Col. Robert E. Lee skirted the unleaded gasoline pit, negotiated a thicket of telephone cords stretched as tight as trip wires and took the center of the New York Mercantile Exchange’s main trading floor just before 3 P.M. last Monday.

Successful, the commanding officer of the Marines’ basic officer training school surveyed the thousands of screaming traders, the hundreds of busy screens and the few harried-looking runners headed right at him before he made a proclamation: "This is an operations officer’s dream."

Call it Quantico on the Hudson. In real life, most officers like their command posts a little less hectic than a frothing commodities market. But Colonel Lee (no relation to the Civil War general) and two dozen of his colleagues got to live the dream, or at least mimic it, as part of an unconventional training exercise in Manhattan last week.

 

"If we could see how the traders process information and do trading in chaotic situations, we could probably learn from them and translate some of those things into the combat operations centers," said Brig. Gen. Richard F. Vercauteren, the Marines’ assistant deputy chief of staff for plans, policies and operations.

The corps figures it has a lot to learn about communications and decision making