COLUMN ONE : War Drum Muffled in Heartland : Springfield, Ohio, offers a Middle American view of the gulf crisis. Patriotism runs deep, but knowledge is shallow. Some apologize for their inattention.

America has spent the past 15 weeks on the precipice of war in the Persian Gulf, but for most people in this heartland city, the bugles have sounded with no more intensity than Muzak.

Scratch the surface of opinions and beneath the yeses and noes are often layers of froth--confusion about who’s who in the distant Middle East and uncertainty as to why Uncle Sam has put 240,000 GIs in the desert sand, with more to come.

By and large, people do back the deployment, but this is done almost in patriotic reflex, more in support of the heat-besieged soldiers than any clearly understood principle. Urgent debate, whether in auditoriums or at dinner tables, seems to await the start of the shooting.

If fighting begins, protracted combat might well reopen in Springfield--and thousands of cities like it--pro- and anti-war fissures closed now for almost a generation. But until then, the call to arms seems too much like maneuvers to provoke any devouring passions.

“It does my heart good to see people getting behind the troops, but at the beginning it was like that with Vietnam, too,” said Jerry Heck, 48, commander of the county’s veterans council. “When the body bags start coming home, that’ll be the big test. That’s the wake-up call.”

Springfield is as good a place as any to check the American pulse. A city of 70,400 where the Mad River meets Buck Creek, it grew from a bustling prairie oasis in the early 19th Century into a hearty factory town, with huge red-brick buildings at its center.

Streets are wide, and sidewalks are shady. The rich live on the north end, near the country club and in the lavish homes of Signal Hill. Toward the south side, the houses are more often wood than brick, owned by blue-collar workers who too well know that the industrial frontier has moved away.

War sluices through the city’s common memory. Citizens recall that, during World War II, Wren’s Department Store planted a victory garden in its display window on Main Street. Springfield lost 55 of its men in Vietnam. Each year, the Memorial Day parade takes 2 1/2 hours to pass the crowds.

Republicans slightly outnumber Democrats, not that politics has played much part in how anyone thinks about the Middle East. The congressional candidates rarely spoke of the crisis these last weeks, what with taxes to hammer at.

Teachers and preachers do discuss it, though not in a probing way. They remind people to write letters to the boys overseas and send them cookies and magazines and Godspeed. It seems only right.

“Imagine being a soldier over there,” said Mike Bartee, an engineer. “That fellow Saddam Hussein is insane. If one morning he wakes up and goes spastic, we’ll lose a lot of lives.”

Scores of interviews in and around Springfield show a general awareness that America has squared off for a major bloodletting, but knowledge of the conflict and its roots are shallow as a puddle.

Is it Iraq or Iran that is the main bad guy? several people asked. Who owns the oil over there, anyhow, America or the Arabs? How do you pronounce what’s-his-name’s name, the jerk who is the new Hitler?

“I guess I haven’t paid much attention to it, except for the gas prices,” said forklift operator David Marshall, 23, in a typical comment. “You know, I drive a Lincoln, a big car, so what’s going on really hurts me.”

Of those who keep up with the news, there are a few general themes to their thinking:

* People want the crisis to end quickly. Whatever the outcome, there can only be more trouble by letting it drag on. Just look at what it already means for the price at the pump.

“I wish we’d do something and get it over with,” said Dieter Pryor, 36 and unemployed. “We can’t let the Arabs just sit on the oil instead of selling it. They want too much money for it, and that’s outrageous.”

* Pressed to propose a swift solution, most people grow perplexed. They do not want the Iraqi aggression to stand, but they also do not want to attack or to withdraw or to give the embargo a great deal more time.

In frustration, many finally say there must be some way to “talk this over” or “buy our way out.” Assassination is also a popular notion.

“I don’t want to kill off (Iraq’s) whole population, just Hussein,” said Janice Sharpe, a student at the community college. “We ought to send in the CIA and just pick this guy right off. P-choo.”

* While most are reticent to unleash the bombers, there is a large minority that does favor an ultimatum and a deadline. If terms go unmet, then blast Iraq.

“And I don’t mean a surgical strike,” said Ted Wallace, 58, of the county’s veterans services commission. “Hit them with all we’ve got, then return, reload, refuel and hit them again. Kick their fannies.”

* Most assume that America would win, but they also fear a “repeat of Vietnam.” This takes on several meanings: Don’t get bogged down in a long conflict; don’t fight unless we go all out for victory; don’t let our soldiers feel they lack support back home.

“Let’s not turn this into another war where we’re fighting the whole world’s battles,” said Linda Clift, 31, a hospital worker. “This time, we need to arrange to have Japan and Britain and France in there with us. I mean, c’mon. It’s their oil too.”

* Some express a cultural superiority to Arabs, describing them as tent-dwellers with a weird religion. A few freely use expressions such as “A-rabs” and “camel jockeys” and one man joked that we ought to bomb them with pork fat.

