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CAMP PENDLETON — Several hundred Marines in charge of planning and running a 45,000-member force head this week to the Persian Gulf region as the U.S. military prepares for a possible war on Iraq. 

A headquarters element of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, one of three main war-fighting commands, is scheduled to fly to the region on Friday. The Marines declined to give the precise number of personnel departing. 

“We don’t want our noses being counted as we move here and there,” Capt. William Mitchell, a spokesman for the expeditionary force, said Wednesday. 

The headquarters element is comprised of planners and commanders whose job is to prepare for the movement of the 1st MEF’s troops, aircraft, supplies and equipment in the region. 

“There’s a sampling of just about every occupational discipline in the Marine Corps you could think of,” Mitchell said. 

Ground troops in the 1st MEF helped expel Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait 12 years ago during Operation Desert Storm by clearing openings through heavily-defended minefields. 

The 1st MEF’s headquarters element includes the expeditionary force’s new commander, Lt. Gen. James Conway, a three-star general who took his new command last week. Conway already has arrived in the Persian Gulf region, Mitchell said.