Among the fighting men and women America is sending abroad to pursue its war on terrorism, many will have had occasion to get to know the dusty rockpile of mountains and torn-up slopes of the Mojave desert in California which today comprise the Marine Corps' Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms.

Covering more than 9,000 square miles, it is the largest military base in the US. Routinely raked with every form of non-nuclear live ordnance known to man, it requires nothing more than occasional warning signs and sand-filled oil drums on its far-flung perimeters to ward off the unwary.

According to Marine Corps' captain Robert Crum, its resemblance to Afghanistan, now familiar to most Americans in the wake of the terror attacks on September 11, is striking. The Bullion Mountains, site of the "live fire and manoeuvre area", are riddled with old gold mines, perhaps comparable to the caves where Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the attacks, and his schools for terrorists are said to lurk. Lava flows, salt flats and sand dunes complicate the terrain.

"The air is thick with anticipation," says Capt Crum. "It is not a sense of dread. We continue to train, remain ready and wait for marching orders."

When they come, from Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush, this Californian base will be only one of many sending forces to his "new kind of war". But in all likelihood many of those shipped off will have been tested in this tortured swathe of the Mojave, where temperatures may swing between 120F and well below freezing.

Every year its gates open to 50,000 troops - equivalent to a third of the Marine Corps force - for "live fire" training. Army tanks train to the north in the Fort Irwin Reservation, next to China Lake where the navy tests its big guns. To the south, artillery regiments practise in the Chocolate Mountains, just west of the Salton Sea.

Although the primary purpose at Twentynine Palms is to train Magtafs - Marine air ground task forces - in battalion-sized units, the navy, army and air force are often called in for combined rehearsals.

And while downsizing and base closures have been watchwords for the military since the end of the Gulf war, what one local calls "Marineworld" has grown in significance.

As if in anticipation of wars to be fought in arid environments, it has increased its throughput of fighting forces by more than 25 per cent since the mid-1990s. In reality, officials say, the rapid sprawl of civilian communities across southern California has increased the danger of intruders into other training zones, forcing a shift into this sparsely populated area.

It has a long history of military connections since world war one gassing victims were brought out to recover in its high altitudes and given homesteads of 160 acres apiece. As people said at the time: "The government is betting you 160 acres of desert that you won't survive."

It lost. The town of Twentynine Palms prospered for years. Its "own" 7th Expeditionary Brigade drew international attention in August 1990 when it became the first Marine Corps unit to land in Saudi Arabia in preparation for Desert Storm.

It was again a focus in April 1991, when the boys came home to a victory parade, commemorated in a vast mural on the road leading to the base's main gate, and drawing a crowd which doubled the town's population for a day.

But there was to be no peace dividend for this community. Its handful of saloons, today offering "$1 shots" of liquor, and its barber shops touting military crops for as little as $2.50 do sparse business. The Custom Tattoo Parlor has not had a customer all day.

"Everything has slowed down since all that in New York," says the owner. The call for extravagant designs has declined in favour of Marine Corps insignia and representations of the Stars and Stripes "It's an identity thing for a lot of guys," says one young Marine.

He say his wife wants to visit Wal-Mart and Big KMart, 25 miles way in Yucca Valley, because she is not sure when the chance will arise again. They drive off past a burnt-out fried chicken stand, tagged "XXXtra Krispy" and a roadside church noticeboard cheering passers-by with the thought that "God is still in control".