Boot Camp for Gonzos.(jouranilsts at Quantico Marine Base)

I'm sprinting across an open field, the roar of helicopter rotors so deafening that I can't tell where the machine-gun fire is coming from. "Get down! Spread out!" shouts a young sergeant. I trip over one of my squad mates and face-plant almost on top of him.

It's Day 5 of media boot camp and we've just landed in a "hot LZ." (For laymen, that's a very loud and chaotic landing zone under enemy fire.) It's not real, of course; the shots and explosions are only noise. But the journalists around me look terrified even so. "Alpha Squad, go!" my commanding officer yells. I watch my platoon mates jump up and run forward. A tiny woman reporter trips and falls, sending her helmet down over her eyes. A beefy sergeant picks her up by the collar like a piece of luggage and heaves her forward. "Bravo Squad, Go!" Now it's me again; I'm up on my feet, my lungs are burning. "Damn, I didn't know middle-aged people could run that fast," I think as I struggle to keep up.

Two days ago I arrived at Quantico Marine Base with 50 other journalists. The commandant promised us action, and he has not disappointed. This place is like a fantasy military camp for wanna-be Marines. We're issued camouflage gear and face paint, assigned to platoons and woken up by bellowing officers at 0500 hours, or 5 a.m. The idea is to give us a taste of what we might experience should we ever deploy with the Marines to write about them. With Iraq looming, the training is charged with an undercurrent that's made us all want to run a little faster.

I'd worked in Cambodia before. I covered 9-11. But I'd never been in a classroom with a giant painting of a Marine in a gas mask sticking a bayonet in the chest of a German soldier. (As I struggled through 10 pullups on the exercise bar outside during a break, one of my fellow journalists nicknamed me "Six-Pack," in joking reference to my modest beer belly. It was going to be a long week.) "If you want to cover a unit, we don't want you to be a burden on them," a burly general tells us. "Our men and women have a job to do. One of those jobs will probably not be to take care of you."

He didn't have to tell me. Before leaving, I packed my bag with all the comforts I could find: blister tape, hi-protein energy bars, a fancy flashlight. As they say in the Marines, I was "good to go." That's when I learned lesson No. 1: never let your bag out of your sight. Mine disappeared on the first day of training, when I loaded it into the bus. Since then we'd ridden around on other ...