Marine Crew Works, Sweats, Waits for War : Military: A California brigade stands ready to do battle in ‘the world’s biggest microwave oven.’

There is something at once magnificent and maleficent about the desert, something that numbs the soul as the heat bakes the brain and the eyes strain to see beyond the shifting shades of beige that roll like waves toward an empty horizon.

“Now I know what being on the moon is like,” a Marine helicopter pilot said, surveying the scene for the first time.

Out here, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in a place that has no name, the only obvious signs of life are the yellow dust clouds churned up by armored vehicles crisscrossing distant dunes.

But look closer. What appears at first to be a line of rubble across the road is actually a barrier to slow-approaching vehicles. What looks like two small outcroppings of rock are really a pair of machine-gun positions flanking the roadblock.

Welcome to the base camp of the 3rd Battalion, 9th Regiment, 7th Expeditionary Brigade, United States Marine Corps.

“This ain’t hell, but we can see it from here,” a 26-year-old sergeant said, repeating what has become sort of an unofficial slogan for this war-in-waiting in the sands of Saudi Arabia.

The 7th Expeditionary, trained in California’s Mojave Desert, is here in full force, its men grousing about the heat and the chow but otherwise eager to prove their mettle in the event of war with Iraq.

The camp, scattered in several separate clusters, is nestled into an old rock quarry that perfectly complements the shapes and colors of the camouflage nets that serve as tents for the troops and concealment for their equipment.

“The cover is real good,” Chief Warrant Officer Charles Rowe of Norfolk, Va., said. “If the enemy ever got this far, by the time they saw us, they’d be dead.”

Inside one of the tents, Warrant Officer Chuck Whittlesay of Seattle was putting a group of Marines through a chemical warfare drill.

“Use your 258 kits for mustard gas,” he said. “I had the stuff on me for 10 minutes once, and it’s no problem. Just pinch-blot it off, like this.”

Getting into the protective clothing proved to be a problem for one beefy Marine, who tried to wiggle into a suit that looked two sizes too small for him. A smaller Marine was substituted for the demonstration, which required the use of the buddy system because the suit cannot be properly closed by the person wearing it.

“Make sure everything is buttoned, zipped, Velcroed and snapped,” Whittlesay barked, “and lace the boots up the leg Cleopatra-style.”

Later, Whittlesay told reporters: “Chemical warfare is something we have to be prepared for. We take the threat seriously, but we can handle it. Our equipment is state of the art.”

The Marines, from Twentynine Palms, Calif., began deploying in Saudi Arabia two weeks ago and are now “here in toto and 100% battle-ready,” according to their commander, Maj. Gen. John Hoskins.

Regulations prohibit disclosure of exact numbers, but the brigade normally consists of about 16,000 members.

Their deployment marks the first time that the corps’ new “pre-positioned ship” concept has been put to the test in a crisis situation. The concept was developed during the Jimmy Carter Administration to enable rapid deployment of battle-ready forces.

Even before the Marines left California, five cargo ships based at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean were on their way here with virtually everything the force would need to wage war for 30 days--from food, fuel and ammunition to armor, artillery, helicopters and fighter planes.

The brigade supplies its own water from two portable desalination and purification units. Resembling giant water beds, the Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Units are turning Persian Gulf water into drinking water at the rate of 90,000 gallons a day.

“This is the first time that the pre-positioned ship concept has been fully implemented,” Gen. Hoskins said, “and I’m very pleased with the way it’s gone. Morale is high and we’re ready to go.”

There are, of course, the usual complaints, about the heat, for one thing. It gets so hot in the desert that “the guys who maintain the helicopters have to stop work at noon because the metal is too hot to touch,” Capt. John Ross of Riverside, Calif., said.

Ross pilots the biggest chopper in the brigade’s arsenal, an H-53 Super Stallion. He had finished a six-month tour in the Pacific and a month at home with his family when he shipped out again.

“Being in the desert is a little like being at sea,” he said, “no alcohol and nowhere to go. First, we had the sea without the beach, and now we have the beach without the sea. There’s not much of a difference.”

Another complaint is the lack of news. Copies of Stars and Stripes, the unofficial newspaper of the U.S. armed forces, are beginning to trickle in, but they have yet to get as far as the 3rd Battalion camp, where the men are eager to hear the latest news from Washington, Baghdad and Kuwait.

There are plans to distribute 7,000 shortwave radios; 2,000 are already “in country” and 5,000 more are on order. When they arrive, the men will be able to tune in Armed Forces Radio, the British Broadcasting Corp., and even the propaganda broadcasts of Baghdad Radio, which has a woman commentator who has been called many things, the most polite of which is “Baghdad Betty.”

In the meantime, there is not much to do but work and sweat, eat and sleep.

While Whittlesay was conducting his “NBC drill” (nuclear, biological and chemical), the 3rd Battalion’s mortar platoon was being put through its paces a few hundred yards away.

“Ours is the best mortar platoon on the West Coast,” said 1st Lt. Eric Mellinger, who hails from New Jersey. “They can fire their first rounds within 40 seconds of jumping off a truck.”

The 120-degree heat seemed to be taking its toll, though. The platoon took a little more than 60 seconds to set up its 81-millimeter mortars.

The mortars, which the Marines call “hip-pocket artillery,” are the heaviest weapons the battalion normally carries. “They’re for when we want to reach out and touch someone,” CWO Rowe said, grinning.

The Marines are deployed in the forward-most positions, and in the desert behind them, Army engineers are building bomb shelters, while Air Force logistics specialists are creating airfields. Most of the work is done in the early morning and late afternoon, when the temperature falls to a comparatively mild 105 degrees.

During the intense midday heat, the men of the 7th Air Defense Artillery’s 2nd Battalion rest in what a battery commander called “The Roving Sands Hotel,” a tent with about 10 cots and an ample supply of MREs--Meals Ready to Eat.

Heating the MREs is no problem, the men said. Just put them in the sun for 10 minutes and they’re done.

“We got the world’s biggest microwave oven out here,” one man said. “Only trouble is, we’re all in it.”

While the Americans get ready for a possible confrontation with the Iraqis, other potential enemies have already been forced to retreat. Six-inch scorpions and thick, tan snakes appeared regularly beneath the soldiers’ booted feet in the early days of their deployment. But the constant traffic of men and machinery has sent them deeper into the desert.

With all signs pointing to an extended stay, commanders are hoping to ease the hardship of desert life with at least a few amenities. A Patriot missile unit, for instance, is hoping to requisition a television set and a videocassette recorder.

“Most guys have their sights set on a year or two,” said Lt. Col. Lee Neel, commander of the 7th Air Defense Artillery’s 2nd Battalion. “We haven’t told them they’d be home for Christmas.”

Staff writer Melissa Healy, who is also in Saudi Arabia, contributed to this story.