Marine Wives Share News From the Front and Home

The Marine Corps, which takes pride in taking care of its own, 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 to share 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 paycheck when they are home. But when they are 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 put them in an unexpected financial pinch. Never mind that they’re receiving a $2 a day “family separation allowance” during the deployment.

Joey Bailey said her husband, David, a chief warrant officer, had to spend about $300 to buy socks, T-shirts, boots and other supplies before he shipped out.

“He gets an annual clothing allowance that’s paid on his anniversary date (with the Marine Corps), but he had to go out and spend that money before he got this year’s allowance, and that put us in a little bind,” she said.

Her bigger concern, though, was the slow mail delivery, which, until this past week, had been forwarded through New York. Marine officials have acknowledged the problem and have told families to route the mail through San Francisco, 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. His morale was low--and he said the other guys had bad morale, too, because they weren’t getting our letters.”

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.

For Michelle Pike’s husband, one of the most exciting moments so far, she said, was handling ordnance after a supply truck overturned in the sand.

“And the heat is worse than they expected,” she said. “Before he left, we were reading stories about how hot it would get over there, and he and his friends just kind of laughed it off. But he wrote me that after he got over there, he had real bad headaches for the first day or two because he wasn’t drinking enough water.”

At home, there are different concerns, said Bailey, who, as an officer’s wife, keeps in contact with the wives of the men in her husband’s unit.

“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. There are good days and bad days. The bad days are when we have too much time to think about it, when we can’t keep ourselves busy.”

The stress is showing on the children, too.

“My children aren’t doing too well,” Bailey said of 3-year-old Joseph and 7-year-old Stephen, who were tugging at her legs to go to the game booths at the fair.

“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.”

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.

“They are in the Persian Gulf, ‘dug in’ 24 hours a day protecting our rights to be free,” proclaimed a poster at the morale, welfare and recreation tent, where the bandannas were being distributed. “The least we can do to give our support and be involved is to walk for 10 minutes each day--until they come home.”

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, and others.

Cindy Simmons said she was delighted by the various information about the Marine Corps she was learning Saturday--especially of the dental services available to the wives of Marines.

“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 stared back.

On the football field, police dogs and their handlers demonstrated their prowess. Across the grass, other children played field hockey and queued up for free soft drinks and hotdogs.

And while the children played and nagged and stood restlessly in lines, the wives continued to talk of their 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 McLeroy, the corporal’s wife. “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 limits 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.”

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