This scorn, on one hand, makes the idea of war more tolerable. On the other, it causes apprehension: Iraqis may be tough to beat because they do not share Americans’ reverence for life, people said. Arabs would attack in waves.

“Arabs don’t care about dying because they become martyrs, you know, off to whatever happy hunting ground it is they go to,” said a man named Jim, who withheld his last name.

Some people apologize for their inattention to such a big international crisis. Yes, it is important, they agree. But with so many problems in life it is hard to spare the time. Like it or not, you have to trust the politicians to make decisions. That is why they are elected.

Occasionally, there are exceptions. Some people avidly stalk the headlines. They get most of the names right--and have facts to lace across replies.

Their views go in all directions--and perhaps this is a portent of days ahead should the desert become a battlefield.

The Parents

For the Kinnisons, Mel and Marilyn, this is a prideful, if scary, time. The second oldest of their four children is over there in the gulf, the boy they named Alan Scott after the two astronauts, Alan B. Shepard and Scott Carpenter.

Whatever George Bush decides to do is OK with Mel, though he would just as soon the President give the go-ahead. “I think so much of our military I believe we could go in at breakfast and be out of there a winner by lunch,” he said.

Thank God for the United States, he said. “Saddam Hussein is another Hitler who wants to take over. He was heading into Saudi Arabia. Someone had to stop him and that someone was us.”

Mel sells cameras at the mall and considers himself an ordinary, God-fearing man. Sure, the Commandments say thou shalt not kill. “But if killing is what it takes, then I’m sorry, that’s what it takes,” he said.

Marilyn, a schoolteacher, is really the family’s Bible scholar. She believes this is part of the prophesied approach of Armageddon. The sequence has begun toward the End of the Age and the Second Coming of Christ.

It is to be expected that some events will be ghastly. Did you hear that the Iraqi soldiers were ordered to kill Kuwaiti babies? she asked. “Their soldiers apparently don’t have much in the way of morals.”

Maybe there is another way to stop that madman Saddam Hussein. “Why not just assassinate him, clean and simple?” she told Mel.

“Now, Marilyn, you just can’t do that,” he answered. “For one thing, we’d never get within 10,000 feet of him.”

“They killed President Kennedy, and he was an American. You mean to say Saddam has better protection than an American President?”

“Well, I don’t know. He’s sort of in hiding. He just doesn’t go riding through the streets, you know.”

The Minister

The Rev. John Waite is ordained in the Church of the Brethren and he used to have what he called a “justice ministry” until his funding ran out. Now he is not so much the gadfly against racism and poverty and this and that.

Sending U.S. troops to the gulf bothered him, but what could he do? Then a few weeks ago, at a high school football game, something hard to ignore happened. His daughter plays in the band. At halftime, it honored parents of local servicemen in the Middle East. Rifle shots, ribbons, the whole thing.

Waite did not begrudge the parents their moment, but all this rah-rah stuff was too simplistic for him. Was anyone bothering to explain that neither Kuwait nor Saudi Arabia are democracies? he asked. Was anyone reminding America of the obvious, that oil is not worth the price of young lives?

At the next home game, Waite handed out anti-war leaflets, standing right beside the man selling programs. He felt “like an ass, stuck out there like a big red sore thumb, making a spectacle of myself.” Even his wife, sympathetic enough to his ideas, asked: “Is this the proper place?”

But what place would be proper? “Americans don’t know their history. What do they read? What do they listen to? Where do they get their information? They get it off TV, and TV is dependent on what the State Department wants to tell us. Someone has to do some thinking of their own.”

The Mom

Joyce Blevins read the leaflet when she got home. Oh heavens, she thought, things are so complicated it just tears you up. No, she can’t believe we’re in the gulf just for the oil. We’re there to stop Iraq from taking over the smaller countries. Somebody has to protect the weak from the strong.

But why did the Navy have to send her boy, Jason, who is only 19 and could never kill anyone? His ship is over there, near Kuwait and Bahrain. Who has ever heard of these places? She had to buy a map and tack it up on the wall.

Killing is wrong, she said. She recalls when a Marine recruiter wanted her to sign the papers to enlist Jason. She told him: “I’ll sign when you promise to build a base right in that soybean field across the street and guarantee no one will ever shoot at my son and he’ll never shoot at anyone else.”

After Jason was graduated from high school, he got some construction work, which he’d probably still have if the contract hadn’t run out. Then his car conked out on him. He couldn’t pay rent for his apartment. Joining the Navy seemed to solve all his problems with one quick signature.

Now his life is in danger. On Oct. 30, when the clock radio woke Joyce Blevins, she drowsily heard the announcer say something about an explosion on the Iwo Jima. That’s Jason’s ship! But she wasn’t sure what he had said.

Had it all been a bad dream? She was in a daze. She made her other children breakfast and tried to calm down. Then out the window she saw her mother running up the walk, crying. Oh no, it was true. The Iwo Jima had exploded.

Her mom said there was an 800-number to call, and the military told her not to worry--they had no names yet but not that many had been killed and the dead were all in the boiler room.

