Marine Wives Find Odd Relief in Ground War

The awful waiting is over and a new kind of emotional ordeal--dulling and inescapable--has begun for many wives of Camp Pendleton’s Marines now that the massive ground attack is in violent swing.

Women strengthened by surviving the initial heartache of separation and the chilling outbreak of war are somberly relieved the big push has at long last begun to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

But they can feel no true joy until the guns are forced into silence, and the perverse logic of the situation is, the faster the killing and destruction are done, the sooner their husbands come home.

“It’s finally started and the end is in sight, but now I’m back to being scared,” said Cindy Seal, who believes her husband, a sergeant with the 1st Marine Division, will be in the fighting.

“His time is coming soon,” she said Sunday, her voice dropping.

The ground campaign began Saturday, and by Sunday, most wives still knew little about the sweeping operation except that something fearsome had begun and Marines were in the vanguard.

Karyl Ketchum, whose husband’s unit took casualties from friendly fire at the battle for Kafji, is trying to keep busy and protect her kids from the disturbing new event.

Emotionally, “I’m kind of in limbo,” she said.

“I know his unit’s out there in front, but it hasn’t hit me yet, I don’t have any feelings like worry and depression,” Ketchum said.

The truth about war is often personal, an inward experience, so although Oceanside has been the neighbor of Camp Pendleton’s normal garrison of 36,000 Marines since World War II, the town shows no visible sign that the war has intensified.

Yellow ribbons continued to flutter from utility poles and mail boxes, and American flags waived from car antennas and front porches. The movements, sights and sounds of Oceanside were unchanged Sunday.

But indoors, military wives confided in and took courage from one another.

Susan Mullins, who leads an Armed Forces YMCA support group for 25 military families, said: “My feeling is, they’re all holding up very well. They’re positive but concerned.”

Yet she senses feelings that are more heightened now than they were during the troop deployment in August and the beginning of war in January. “They are more serious, I think there’s a little more stress than before. They’re quieter, there are less comments. They don’t know what’s going on.”

Lupe Garcia, who is an ombudsman for the spouses of Marines serving on the amphibious assault ship Tarawa, said she is “frightened, very frightened,” but knows little of how the military does its job.

“This is my first. I don’t know what they do. I’d like them to get it over with and come home,” she said.

Just how long the ground war, potentially the most bloody aspect of the war for Americans, will take is a nagging, unanswerable question. Some Marine wives are confident of quick victory; others are wary of over-optimism.

Seal said, “I think it’s going to be long, at least six, seven months at least. (Iraqi President Saddam) Hussein, he’s not going to give up. It seems against his nature. I hear for the Iraqis, to die is better than to give up.”

Gigi Perez, married to a staff sergeant serving in a light armored infantry unit, tries to take heart despite her fears over the sprawling land battles.

“In a way, it’s kind of a relief. I’m glad they did have the air fight first to weaken the Iraqi troops,” she said, but hastened, “it’s scary, don’t get me wrong.”

The ground war is especially hard on younger wives, according to Julie Choney, who leads a support group for the wives of men in her husband’s unit.

“They’re huddled together, clinging to one another,” she said. “You see a lance corporal’s wife spending more time with another lance corporal’s wife.”

Children are hardly exempt from the strains of this war, and Ketchum has seen her two kids, aged 7 and 9, succumb to the sorrow and anxiety of their father’s absence.

“They’re convinced in their own minds he won’t return,” she said. “That’s the safety factor they put in their minds. When he calls, they won’t talk to him.”

Ketchum tries to filter what they hear about the war and has decided not to explain about the ground war because they know enough already. “They see a war, they don’t understand (the difference between) air and the ground.”

Many wives survive on faith, and Sunday was a typical scene at the small, storefront Faith Community Baptist Church in Vista, where visiting Rev. Terry Wilcox told the congregation that all are saddened by what Hussein has done to Kuwait, Israel, and to the earth’s environment.

“We’re praying for God to protect (the troops). We want them protected so they can protect others, so they can help others. God is concerned about the soul of all men, even Iraqi souls,” said Wilcox.

Outside the church, the glow and reaffirmation of the service had taken hold.

Faye Robertson, the wife of Cpl. Roy Robertson, a combat engineer whose job is to neutralize land mines, said, “I’m praying and leaving it in the Lord’s hands. I’m getting all the strength I need, right here at church.”

