was not just another day at the Farmville Regional Airport.

So did the tiltrotor V-22 Ospreys, the CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters, and the single-engine Cobra attack helicopters circling above the airport.

Nor was it a typical day at the office for the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, in the Farmville area through next week to train away from their Camp Lejeune, North Carolina home.

“Well, to tell you the truth,” Commanding Officer, Colonel Frank Donovan, told The Herald during a quick break from monitoring his troops, “we train very hard on our own base at Camp Lejeune and have tremendous training opportunities there. But to train here-where the Marines don't know the trees, the hills, the rocks-it gives us an opportunity to become better thinkers, and think a problem through and not just return to a prior memory of being in a certain training area.”

Real warfare will call the Marines away from their own back yard into deserts and mountains overseas.

The 24th MEU is the landing force for the Norfolk-based Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, comprised of the amphibious assault ships USS Iwo Jima, USS New York and USS Gunston Hall.

Those ships won't be traveling to Camp Lejeune until the fighting is over and it's time to go home.

Training that makes the Marines think on their toes is invaluable for its overseas preparation and is why the Farmville area has been picked by the Marines for training three times in the last five years.

Colonel Jim Donnelly, who was instrumental in putting together the training scenarios in and around Farmville this month, is also an avid proponent of off-base training, sites for which are picked a year in advance so arrangements can be made with local leaders and property owners.

An FBI agent assigned to the Marine unit is specifically tasked, in fact, to work on coordinating locations for soldiers to train away from Camp Lejeune.

“Especially something like this with an airfield seizure,” Colonel Donnelly said of the benefits derived from such training. “The military airfields that we have access to are military airfields and so not only are they very familiar to the pilots who fly in and out but they're also really busy. So trying to coordinate the blank fire you hear in the background and the pilots approaching something that they're not familiar with (is difficult)…So getting an opportunity like this in an area that's completely unfamiliar to the pilots and the Marines…is a great opportunity.”

Approximately 100 Marines and nine aircraft were involved in the airport training.

Friday's scenario was this:

The Farmville Regional Airport became an airfield in a fictional country. The local government, in concert with the US embassy in that country, sought Marine Expeditionary Units to come in and help support them against destabilizing factions within the country.

“The embassy has asked us to come in at the request of the local government and secure this airfield,” explained Captain Robert E. Shuford, who accompanies The Herald down the airstrip and into the woods as Marines land and move off into the firefight with the enemy. The wind is sustaining 35 to 40 mile-an-hour gusts, bringing the wind chill down to bone rattling 'feels like' temperatures on this 30-degree morning. “There's been some insurgent factions using this airfield and using it to set up some of their operations.

“That's the mission today,” he said. Engage the enemy. Defeat the enemy. Win the airport back.

A company of Marines was being flown, in real time, from Camp Lejeune for the training exercise, even though some of the Marines involved in the training this week are basing their operations out of Fort Pickett.

The two-hour flights are more realistic.

“So the company actually loaded at Camp Lejeune and flew all the way up here and conducted long-range airfield seizure,” Captain Shuford explains. “So it's not like they were right around the corner, and 'Oh, let's go pick them up and bring them here.'”

Captain Shuford, whose tours of duty include Iraq, trains Marine lieutenants.

“We have about a company-size force of Marines inserting with Ospreys, and CH-53 helicopters,” he says, the latter chopper the largest used by the military. “That's what you see right now. They're securing the airfield so some of the elements have already inserted in the tree-line there and then we have some more Marines fighting those insurgent factions up here in this part of the tree-line.

“We've got some of our attack helicopters overhead providing overhead watch and support. That's an AH-1 Cobra…So they're supporting the guys on the ground with close air support and then with just an overall visual of what's going on. So they can report back to the guys on the ground like, 'Hey, I see this' or 'I see that' where (the infantry) might be tied up here in the tree-line and something else is going on over here and the guys up in the air can see that. So that's the support they're providing.”

The training is not scripted.

The Marines are not connecting dots that are just sitting there waiting to be connected.

There is a scenario but it is live, evolving.

There is a goal but how it is achieved depends on how well the Marines, and the insurgents, do their jobs.

At the end of the military operation, the Marines want to report that the airport is secure, how many insurgents were killed and what the casualties were. But they've got to do it themselves. It won't be done for them.

“The intelligence painted the picture for this…so it's a continuously developing scenario,” explained Capt. Shuford. “All they knew is that intelligence painted a force of maybe 15 to 20 bad guys (insurgents)…There's bad guys at the airfield and we gotta secure it, is basically what the picture is.”

The Marines' commanding officer, Col. Donovan, is maintaining a dual perspective. He observes the training, sees how it is going, but he's also part of the training exercise.

“He's actually monitoring the radio, listening to what's going on through our operations center and seeing actions on the ground as if he wasn't here. He's on the radio listening to all the actions on the objective as people are reporting back saying 'This is what happened' and he's giving direction on the radio,” Capt. Shuford explained. “But he's also out here observing because he wants to see how it all goes.”

It goes well.

The good guys win.

“Dealing with an American community as a training environment is a really great thing for our young Marines to deal with, too, because,” Col. Donovan said, “now they get to return here, to America, to the community and realize, 'Wow, what a unique opportunity to actually train in our own backyard.' It makes it a really worthwhile event for us.'”

The Marines benefit from the familiarity of community and the unfamiliarity of that community's terrain.

Unfamiliarity is difficult to come by.

There is a lot of imagery on the internet and everybody can Google for a map of anything.

“So what's unfamiliar is different than it was 20 years ago,” points out Col. Donnelly. “But as these Marines are finding out, you can look at something from a satellite image and it's still not going to show you where all the little-micro-terrain, we call it-the little bits and pieces of the ground are…”

The little bits and pieces that, in a real battle, can mean the difference between winning and losing.

Living or dying.

And that is never just another day at anyone's office.