The Task Is a Giant One for Cleanup Forces : Acton preserve: Marines volunteer to make some heavy-duty storm repairs so two elephants can roam free.

Just as it has countless times before, the U.S. Marine Corps on Saturday rushed in to offer its brawn--this time to a pair of elephants whose Acton stomping grounds were washed away by last month’s rainstorms.

Kura and Timbo, African elephants who live at the private Shambala African Preserve, have been without their play yard since the Santa Clara River overflowed its banks during the heavy rains three weeks ago, washing out a dirt road and littering the usually dry channel with brush and junk.

Enter the Marines 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, whose motto is “Swift, Silent and Deadly.”

Armed with shovels, thigh-sized biceps and coolers of Miller Lite, 17 Camp Pendleton grunts--who still think elephants are cool enough to give up a weekend for--set to clearing a quarter-mile stretch of the riverbed and rebuilding bridges so Kura and Timbo can romp freely again.

“They look pretty bored in that shed,” Lance Cpl. Robert Bergemann said of the elephants, which now spend much of their day in a barn.

Bergemann, 22, and his fellow Marines donated their time to clear the riverbed after a group of them visited the preserve, run by actress Tippi Hedren, who starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 thriller “The Birds.” In addition to Kura and Timbo, the 20-year-old preserve is home to 67 big cats--lions, tigers, leopards and others--who were abandoned or mistreated by their former owners.

“We all had a real good time and the least we could do was come back up here,” said Lance Cpl. Rob Latkas, 20. “I could see us all out here working.”

Even Marines who had not come on the initial trip a week earlier joined the effort.

Lance Cpl. Vinny Marzi, for instance, was rousted out of bed at 3:30 a.m. and told that he was coming along to help build bridges for elephants.

“It was kind of surprising,” said Marzi, 21. “I woke up on the way out the door.”

But by lunchtime, the Marines, all of them veterans of the Persian Gulf War, had cleared about 50 yards of brush, built a dam out of branches and tree trunks and laid a bridge of telephone poles.

“These guys are as good as that thing,” said elephant trainer Chris Gallucci, pointing to a bulldozer smashing its way through a wall of brush.

For many of the Marines, used to drilling day in and day out, Saturday’s routine reminded them of their civilian lives. “I haven’t done work like this since I used to build grain bins back home,” said Bergemann, who helped out on his grandfather’s bean and corn farm in Blue Earth, Minn.