Another wife, Rita Hall, who is married to Staff Sgt. J. B. Hall, a 17-year career Marine, said, “I feel confident. I’m proud of the President and of all the men and women over there. And it’s very important for our husbands and brothers to know that we’re behind them, and that we’re taking care of everything at home. They don’t need to worry about home. They’ve got their hands full.”

Even so, placing confidence in God doesn’t end the anxiety and suffering.

Despite feeling relief that the ground war will speed toward peace, Choney conceded, “There’s a lot more anxiety today for all of us. It’s like what President Bush said, the final days of liberating Kuwait.

“We don’t know what those final days will hold,” said Choney. “That’s the hard part, having to wait and see what God has decided to do. It’s hard to wait.”

From the first, military families have clung to the premise that a full-scale war couldn’t be over until the ground war had begun, and now, at last, it had.

“Bombing is not going to win this war,” said Lance Cpl. William R. McNett, 22, who had stopped in at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County on Sunday. “You have got to go in and take some land. I think it’s great. . . . We’re tired of waiting.”

A Marine wife was coming out of the 10:30 a.m. Mass at Blessed Sacrament Church in Twentynine Palms, five miles from the Marine base that has sent thousands of men and women--65 from her parish--to the Gulf.

“I’m glad it started, because the sooner it starts the sooner they’ll be home. I just want it over with,” she said. She would not give her name; her husband is a sergeant in a light-armored vehicle at the front.

Their two children, ages 3 and 4, who went romping off into the sunshine outside the red-tile-roofed church, will be getting counseling this week, she said. All of this is just too hard on them.

Not that it’s been easy on her. Sunday’s confident military predictions about a quick and easy ground war were too familiar. “That is what they said with the air war too, at first.”

Barbara Lee, 33, spent Sunday doing what she guessed her sergeant-husband was doing half the world away from her home in Twentynine Palms: her duty. She went to church, drove her 7-year-old daughter to a Brownies meeting, and headed to work as a hotel cook.

“There isn’t a lot of wailing and moaning going on. This is a military town, and that is the nature of the beast.” But “I don’t feel relief. I would have felt relieved if it hadn’t started and Saddam had left and everybody lived happily ever after. But it isn’t going to happen that way.”

In Tustin, at Debbie Guddeck’s house in the shadow of a giant aircraft hangar, dinner was ready Saturday, the baby-sitter hired, the rented videotapes waiting. She and several friends with family in the Gulf had arranged for a relaxing evening--and then came the ground war.

Guddeck, whose Marine major husband left for the Gulf six months ago, decided the news could wait a bit, and so she taped it. “After dinner, we watched ‘Beaches’ and we cried. Then we watched the news and cried again.”

On Sunday morning, she scanned more censor-delayed footage “thinking I might see my husband. I don’t know where he is. I know that he is riding in a LAV (a light-armored vehicle). And I know he doesn’t like that. I just hope that the phone doesn’t ring and that there are no knocks on the door.”

At Blessed Sacrament in Twentynine Palms, where the altar table is wrapped in a yellow net ribbon bearing the names of its parishioners in Saudi Arabia, the Rev. Gerard McGuinness didn’t mention the war, except to repeat the prayer he’s said almost every Sunday, asking for a quick and safe end to it. “We do best to carry on as normal, not overemphasizing,” he said afterward. “Life has to go on.”

Parishioner Cecilia Plezia, at 70, carries memories of every war since World War II. She is a rarity in town, non-military. She too wore to church the yellow ribbon and the red, white and blue one the church gave away two Sundays ago. But other wars have left her with contrary feelings about this ground assault.

“I never thought we would come to this. I thought we were finished with these types of wars. I was very disappointed. It is so primitive. Yet here we are at it again,” she said sorrowfully.

“We are saying that it is for humane reasons, but actually it is for oil.”

The church services reminded these people of what, the night before, some others had tried for a time to forget.

The Max in Twentynine Palms is one of the few nightspots still open; many closed after the troops shipped out and took their business along with them.

Tessler and Gorman reported from San Diego County. Also contributing to this report were Times staff writers Patt Morrison in Los Angeles, Dean Murphy Twentynine Palms, and Kevin Johnson and Mark Landsbaum in Orange County.