Cpl. Ray Lewis Cpl. Justin E. Durham, 20, from Rye, Texas, a rifleman with Company G, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, holds security on an Enemy Prisoner of War during Mojave Viper at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif., March 7. Durham and other Marines with 2⁄7 trained with battle mannequins to become familiar with enemy prisoner of war procedures before their upcoming deployment to Afghanistan. Mojave Viper, the Corps' premier pre-deployment desert training, prepares Marines for combat through live-fire combined-arms exercises.

Actually, they’re called ‘‘battle mannequins.” Marines with Company G, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment got the chance to use life-size human replicas during Enemy Prisoner of War training here.

‘‘It’s beneficial because you had hands on an actual dummy,” said Cpl. Justin E. Durham who will soon deploy with his unit to Afghanistan. ‘‘You usually have a notional grenade or a notional this, a notional that. Now at Mojave Viper there is no notional. You had live grenades. You had EPWs.”

The dummies were a part of a recent addition to Mojave Viper—the Corps’ premier pre-deployment desert training.

‘‘When we first started ranges it was just fire and maneuver,” said Lance Cpl. Smith, 21, a rifleman from Elma, Wash. ‘‘Two years ago they started to [add] dummies to put it in our minds that there are things we have to do. We need to collect evidence ... learn about the enemy and treat an enemy casualty.”

Knowing how to handle EPWs is vital as battle on the battlefield, said Lance Cpl. Geoffrey T. Kamp.

‘‘You've got to pretend,” he said. ‘‘The mannequin ... is a visual representation of an actual human being.”

So Marines view the dummies as a training tool and not as a laughing matter.

‘‘Nothing we do is funny,” said Durham, 20, from Rye, Texas. ‘‘You train like you fight. If it was a real scenario it would be different, but you treat a dummy as if it were areal scenario, and that’s why I had my weapon pointed at it.”

Durham didn’t know what the ‘‘prisoner” might do next.

‘‘So you’ve got to constantly make sure that he doesn’t do anything,” Durham said.

Durham said he can hold his own weight.

‘‘It’s heavier than I expected to be,” said Durham who lifted a resisting EPW out of an underground bunker. ‘‘I thought it was a little plastic dummy, but it has some weight to it.”

Above all else the Marines here keep one thing in mind when training with the dummies.

‘‘[I know] that the skills I learn here could in turn put some bad people away,” said Kamp, 20, a rifleman from Indianapolis, Ind.

When the Marines finish Mojave Viper, they will begin their mission of supporting the Afghan National Police in Afghanistan.