Uneasy Calm Before the Storm : Marine Wives Hold Tense Vigil Waiting for Start of Ground War

A tense, restless calm has settled over the home front, even as Marines from Camp Pendleton push toward a probable full-scale battle against entrenched Iraqi forces.

Marine wives are holding their emotions together, following the news but keeping busy and watching after one another, clinging to shreds of normalcy while bracing for word that the ground war has finally begun.

With such feelings come contradictions, and some wives are simultaneously frightened for their husbands yet almost wishing the ground combat would start just so they can get beyond the agonizing wait.

Linda Davila, married 17 years to Gunnery Sgt. Jose Davila, feels a compelling drive to get on with it and have it done. “Hurry up, whatever he has to do, hurry up,” she said.

She’s luckier than many Marine wives, being older, more seasoned, better able to cope with the excruciating realities of military life.

Her husband has been a Marine for 18 years, and Davila, in a gentle, whimsical aside, mentions, “I knew him when he was a funny-looking kid in the seventh grade.”

But now, memories sometimes become a luxury, and days must instead be filled with practical things that are necessary to survive and keep from spinning out from dwelling on the war.

“Honestly, I don’t have time to think about me, between the job and the kids and the doctors’ appointments,” Davila said.

She does have time to think about others. She’s a key wife, a volunteer who lends emotional support and understanding to 13 other wives going through the same ordeal.

“We’re hanging in there pretty tough, the ladies aren’t in a panic right now,” Davila said. Yet nobody can pretend all’s right with the world, any more than they can have the comfort of knowing their husbands will return home safe.

“Mostly they’re scared. They want to be reassured, ‘If I watch TV, am I going to see my husband’s name flashed?’ ” as a casualty, Davila said. There are roughly 30,000 Marines and reservists from Camp Pendleton serving in the Gulf War.

She tells the other wives that the Marine Corps doesn’t work that way, that if there’s important news about their loved ones, they’ll hear it first from the military.

“Fear of the unknown, they don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Davila, who lives in North County.

Carolyn Grubb, married to a lieutenant colonel serving in the war zone, has learned the emotional rhythms of her situation.

After Marines were first deployed in August, she was riveted to the news, letting her fears rise and fall with the day’s events in the Gulf. “Now I’ve learned to take it all in stride,” she said.

But she has help.

“I have tremendous support from my neighbors and friends,” said Grubb, an Orange County resident. She also credits her two teen-age sons and her many responsibilities--she’s an elementary school computer instructor active in PTA--with keeping her equilibrium.

When the United States began the bombing last month, Grubb came to understand something about war, that it’s easier in some ways to cope once the uncertainty has ended.

Once the war actually started, “There was just feelings of great relief we had something real to look at and real to face. I’m sure it will be the same (with) the ground war,” she said.

However, if ground combat begins, it will spell the end of one form of suffering and the beginning of another--the wondering who will be hurt, who will die?

“There is anxiety, there is uncertainty,” said Navy Capt. John Winnenberg, a 62-year-old chaplain who was decorated for bravery in Vietnam. “There is a bit of frustration . . . what is tomorrow? I can only live for today.”

Nobody is immune from the stress.

Even Navy Lt. Paul Schratz, a psychologist at the Naval Hospital at Camp Pendleton, acknowledged, “For me, it’s been a roller coaster emotionally.”

He is part of a preventive program consisting of nurses and other care providers who primarily counsel Marine dependents that their gambit of feelings are “normal for an abnormal situation.”

With events seemingly leading to mass ground conflict, “I see now as we approach another milestone, the level of stress is getting more and more tense,” Schratz said.

There’s nothing he can tell families to make them feel better, but he can help them confront the situation and communicate with one another.

Wives and families have already passed one large hurdle, shifting into a routine after the deployment. But another harsh challenge is pending, and Schratz said, “Once we get into a ground war and see casualties, that will be very difficult to deal with.”