As Soldiers Prepare for Their Orders, Spouses Brace for Uncertain Farewells : Deployment: Families and friends say goodbys as troops get ready for possible duty in Saudi Arabia.

The piercing ring of the phone shattered the late-night quiet at Rhonda Lem’s house, stealing her husband away from their bed to an uncertain fate that she refuses to question.

“I don’t know anything,” she said Wednesday afternoon, sitting under the carport awning at the home of a fellow Army wife. About 15 hours earlier, Rhonda Lem had placed neatly folded passages of Proverbs torn from the Bible into her husband’s shirt pocket and had kissed him goodby. Although she is not sure, she assumes that he’s among the estimated 4,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division sent to guard the oil fields of Saudi Arabia.

The potential deployment of more U.S. troops was hinted at dusk, as soldiers at Ft. Stewart, Ga., began stuffing duffel bags and equipment into armored personnel carriers.

In a drenching thunderstorm, their wives and girlfriends gathered spontaneously, peering to get a last glimpse of their loved ones.

“All we can do is hope and pray,” said Michelle Dawdy, 20, as she held a vigil from the back of her blue sedan for Pvt. Fidel Iglesias, her husband of two months.

“When you say your wedding vows, it’s for better or worse, and this is the worse,” said Dawdy.

Between cloudbursts and thunder claps, Iglesias finally emerged from a small building adorned with a symbol of a panther and the slogan “Speed and Power” to hug his bride and bid her goodby.

Soldiers on the base were forbidden to discuss their orders, so many of the relatives and friends who came to see them off said they were acting on a hunch after days of rumors that had swirled around the post, outside Hinesville in southern Georgia.

“I’m very scared,” said Sondra Robinson, 25, whose husband, Calvin, was among those packing and, she believed, heading for the Middle East. “This is the last opportunity I’m probably going to have to see him. That’s why I’m standing out here getting soaked.”

“You don’t really know what’s going on, whether they’re coming back tonight or going away,” complained one woman, waiting to see her boyfriend.

Pentagon sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity earlier Wednesday, said that they expect deployment of troops from Ft. Stewart and Ft. Campbell, Ky.

Soldiers on leave from the 24th Division at Ft. Stewart were summoned back Tuesday, but base officials refused to say whether they were being sent to the Middle East.

At Ft. Campbell, a base spokesman said Wednesday that the 101st Airborne Division there had not been deployed to Saudi Arabia but that soldiers there were tensely awaiting word.

Back at Ft. Bragg, 31-year-old Rhonda Lem and others who already had said goodby to their spouses waited and worried.

Lewis Lem, 34, is an air defense artillery specialist with the elite 82nd Airborne. His wife hopes that he will be among those who safely return to this neighborhood of military families. She is trying hard, she said, not to let fear and uncertainty paralyze her or her two daughters and two sons.

“My husband got a phone call about midnight on Monday, and he had to go to work,” she said. “He came home about midnight (Tuesday) and had to go right back. That’s all I know.”

As daybreak unfolded Wednesday over Ft. Bragg, military families and the businesses that serve them were already bracing for news of war. Many of the soldiers’ relatives said they knew something was afoot because of the dull roar of the C-130 Hercules and C-141 Starlifter transports taking off and landing during the early morning hours.

Army officials would not comment on their operations, but sources said transport planes began leaving about 3 a.m. Wednesday. Commercial jetliners landed during the day at the airfield, possibly as charters to ferry soldiers to the Middle East.

At Old Sarge’s Surplus, a military supply store in Spring Lake, near Ft. Bragg, Debbie Duncan, 30, rushed in during the lunch hour to purchase last-minute provisions for her husband, James, 24.

“Of course, I’m worried about what might happen to him,” she said, handing over a few dollars to the store clerk for an olive-drab, belt-like pack, toothpaste, shampoo and razor blades. “But that is his job, and doing this is my job. He’s taking care of the country, and I’m taking care of him.”

James Mabe, the sales clerk at Old Sarge’s, said business has been brisk since the community learned that fighting was possible in the Middle East. The 82nd Airborne is often among the first units to see action, and paratroopers can’t jump without dog tags, he explained.

“We’ve sold maybe 1,000 or 1,200 dog tags in the last day,” he said. “I expect to sell another 1,000 today. We usually don’t do 1,000 tags in three months. We probably didn’t make 500 of them when they went to Panama last year.”

Fulwood reported from Ft. Bragg and Secter from Ft. Stewart.