Military Personnel Prepare for a Lonely Holiday Season : Duty: For many Southland service personnel, Somalia mission will mean second time in two years that they ring in new year overseas.

Thousands of Marines, Air Force pilots and Navy engineers around Southern California are packing their bags, paying their bills and rushing out to buy Christmas gifts because they soon will be helping deliver food and other lifesaving supplies to starving people in Somalia.

For many of the service personnel and their families, it is the second time in two years that they have had to prepare for a lonely holiday season.

“I can’t believe it,” said Lorie Waters, who is eight months pregnant and will deliver her second child in two years with her husband, Derral, gone. He missed the birth of the first during the Persian Gulf War. “It’s like deja vu and kind of depressing,” she said at the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County. “I’m going to be here all alone with two kids. If we just had a little more notice . . . “

Lance Cpl. Sam Cervantes, another Gulf War veteran, this time leaves behind a bride of only two weeks, forcing an indefinite delay of their planned Christmas honeymoon.

“The first time, it was really no big deal,” Cervantes said Saturday at Tustin. “Sure, I was scared and there was a lot of confusion. But now, I have to worry about my wife. She’s been crying and she is confused.”

At least eight military bases in the Southland will be sending personnel to Somalia as part of Operation Restore Hope, announced Friday by President Bush. Marines from Tustin and El Toro Marine Corps Air Stations in Orange County, from Camp Pendleton near San Diego and from the Marine Corps Combat Center in Twentynine Palms will be among 16,000 West Coast Marines heading for Somalia.

At March Air Force Base in Riverside, which houses air refueling tanker planes, at least one reserve flight crew has already left and others are waiting for orders, said Sgt. Cliff Meidlein, an Air Force spokesman.

At Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, double flight crews are being organized to fly C-141s, the Air Force workhorses. The same planes took troops and equipment to the Persian Gulf for Desert Storm and to Panama before that. Last winter, the planes carried baby food to Siberia, said Lt. Tatiana Stead, an Air Force spokeswoman.

Flights to Somalia need two crews because they are 19 hours long.

“At this point,” Stead said, “all we’ve done is get orders to be on standby, which means that we’ve told our pilots and co-pilots: ‘Stand by your phones. We’re not sure when the orders are going to come, but when you get the call you’ve got three hours to get ready.’ ”

Many of the soldiers said they welcome the chance to participate in the mission.

“People are dying there, and we have the chance of a lifetime to save them,” said Maj. Harold Chappell, 38, an 18-year veteran from Camp Pendleton. “This is precisely the kind of thing this country, and especially the military, should be doing.”

Navy Seabee units based locally are also checking their readiness for Somalia, a nation void of such traditional infrastructure as road, bridge and water systems. Relief agencies have informed U.S. military commanders that runways are rutted and roads impassable, another reason food has not reached outlying areas.

Seabees, the Navy’s engineering and construction personnel, are based locally at Port Hueneme Naval Base in Ventura County and at the Naval Amphibious Base at Coronado. Both are expected to send units to Africa.

On Saturday, officials were attempting to prepare the families and loved ones who will be left behind. About 200 troops and their families crowded into a Tustin Marine Corps Air Station auditorium for a briefing on the various support services available to them during the indefinite deployment. There were presentations on matters ranging from medical services and support groups to available outlets for baby furniture and food.

In a speech to an assembly where fidgety children sat on the laps of nervous parents, Lt. Col. Dan Spurlock urged military families to begin taking care of their urgent needs.

“Leave nothing to chance, be you with or without wives or special others,” said Spurlock, commanding officer of Transport Helicopter Squadron 363, nicknamed the “Red Lions.” “We’re not leaving tomorrow, so you have time to work things out.”

Although Spurlock could not say when the Marines would return, he attempted to inspire those who would travel with him and the family members who would not.

“You are going to be proud of this mission for the rest of your lives,” he said.

Staff writer Dat Tran and Times wire services contributed to this story.