Pendleton Marines Off Africa Coast

About 2,000 U.S. Marines from Camp Pendleton were deployed off the Horn of Africa Wednesday, waiting for possible orders to move into war- and famine-ravaged Somalia.

They all had left Camp Pendleton in October on a routine deployment, Cpl. Paul Jerome said.

“They, like everyone else, are awaiting some kind of word,” Jerome said. “They are en route to the coast of Somalia and Kenya but they have not arrived at their station yet.”

Jerome said 50 Marines from Camp Pendleton have been stationed in Kenya since early fall.

In Washington, President Bush reportedly was preparing for a meeting with a Marine general, who was planning the campaign to protect a U.N. force trying to get relief supplies to hundreds of thousands of emaciated Somalians. Many of those people are believed to be beyond help.

Pictures of the starved Somalians have horrified people around the world. But getting food to them has proved a dangerous task in a country bereft of a central government and terrorized by trigger-happy factions armed to the teeth and not above interdicting aid.

At Camp Pendleton Wednesday, Karen Beardreault said her children had gotten used to not having their father at home. She was facing the prospect of going it alone as a parent this Christmas and the next few months. Her husband, Capt. Brian Beardreault, was part of the Marine force aboard the amphibious transport ship Juneau.

“It’s not a war,” she said. “We’re going in there to secure an environment, pave the way to get all the supplies there. We’re not going there to directly fight.”