Marines Mobilizing at Pendleton; Some May Be Heading to Mideast

The Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base is being mobilized as it hasn’t been since the Vietnam War, with troops packing their weapons, radio gear and most essential personal belongings and being shipped out on hours’ notice to uncertain destinations, according to civilians and military personnel on the base.

For the families they are leaving behind, there is little doubt that the Marines are eventually headed for the Mideast and are perhaps destined for desert warfare against Iraq.

“My son called me about 10 this morning. He was whispering into a pay phone. He said he wasn’t supposed to call me, but he wanted me to know he just got his orders and had to pack right away,” the mother of one lance corporal infantryman said Thursday. “He said he couldn’t tell me where he was being deployed, or how--or that he even had orders. . . .”

The movement appeared to belie comments by Gen. Alfred M. Gray, commandant of the Marine Corps, who held a news conference at Camp Pendleton on Wednesday specifically to say that there were no immediate plans to deploy Marines from the base to the Middle East and that they were not on any special readiness status.

Marine families had little more information to work on and said they were confused and angry about the secrecy that kept them from knowing the destinations of their husbands and offspring.

The wife of a lieutenant said she was told by her husband Monday night that his 900-man battalion would be deploying Tuesday and Wednesday. She hasn’t talked to him since.

He told her he was going to the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, the sprawling 932-square-mile desert facility in San Bernardino County that plays host to desert training games and has an 8,000-foot-long airfield.

In response to the mobilization reports, Lt. Cmdr. Ken Satterfield at the Pentagon said:

”. . . I won’t get into alert status, but I can confirm there are no Marines involved in this (Mideast) operation at this time.” He added, “What might happen, I can’t say.”

Pentagon sources said Marines at Camp Pendleton are unlikely to be deployed soon in large numbers, although they could be called into service in several weeks. However, Lt. Gen. Walter Boomer, commander of the First Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton, has been selected to command all Marines deployed to Saudi Arabia, the sources said. He will leave the base soon, accompanied by a small coterie of aides, they said.