We would have been a lot better if we came here disguised as a squad of combat marines.

Looking as fit and rested as a combat marine just back from a week of R & R on China Beach, Oliver L. North is reconnoitering the front lines of Virginia politics, probing to see if there might be an opening for him in the state's 1994 Senate race.

Like Mr. North, Mr. Robb is a proud former combat marine who carries considerable political baggage, his particular load stemming from several Federal investigations in which allegations were made - but never substantiated - that he consorted with drug users and was involved in an eavesdropping plot against Mr. Wilder, his chief political rival.

I was a combat marine for a number of years so I know exactly how that should be done.

Once Uncle Calvin, who had been a combat marine, so may have actually shot some people, or at least knew how to do it, was telling us his plan for peaceably luring sit-down strikers out of a Detroit auto plant, when Uncle Gregory pounded his fist half through the table top.

A squad of combat marines dropped out of the bottom of the ship, blast rifles aimed.

One radio station said that the United States was sending 50,000 combat marines.

Richard Harwood, who brought the determination and cunning of a combat marine to reporting and editing and, finally, to policing his own newspaper for editorial missteps, died of lung cancer on Monday at his home in Bethesda, Md.

Mr. Webb was a combat marine in that war, earning eight decorations, including two Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star, the Silver Star and the Navy Cross.