Bound for Somalia : Military: Seabees from Port Hueneme will join the mission to help bring relief to the famine- stricken country.

About 200 Seabees from Port Hueneme will leave by Thursday to join thS. military effort in Somalia, with another 600 preparing to ship out by early January, Navy officials said Monday.

A 600-person battalion that had been preparing for a regular seven-month deployment to Guam got word Friday that they would instead head to the famine-stricken African country.

As part of the U. S. military operation to restore order and clear the way for international relief efforts in Somalia, the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 40 will drill water wells, build roads and put up bases to support the Marines and other armed forces, Port Hueneme officials said.

The battalion will be joined by a regiment of about 200 Seabee supervisors and support staff.

“We are going to do whatever the Marines tell us,” said Capt. David Nash, commanding officer of Port Hueneme Naval Construction Battalion Center.

But some Seabees in the battalion bound for Somalia said they’re not happy about the change in plans.

“I’m really not looking forward to it,” said Petty Officer Lewis Stephan, 22, as he helped crate dozens of truck tires to be shipped to Somalia. “It’s going to be living in tents. It’s going to be just like Saudi all over again. Not much liberty.”

In Guam, the Seabees would have slept in Navy barracks and worked regular hours, with free time, or liberty, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

In Somalia, they’ll be working all the time, said Stephan, a Wisconsin native who has been in the Navy for 3 1/2 years. And the prospect of seeing masses of starving people is “kind of gross,” he said.

But Stephan said he is most worried about contracting a serious disease. “That’s the only thing I’m really scared about,” he said.

Because Seabees typically spend seven months each year at Guam and other overseas bases, they are always inoculated against diseases such as yellow fever, cholera and typhoid.

But to prepare for Somalia, they’re getting additional shots against meningitis and hepatitis along with extra precautions, such as warnings against using after-shave lotion because it attracts insects that may carry disease, Navy officials said.

Cmdr. Bill Rudich, head of the battalion going to Somalia, said his battalion was stationed in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War.

But Somalia “is a very different situation than I think any of us have ever been involved in,” he said.

He said he’s concerned how his men will cope with the mass starvation and suffering they’ll encounter.

“It’s one thing to see it in pictures . . . to see emaciated people like that,” he said. “I’m not sure how they will react” to the real thing.

Rudich said he had scheduled a social worker to talk to the Seabees to help them prepare psychologically for the deployment.

In addition, Saudi Arabia had conveniences that Somalia lacks, such as highways, airstrips and sophisticated telephone systems.

“We know we’re going into a very austere theater,” Rudich said. In Somalia, “if we don’t take it with us, we won’t have it there.”

So the Seabees have been working around the clock for the past four days getting equipment such as bulldozers, forklifts and trucks ready to ship.

Some of the smaller equipment will leave this week with the initial detachment of 200 men, while the rest will be put on a ship next week, Rudich said.

Petty Officer Charles McCarron, who was helping other Seabees pack equipment Monday afternoon, said he has a 3-month old baby and a wife who’s upset about his being sent on a military operation.

“She went through it already” when he was stationed in Saudi Arabia for six months, McCarron said.

But McCarron said he’d rather go to Somalia than back to Saudi Arabia. “I don’t have to worry about gas,” he said, referring to the threat of poison gas from Iraqi troops during the Gulf War.

“It’s like a part of you wants to go, but there’s another part that’s nervous,” he said.

In addition to the 800 Seabees from Port Hueneme, a battalion of 600 Seabees from the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Gulfport, Miss., is also bound for Somalia. That battalion is en route to a naval base in Rota, Spain.