Waiting Game Gets Tense for O.C. Marines

As thousands of local Marines carted out the birthday cakes and candles to celebrate their history here last week, a darker future clouded their celebrations: the real prospect of a war that could draw into it thousands of additional area soldiers in the weeks ahead.

“A lot of people are just wondering--will they be the ones called on to go the (Persian) Gulf?” said Cpl. Darrick Dees, a helicopter mechanic at the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station. “It’s all just a waiting game. No one really knows.”

Local military personnel and their families have been playing the waiting game since the Iraqis invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2. But the stakes were upped dramatically on Thursday with President Bush’s announcement that he would send additional troops--perhaps 200,000--into the Persian Gulf powder keg to prepare for an “offensive” option.

Among that group could be a formidable local contingent: as many as 18,000 Marines from Camp Pendleton, as well as El Toro and Tustin, who will form a special-assignment, amphibious assault unit known as the 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

After Bush’s announcement, “morale was soaring” among those Marines who may end up in the Persian Gulf as part of the 5th Brigade, said its commander, Brig. Gen. Peter J. Rowe.

“The forces here knew they would eventually be deployed,” said 5th Brigade spokesman Capt. Chris Gillette, “so it’s a relief to a certain extent to have it officially announced. We are finally going to be able to become directly involved in this operation.”

Gillette, whose chief duty in the Persian Gulf will be to provide information from the outside world, said of his own entry into the conflict: “It’s something I’ve prepared myself for psychologically for a while now. It’s why I joined the Marines--not to sit on the sidelines.”

But for others in Orange County, hit close to home by the newly heightened prospect of war, the mood appears less gung-ho:

* For Kittie Flynn, the coming weeks may be long ones. With four boys, ages 4 to 14, at home at Camp Pendleton, she has tried in the past few days not to think about war. She just wants her husband, 42-year-old Lt. Col. George Flynn, a Marine battalion commander now shipboard in the Persian Gulf, to be home for Christmas.

“Whatever the President and Congress feel is correct, I support,” Flynn said. “We’ve realized all along that something like this may happen and that’s why our husbands are there--to defend our country. . . . We’re just hoping they’ll be back before the holidays. But nobody knows.”

* For Kathy Collier of Buena Park, news of the stepped-up deployment was a relief. A founder of an area support group for families of soldiers in the crisis, she sees the move as an added layer of security for her son, 24-year-old Army Spc Darrin Collier, stationed in Saudi Arabia.

“The more numbers we have over there,” she said, “the safer everyone feels.”

But Collier acknowledged that there was still tension among members of her support group as they traded phone calls after Bush’s announcement. The hope is that the United States’ show of strength will force Saddam Hussein to back down--before the shooting starts, she said.

“It’s very difficult for us to accept the fact that there might be a war in the next two months,” she said.

* For World War II veteran John Penn of El Toro, the occasion to remember dead soldiers past over the Veterans Day weekend is also a chance to pray for the future.

An organizer of a veterans’ service at El Toro Memorial Park Cemetery today at 2 p.m., Penn said: “I’m sure those boys are going to be on all our minds this weekend. We don’t want to be at the cemetery again in a year or two putting wreaths on dead GIs from the Middle East.”

The hopes will no doubt be similar at the Newport Beach Marriott today, as 750 family members of troops in the Persian Gulf are expected to gather there for brunch at 10:30 a.m.

Collier and other leaders of military support groups say these chances to share their fears and hopes with others at a time of such uncertainty are invaluable. And in a matter of weeks, the number of local people able to share those experiences may swell by thousands.

Although the military does not disclose specific troop levels in its operations, past estimates have put the number of Orange County soldiers sent to the Middle East since summer at 5,000 or more. The mobilization of the 5th Brigade, which military sources say is not expected to come for several weeks, seems almost certain to surpass that figure.

While based at Camp Pendleton, the brigade may draw on fighter and attack aircraft personnel from El Toro, as well as helicopter troops from Tustin, according to Capt. Gillette. Originally created in Virginia during World War I and restructured in the years after, the 5th Brigade moved its headquarters to Camp Pendleton in July, 1985. It normally uses 20 Navy ships to embark on what the Marines call “forceable entry operations ashore.”

Among the more notable assignments in the brigade’s history: deployment in the Cuban Missile Crisis in November, 1962. Twenty-eight years later, 5th Brigade family members now watch its latest deployment anxiously, hoping this one ends as peacefully.