But that is where Jason works! She wept. The phone rang again and again. Her husband came home from work. The house filled with friends. People from the church started a prayer vigil.

Then the phone rang one more time. It was Jason, and he was safe. Mom, he said, I had to carry some of my buddies from that boiler room. They were dead and all burned up. It was awful.

And Joyce Blevins decided: “Whatever it takes, a dishonorable discharge, shooting off his toe, whatever. I want my son home.”

The Chamber President

This crisis is really dragging on, isn’t it? asked Larry Krukewitt, president of the Chamber of Commerce. No question, America was right to send troops. “We can’t succumb to paper tigers,” he said. “There was a period of time when the whole world was walking all over us, and that’s done with.”

But he wonders how long the stalemate can go on. It’s so nerve-racking. He can’t figure out what George Bush is up to. He keeps sending more troops, and that’s beginning to remind him of Vietnam, “you know, when they kept asking for another 50,000 men and saying that would turn the tide.”

Krukewitt wishes the Administration was more forthcoming, explaining the upside, the downside, all the options. “The American people are pretty savvy. Explain something to them, they’ll stand up for it.”

Of course, we can’t be expected to do more than our fair share. If this is aggression against the world community, then where is the rest of the world? “Their support is nice, but where are their troops? This has got to be a worldwide fighting force, not just Americans.”

The Dad

Almost half a century ago, Bob Saunter himself was a soldier. World War II taught him how to follow orders. It is OK to question your superiors, but after that you do what they say. That’s the military way.

Then came Korea and Vietnam, and Saunter had trouble understanding these “police actions.” Vietnam is still confounding to him. It dragged on without America ever really knowing whether to come or go.

Now there is this situation in the gulf. Saunter’s son, Eric, is there. The young man is 24 and an Army machinist, but his dad can still picture him in the garage, a teen-ager tinkering with his motorcycle.

“I suppose we’re over there either to make the world safe for democracy or to protect our oil,” said Saunter, 66, who is director of the county library. “I’d rather it be the former, but as a realist I think maybe it’s the oil.”

He has trouble imagining his son in the desert. The Middle East is so inscrutable, anyway. Americans don’t understand the Arab mind, he said. “A huge loss of life would not be as meaningful for them as us.”

This frightens him. Saunter knows how badly he’d feel if his only son was killed, “especially if it was solely for the price of oil. I guess the words ‘lost cause’ come to mind--or even a word like ‘waste.’ ”

But Eric chose this, the father reminds himself. He joined the Army. “And if they send you somewhere, you go,” he said. “You do what you’re told.”

The Union Leader

Don’t be silly, said Tim Marshall, head of Local 658, United Auto Workers. Anyone who thinks we’re in the gulf for anything but the oil is in dreamland. “You think if they were growing grapes over there, we’d care what happens?”

The name of the game is money. Wait until this is over. The oil companies will be rich, and so will a lot of defense contractors, he said. “How can we trust those defense contractors after seeing how they steal?”

It’s sad too. “America is just an old dinosaur warrior state while the rest of the world is tired of fighting. Even the Berlin Wall is down.”

Don’t overlook the possibility this is all a trick, he warned. While people are thinking about the Middle East, they’re not paying attention to all the political scandals, like the S&Ls.;

“The truth will never come out; it never does,” Marshall said. “But think about it. We condemn Hussein for doing the same darn things we did in our own hemisphere, with Grenada and Panama.”

He suggested everyone watch the movie “Lawrence of Arabia.” “It tells you how all the problems over there were started by the European commonwealths. . . . It’s all for money, and some people are going to get rich off this thing, too. Wait and see.”

The Vietnam Vets

The two men had both seen plenty they would like to forget in Vietnam. As is their custom, they were drinking at the Union Club downtown, a dark smoky hall where beers are 75 cents a pop. Empty Budweiser cans become makeshift ashtrays on the tables.

The conversation turned to the gulf, much on the mind of John Sturgell, 43, an assembler for the phone company and a member of the National Guard. He has been told that his unit is likely to be called up soon.

“We ought to attack with all we’ve got,” Sturgell said. “Blow up every damn thing, except the oil fields.”

He and Dean Gaddis, 43, a lineman with Ohio Edison, had not talked this over before, though Gaddis had been waiting for it. “Did you know that Kuwait used to be part of Iraq?” he asked. “Maybe we ought to talk with Saddam Hussein. Maybe he’s got something to say.”

“T-a-a-a-l-k!” Sturgell said. “You don’t talk to a man like Saddam Hussein. You kill him.”

“How do you know what he’s like? Saddam Hussein has his beliefs just like you’ve got your beliefs. Who are you to say he’s wrong?”

“All I know is I’m an American and I’m free.”

“You just know what the media tells you.”

For a few seconds, Sturgell seemed hurt by that.

“Dean,” he said finally, “you mean you’re not going to be there to say goodby to me if I have to go.”

Gaddis smiled. The debate was over. “You know I’ll be there,” he assured him. “And I’m bringing you a six-pack.”