Marines gird for battle on Wall Street

TRAINING from C1

try. They began the imaginative bit of military research waiting around the trading pit for the opening bell.

?Prematurely breaking the silence, Gen. Richard D. Hearney, the nation’s second-ranking Marine, shouted out a bid. Veteran floor traders murmured approval. "He jumped the bell, just like I do every day," said one trader, smiling at the audacity of the four-star amateur.

?The Marines were slow to adjust to the bellowing, arm-waving techniques vital in the Merc's trading room at the World Trade Center. Harkins was soon booming out simulated bids in a fog-horn Virginia drawl, but many of the highest-ranking officers, accustomed to attentive silence when they spoke, took longer to catch on.

?Hearney, the Marine Corps assistant commandant with the lean, craggy look of an actor in Western movies, acknowledged that he and his Pentagon colleagues usually do not shout. "I would hope we don’t have to yell like that to get attention," he said.

?There were no women in the exercise, a measure of the male-centered environment of both Marine officers and commodity traders. That was about all they had in common. The Marines were much older, with shorter haircuts and no fashion excesses, even though they seemed to enjoy the difference.

?Hearney, 53, loved the two-tone lizard-skin boots that his trader tutor, Eric Plateis. 35, was wearing. Several officers complimented trader Bob Coakley on his tie-dyed trading jacket.

?After two hours, many of the Marines were still far from any chance of profit on their fictional trades. But the traders saw potential. "Every one of them is getting better and better," Coakley said.

?The Marines talked about the problems of both reacting to and recording the fast-moving bids, something to ponder when they returned to Washington. They noted the traders’ lament that the most difficult thing to learn was to cut one's losses, something military leaders also struggle with.

?The idea for the mercantile-Marine exchange grew from a chat several months ago between Robert Levin, senior vice president for planning and development at the exchange, and Bing West, president of GAMA Corp., a federal contractor with experience to conducting military exercises.

?The Marines were game. "We are concerned about making sure the Marine Corps is relevant to the 21st century," Harkins said.

?At Tuesday night’s computerized war game at a military facility on Governor’s Island, the tables were turned, with the traders invited to play with military concepts under Marine direction. The officers watched carefully to see if civilians with minds trained for quickness saw ways to make rapid decisions that had not occurred to them.

?There was also friendly intimidation. Tony Birbilis, a 31-year-old trader with curly brown hair falling below his collar, winced as Hearney gave him a signal not found in the trader's book – a hand passed over the top of his head.

?Birbilis knew what it meant: "The general said I'd have to get a haircut before I got to play their game."

?Perhaps, Hearney said, the traders might learn something, too. His unexpected bid before the bell had been intentional, the element of surprise being second nature to someone who has been a combat pilot as long as he has.

?"It kills the killers," the general said.