Letters From Servicemen Ease Vigils : Home front: A soldier’s father gleans insight from his son’s message. A Marine’s wife learns just what she needs to know: He’s alive.

Her husband may be in the Mideast with the Marines, but Olivia Sosa does not want to know the details.

“In the beginning, I watched the news, but all the analysts do is talk,” said Sosa, a 20-year-old insurance saleswoman with huge brown eyes. “What’s the point? It worries me. So now I just pray he’ll be OK.”

The three short letters Sosa has received since her husband, Lance Cpl. Christopher R. Sosa, 22, left six weeks ago have told her all she really wants to know: He’s alive.

“He asks how the baby behaves, gives his love to his mother and grandmother, and says it’s 130 degrees during the day and 90 at night,” Sosa said. “He says he hardly has time to write, so I’m happy to get anything.”

A quiet, industrious youth with an iron will and a talent for restoring old cars, Christopher Sosa has been stationed on a ship in the Persian Gulf before, said his mother, Rita Sosa, a 43-year-old housewife who lives next door to her daughter-in-law in a working-class neighborhood in San Fernando.

While in the military, Christopher has traveled to the Middle East and Japan--places he could not otherwise afford to see, his mother said. Her living room walls are covered with more than 25 photographs of her four children, including nearly a dozen of Christopher. She also has pinned up such souvenirs as paper money Christopher sent her from the Persian Gulf when he was on duty two years ago.

“Let me tell you about Bahrain, a small country in the beginning of the gulf,” Christopher wrote in a letter dated Dec. 3, 1987. “The people here dress with sheets on their heads like sheiks. It’s just like Beverly Hills in the desert.”

Although she is glad her son is getting to see the world, Rita Sosa said that, like her daughter-in-law, the less she hears about the present crisis in the Middle East, the better she feels. “If I listen to the news, I won’t sleep,” she said.

Christopher had been home for only two days on emergency leave after his wife had surgery to remove a cyst from her spine when he was called back to Camp Pendleton Aug. 5 and sent to Saudi Arabia. The couple’s child, Christy, is 1 1/2 years old.

“She sees his shoes, his hat and yells, ‘Papa, papa,’ ” Olivia said tearfully. “I say, ‘Papa is at work, and he’ll be home soon.’ ”

The family says they are confident their prayers will keep Christopher safe because he has so much to live for. There’s the 1963 Chevy Impala waiting in the back yard for him to restore. And there’s his fledgling marriage, which began about two years ago when the couple eloped to Las Vegas. The couple has been together largely only during weekend leaves ever since.

“I feel like we just got married. We’re not tired of each other,” Olivia said.

Jimmy Mallett walked out of his Glendale print shop in the middle of the afternoon again last week, but this time it was to celebrate.

Last time he left work early, Mallett had just learned that his only son, Robbie, had been sent with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to Saudi Arabia.

This time, it was the first letter in the six weeks since the 20-year-old parachutist left that sent Mallett zooming home to San Fernando.

“My daughter ripped it open and read it to me over the phone, but I just had to see it for myself,” said Mallett, 38, who has had sole custody of his two children since he was 20 and they were toddlers. “I was so happy to get anything. I wouldn’t have cared if it was just one line.”

Since it arrived, Robbie’s letter has rested on the television set in the Malletts’ living room, where family members reach for it over and over again. Mallett said the letter’s place of honor is appropriate because the TV is constantly tuned to the news, the family’s main source of information on the Middle East situation.

“To be quite frank with you, I’m getting a little bored with the whole thing,” said Mallett, who has said he fears for his son’s life. “I’ll bet I know as much as George Bush does by now.”

Still, Mallett said he would like Robbie to send him more details on “what he sees through his binoculars when he looks out on the desert.”

“I wish I was there in his place,” he said.

Mallett said he and his family have sent Robbie more than 50 letters since he was flown to Saudi Arabia in the middle of the night shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2. Robbie did not mention receiving those letters in the first one he wrote home, nor does the family know exactly where he is stationed.

He did report that he has been promoted from the rank of private first class to specialist. But the promotion hardly compensates for the overseas duty.

“Hi ya, Pops” the letter begins. “Me, I’m doing fine, just sittin’ sweating . . . in this God-awful country.”

Although no one knows when the Middle East crisis will end, Robbie wrote that he has been told he will be there for at least six to nine months. Before shipping out, the tall, easygoing youth had been eager to get out of the service and embark on another career, possibly as a math teacher, his family said.

“That means I won’t be home for X-mas,” Robbie wrote. “You know if they keep me here nine months, I’ll save $8,000--cool, huh?

“But don’t worry, I’ll make it out of Saudi Arabia in one piece.”

Robbie has been trained to provide air defense for his unit by operating a shoulder-fired, infrared homing missile. The assignment is particularly dangerous, according to Army spokesmen, but Robbie seems to regret that the standoff in the Persian Gulf is preventing him from demonstrating his abilities.

“All I want to do is bust a MiG-23 out of the sky, and I’ll be happy,” the letter says. “Cuz ‘happiness is a confirmed kill.’ (Just kidding). I do want to use the Stinger though and show the world what kind of Army we are.”

The toughest problem the soldiers face, says Jimmy Mallett, is keeping up their morale during the long, hot days. Care packages from home can help, he says, adding that he is incensed over news reports that Saudi authorities are searching Americans’ mail and destroying anything that offends their Islamic sensibilities, including magazines that show women’s forearms.

“We’re over there to protect them, and they take their mail away,” the elder Mallett said in disgust.

“Please do not send any packages,” Robbie wrote. “They won’t deliver them . . . “

But Robbie did ask his father to send him about $100 because his paychecks are directly deposited in a stateside bank 6,000 miles away. For the past week, Mallett has been trying to devise a scheme to get the cash past the Saudis so Robbie can buy cigarettes, which the Army stopped supplying free of charge in the late 1960s.

Robbie also asked his father to send him stamps, which he said are difficult to get. Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) announced Saturday that he will introduce legislation to allow letters to and from American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia to be sent free of charge.

Cranston, who recently returned from a visit to the area, said, “just about everyone I spoke to said that what they wanted most was letters from home and to be able to write their friends and relatives often and easily.”