Survivor’s Words Help Family Start the Healing : Death: Marine who lived through missile attack helps buddy’s wife come to terms with tragedy.

SAN CLEMENTE —  In the darkness with the thunder of fighter jets overhead, Cpl. Stephen E. Bentzlin and his unit of Marines were rumbling through Khafji in their light-armored vehicle, driving the enemy back.

Nearing the end of what began as a reconnaissance mission, Bentzlin, seated in the rear with five fellow Camp Pendleton Marine buddies, bounced over the rough desert terrain with Lance Cpl. Ronald Tull in the driver’s seat.

And then it was over.

A missile, possibly from an American jet, ripped through the back of the truck, hurling Tull into the sand and knocking him unconscious. Tull survived, but the rest of the unit, including Bentzlin, whom Tull described as a “rigid” leader with an intense love for his wife, died instantly.

The tragic details of how some of the first American ground troops lost their lives in battle for Khafji, as relayed from Tull to Carol Bentzlin in telephone conversations last week, is bringing relief to the 29-year-old widow.

In the weeks since being notified of her husband’s Jan. 29 death, Carol Bentzlin has demanded to know the details--she is still not sure if he was killed by friendly fire--and feared that her 23-year-old husband had died only after long suffering.

“All I could think about was that he lay there burning to death,” she said this week, sitting on a park bench with a sweeping view of San Clemente beach. “What comforts me is knowing that he died instantly. He (Tull) told me that Steve did more than his best. Ron is going to help us heal.”

Carol Bentzlin is planning to meet with Tull, 22, at the end of the month, and she will try to arrange a group meeting of the families whose young men died with her husband.

The men with whom Steve Bentzlin shared the back of that Marine armored vehicle--Pfc. Dion J. Stephenson of Bountiful, Utah; Lance Cpl. Frank C. Allen, Waianae, Hawaii; Lance Cpl. Thomas A. Jenkins, Coulterville, Calif.; Lance Cpl. Michael E. Linderman Jr., Roseburg, Ore., and Sgt. Garett A. Mongrella, Belvidere, N.J.--were all mentioned at one time or another in letters sent home to his wife.

“They died together,” she said. “I have all these letters from Steve that talk about them.”

In the short time since her husband’s death, Carol Bentzlin said she and her three children by a previous marriage are already on the road back. Time and Tull’s story are helping to prepare the young mother for a return to the beach where she and Steve shared their first date. She will go back to school for a degree in literature or English and possibly pursue a teaching career.

But she will not forget the nauseating feeling the night a Navy chaplain came to the door of her Camp Pendleton home to break the news. And she vividly recounts the freezing day of her husband’s funeral in Minnesota. Before the ceremony she asked that the casket be opened so she could privately view her husband’s body.

“I wanted to be alone with him. I wanted to hold his hand, kiss him goodby,” she said.

“He was wrapped in a green blanket, like a baby,” she said. “His uniform was laying on top of him. They took his ribbons off and gave them to me.”

Recent days have been filled with interviews, family and chronicling her thoughts in a journal. She also encourages the children--Ricky, 7; Michael, 8, and Ryan, 10, to write down their thoughts. Some of their notes have been found scrawled on napkins and placed on the family hutch.

Michael, whom she describes as the most sensitive, wrote: “God, I have one really big wish and that’s that you make Steve be alive again.”

Another asked why Steve’s ashes couldn’t be buried in the back yard.

“We’ve all changed,” she said. “I feel a lot more peaceful. I know where Steve is. I don’t have to wonder where he is any more, whether he is laying on the ground somewhere.”

Healing also requires that she clear another emotional hurdle: moving out of her Camp Pendleton home, leaving her friends and the Marine Corps behind. Counselors are working with her and the children.

“It’s going to be really scary because it’s been everything I know. I don’t know what’s coming, but I’m going on.”

The family has been granted a 90-day extension that will allow them to live on base until the children finish school. But she thinks about things, like how she will pack her husband’s boots, which have been standing in the living room since word of his death came, or where she will move when the time comes.

“I thought about moving to the desert, where there is affordable housing. But I’m going to stay in San Clemente. I thought about moving, but why should I make a major change?”

With the family finances once her husband’s responsibility, Carol Bentzlin has been introducing herself to creditors.

“He had the sense. He was the rational one, calm. He took care of any credit stuff. Most of our creditors have been outstanding. I don’t think they are going to remain outstanding because next week this is going to be old news.”

Time, she said, has also taught her to look on her situation from a much stronger perspective.

“You can look at this like the worst thing that ever happened or you can look for something good in this. I can take care of this.”

She said letters and sympathy cards that have poured in from all over the world have helped. All contain touching acknowledgments of her husband’s death and some include money.

She received a particularly touching piece of mail Friday, a letter her husband wrote that had been delayed for weeks.

“I’m looking for the meaning in all of this,” she said. “I don’t know it yet, but I’ll know it when it comes. I can’t think of going through anything worse, except maybe losing one of my children. It’s a cake walk from here.”