The Home Front : Marine Corps Wives Compare News--and Their Worries Over Mideast

The Marine Corps, which takes pride in taking care of its military family, held a family fair Saturday for the wives and children of Marines deployed in the Middle East--and the wives took the opportunity to compare news from their husbands and gripes on the home front.

The men in the bunkers are adopting pets--usually scorpions--and giving them names.

They’re giving themselves buzz haircuts right down to the scalp, partly because the sand fleas are so bad.

They’ve invented sand bowling by positioning empty water bottles and knocking them down with rolled up balls of tape.

They’re envious because of word that Saudi Arabian troops--and they’ve heard some Army soldiers, too--have air-conditioned tents.

And they’re depressed because they haven’t been getting much mail.

“It’s not that we’re not writing,” said Jeri McLeroy, a 21-year-old wife of a corporal. “I’ve written maybe 20 letters. But he’s been over there for almost a month and he said he’s only gotten one letter so far.”

Some wives complained, too, about what amounted to a cut in their husbands’ take-home pay because of their Mideast assignment.

“I can’t afford to pay my rent anymore. My parents are going to have to help me out,” Kathy Harrison said.

The problem, Harrison and other wives have come to realize, is that enlisted men receive about $180 a month in food allowance that’s included in their paychecks when they’re at home. But when they’re deployed, the Marine Corps drops the supplement because the men are being fed directly by the Corps.

For those families that grew accustomed to the food allowance, the loss of $180 a month puts them in an unexpected financial pinch.

Joey Bailey’s biggest concern, though, was the slow mail delivery--which, until this last week, had been forwarded through New York. Marine officials have acknowledged the problem and have given families new San Francisco addresses, believing that will speed things up.

“It was taking a couple of weeks for him to get my letters,” Bailey said. “He has sent me 10 letters and they were getting a little, uh, nasty because he hadn’t heard from me yet.”

The word from the men, she said, is that they’re hot, bored, hot, tired, hot and restless. The temperatures have been hovering around 120 degrees.

Bailey said that “a lot of the younger wives are still scared--and mad, mad at their husbands for having left them. They (wives) just don’t understand that that’s what these Marines are trained to do, and supposed to do. I don’t like it either, but I know I can’t change it.”

The stress is also showing on the children, Bailey said.

“My children aren’t doing too well,” she said of Joseph, 3, and Stephen, 7.

“They’re having nightmares. The younger one asks me, ‘Why can’t we go get Daddy?’ And Stephen finally told me the other day he’s worried about Daddy. He said, ‘Daddy’s going to come home in a body bag.’ Those were his actual words. He picked it up off the TV.”

Michelle Pike, a 29-year-old wife and mother of three young children, said: “The 6-year-old is giving me the hardest time. He’s very hard to handle now. He’s doing stuff he knew he couldn’t get away with before because he knows his father won’t be home at 6 to deal with him.”

As the day went on, more and more women and children wore red-white-and-blue bandannas adorned with the printed slogan, “I (heart) the Marine Corps.” They were given to everyone who pledged to walk 10 minutes a day as a show of support for Operation Desert Shield.

Around the fair, which attracted hundreds of wives and children--and Marines who haven’t been sent to the Middle East--military officials stood by to answer questions. There was a tent for legal affairs, one offering dental care, one dispensing information about religious services available on base, one for wife support groups.

Cindy Simmons said she was delighted by what she was learning.

“This is information my husband never brought home to me,” she said.

How’s he doing overseas?

“Oh, he’s not deployed,” she corrected with a laugh. “He’s still here. But this was still a chance to learn some new things about the Marine Corps.”

At another booth, military police admonished children to say no to drugs, and offered their versions of hay rides--small supply trailers, filled with hay, pulled around the grounds by three-wheel all-terrain vehicles that usually patrol the base’s beachfront and perimeter.

Elsewhere, a Marine in scuba equipment bobbed in a small booth filled with water, and gawked through the plexiglass wall at the children who gawked back.

And while the children played and nagged and stood restlessly in lines, the wives continued to talk about how they are coping.

“All of my husband’s bills are still being sent to his barracks because he didn’t change his address after we got married,” said Jeri McLeroy. “I assume someone on base is sending them over to him in Saudi Arabia--and he’ll send them back home for me to pay.”

Gemma Yuman, 21, said she still hasn’t seen the stubs of her husband’s newly adjusted paycheck, “so I still don’t know how much money he’s getting so I know how many bills to pay.”

Pike said she is learning new things as the head of her household. “I’m learning how to put up a chain-link fence on my own,” she said, laughing. “You learn to do when you’re on your own.”