Winds of War Chill Children of the Military

SAN CLEMENTE —  At San Clemente High School, the emotional upheaval caused by the Gulf War has been expressed through sarcasm or stoicism by some, anger or anxiety by others.

And in many, at one time or another, it’s been expressed through tears.

On the first day of the second semester Monday, the school, which serves about 150 students whose parents are stationed at Camp Pendleton, held the first of its planned weekly group support sessions for military youngsters. While the seven students gathered for the first session at 9 a.m. were alternately tearful, talkative and detached, it was clear that they were all experiencing the same emotion--frustration.

They were frustrated by a war over which they have no control but which has taken a measure of control of their young lives.

In a conference room next to school psychiatrist Loren O’Connor’s office, the initially apprehensive students slowly opened up to each other and discussed the pressures that the war has added to their already chaotic lives as military dependents. The conversation became so deeply personal at points that three of the students asked that only their first names be used, and the other four requested complete anonymity.

For one member of the group, a 14-year-old freshman, the telephone has been a constant reminder of the drastic change in his family’s day-to-day routine.

“My dad’s on call 24 hours a day,” said the student, whose father is awaiting deployment from Camp Pendleton to the Persian Gulf. “He can’t take us anywhere because he has to be by the phone. Every time the the phone rings, everybody looks at it.”

For another student, the war means frustration over being forced to grow up too fast. With her father at war and her mother struggling to cope with his absence, she’s been serving as a sort of substitute parent.

“Yeah, I do everything--cook, clean,” she said. “ . . . I’m kind of doing OK, I guess, but I break out and cry sometimes.”

And for 17-year-old Robert, a native of the Philippines whose father left his family for eight years while carving out a new life in the American military, the war means frustration over the interruption of getting reacquainted with his father.

“He left us; he came to the U.S. in 1977 alone, while we were in the Philippines,” Robert said. “He took my mom to California in ‘83, and we came--me and my brother--in 1985. We (were) all together again, and now he has to leave us again to go to a war.”

O’Connor, the school psychiatrist who conducted the group session with school counselor Sally Canlin, noted that for many of the school’s military students, the war doesn’t represent as grave a threat because their parents, many of whom are career military, are in the rear echelons.

“It seems high school kids’ parents are in pretty good spots in terms of safety, but it’s still a war situation,” he said.

While much of their anxiety stems from not knowing if their fathers will come home, O’Connor said the military kids are further frustrated by ordinary pressures of military life--a 14-year-old group member named Shanika said she’s lived on at least six different military posts--and the ordinary pressures of going to school and just being a teen-ager.

One of the girls who asked not to be named said that in addition to worrying about her schoolwork and her father, who is deployed in Saudi Arabia, she has to deal with the emotionally wrenching separation of parents last year.

“My dad’s been over there since August,” she said. “My mom doesn’t even care, (at least) she doesn’t seem like it.”

Other members of the group also said they were frustrated over the often misplaced anger of the mothers. Most raised their hands when O’Connor asked if they had noticed an increase in irritability in their mothers since the beginning of the war.

“My mom was like, ‘He’s going to go over there, so what?’ ” said a 15-year-old girl who asked to remain anonymous. “She was really mad at him at first.”

Robert said he understands his mother’s anger--the whole family was upset, he said, when the news came that his father, who was deployed to the Gulf in June, would not be rotated back to the states as scheduled in December.

“They were on their way home (aboard ship) in December to make Christmas over here, but they had to turn around and go back to the Persian Gulf,” Robert said. “In (June), I was OK because (I knew) he was going to come home in December. I started getting mad because he didn’t come home.”

Not only that, but Robert’s older brother is deployed with the Marines in the Philippines, further separating a family that endured years of being apart. Robert said his mother is understandably angry about her family being torn apart again, but he added that he is frustrated that she often directs her anger at him.

“Every time she gets mad, she takes it out on me because I’m the only one there,” he said.