Officials Confirm Marines Have Left for Middle East : Deployment: Units from four California bases have been sent to embarkation points. Totals are unknown.

U.S. Marines from at least four bases in California have left for the Middle East, officials confirmed Saturday.

Units from the 1st Marine Division and 1st Force Service Support Group at Camp Pendleton, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing in El Toro, and the 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Twentynine Palms have been sent to embarkation points for deployment to the Middle East as part of Operation Desert Shield, said Capt. Rose-Ann Sgrignoli, a spokeswoman at Camp Pendleton.

Lt. Gene Browne, an El Toro base spokesman, added that Marines from the Tustin base have also been deployed from Orange County to embarkation points, “but beyond that we really can’t say.”

Sgrignoli would not say how many troops had left or when they had gone. She also did not say where the “embarkation points” are or whether the troops will fly or sail to the Middle East.

However, wives of Marines from Twentynine Palms identified the “embarkation point” as Norton Air Force Base, just east of San Bernardino, and said most Marines had left by Saturday.

“They’ve been planning this all week,” said Laura Redlin, whose husband, Col. Robert Redlin, is a logistics officer with the 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, based at Twentynine Palms.

“I haven’t seen my husband at all except last night before he left,” added Redlin, who said her husband left Saturday morning for the Norton base.

“There’s a lot of action here, going on all day and all night,” said Kenneth C. McFarland, a disabled veteran who lives in Twentynine Palms.

McFarland said he has seen large buses leaving the base with men inside.

“There are some coming but more leaving,” he said. “It’s about three times the normal activity.”

Cheryl French, a 30-year resident of Twentynine Palms, said she lives near a side exit to the base that the troops have been using “all night and all day for the past few days.”

“We’re used to seeing convoys coming in and out occasionally, but nothing like this,” said French.

Apparently, the Marines left the base in a convoy on a back road. One resident, who lives on that road, said the convoy took 20 minutes to pass by.

Twentynine Palms runs a three-week training program for Marines, acquainting them with combat conditions in the desert.

A wire service report quoted unnamed Bush Administration officials as saying that 4,000 Marines from Twentynine Palms were on their way to the Middle East. On Friday, residents around El Toro noticed an increase in aircraft noise at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station there.

At Camp Pendleton, civilian and military sources say the level of activity there in the last few days hasn’t been seen since the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

In addition to the troops from the three Marine bases, units from the Army 101st Airborne Division in Ft. Campbell, Ky., have started making their way to an embarkation point, said Lt. Ronald Sharp, a spokesman at Twentynine Palms.

Already in the Middle East, Sharp said, are units from the Army 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, N.C., a squadron from Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina and transport aircraft from Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina.