War’s Arrival Sends Chill Through Orange County : Reaction: Expressions of patriotism--and fear--are seen as news of the bombing fills the airwaves.

At the Orange County Performing Arts Center, students rose before “Madama Butterfly” and sang the National Anthem. At the Crystal Cathedral, a hot-line counselor consoled a frightened child calling from a closet. At a high school basketball game in Fullerton, players and fans stood for a moment of silence.

Across Orange County on Wednesday thousands were transfixed before television sets and radios as war became real at 3:30 p.m.

“We looked at our watches and said ‘OK, Jan. 16--we’ll never forget this day,’ ” said Jennifer Neumann, 17, of Irvine, who had been shopping at South Coast Plaza when she learned of the military attack on Iraq.

In a distant desert, 36,000 Orange County and Camp Pendleton based-soldiers were poised for battle as their families back home waited anxiously. Grade school teachers lamented how to explain war to the young; churches held emergency prayer services and military installations heightened security, checking under cars with mirrors at the El Toro marine base entrance.

In Laguna Hills, senior activists staging a peace rally got the news about the United States-led attack from passing motorists but they refused to believe it at first. “It doesn’t make sense,” insisted Bernard Feldman, 69, a leader of the Laguna Hills Leisure World protest.

In Irvine, dozens of anxious university students huddled around recreation center TVs for any word on the attack, but others were nonchalant about the day’s events and continued playing pool and video games.

“I know all I need to know,” said 19-year-old Lam Nguyen, born in Vietnam. “There’s nothing I can do about it. We just have to prepare for it and support Bush.”

And at the regional Army reserve center in Los Alamitos, Army Pvt. Bill Poston, 18, of Anaheim--his blond hair just cropped to military style this week--was finishing up his daily duties in the motor pool when the news hit.

He hadn’t had time to wipe the sweat and grease from his hands when a fellow reservist came running by with the news he’d been anxiously dreading for weeks: “We attacked!”

Polls nationwide have shown the country generally split over President Bush’s aggressive posture in the Middle East. But in the bars and shopping malls, supermarkets and living rooms of conservative Orange County on Wednesday, residents young and old told a different story.

At Hennessey’s Tavern in Seal Beach, patrons grew hushed as President Bush appeared on the television. As Bush declared that he would not make this another Vietnam, with troops feeling they were fighting with one hand tied behind their backs, McDonnell Douglas employee Jerry Elliott, 54, of Long Beach, clenched a fist and pounded the table.

An Air Force veteran, Elliott had been to Vietnam. And Bush’s promise was all he needed to hear. “All right!” he said to no one in particular, his eyes glued on the set.

At Superior Court in Santa Ana, Judge Donald A. McCartin, who oversaw the trial of serial killer Randy Steven Kraft, was no less an advocate of Bush’s actions.

“I think it’s great. I think it’s time,” said the veteran of World War II and Korea.

“I may be a little on the hawkish side of the spectrum since I was eight years in the Navy and the Marines, but you have to take a stand,” McCartin said. “This guy is just out of control . . . and he’s got to be stopped.”

Bajies Abdo, 30, wasn’t so sure Wednesday’s attack was the right way. Born in Jordan but reared in Kuwait, he learned of the attack on Iraq at his job at Home Buyer’s Guide magazine in Newport Beach. His parents and dozens of relatives are in Jordan where food is running out on store shelves. He has an uncle ailing from heart problems who is now stranded in Kuwait.

“It was just like, ‘Oh, God! This is really happening!’ I guess we’re all going to lose in this now. There’s only one person to blame if anyone gets hurt, and that’s Bush. I closed my office to be alone when I heard. I can’t just stand there and cry. We don’t do that. Arab men. We have to cry in private.”

One of the first calls to the Garden Grove Crystal Cathedral’s crisis hot line was the most devastating.

A young boy in Los Angeles, who was “hiding in the closet and talking to me on the phone,” said church counselor Frank Glover. “The boy was 9 years old and home alone. . . . He was scared because he’d obviously been watching TV and his brothers had told him the war was coming to L.A.”

“He was scared and his parents weren’t home. . . . He said, ‘What am I going to? I’m too little to fight.’ It was a real tear jerker. . . . He wanted to know if the war was going to come here.”

In a tense Garden Grove mosque, from 50 to 60 Muslim men lined up in four rows for the evening prayer, some of them torn by profoundly mixed emotions. For while many have long opposed Saddam Hussein, news of that attack wrenched at their divided heritage.

Said Muzammil Siddiqi, director of the Islamic Society of Orange County: “It’s a trying time for us. It’s a trying time for all Muslim people who will kill or be killed.”

At the American Legion Post 291 in Newport Beach, eight veterans at the bar watched grimly and said little as news of the attack flashed over the television.

“You don’t cheer when a battle starts,” said Frank Kaiser, 44, a past commander of the post and a Vietnam veteran.

At the Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, General Director David DiChiera told the audience of teen-age students that singing the Star Spangled Banner “is our way of keeping in mind that we are at war tonight.”

Telephone lines at the American Red Cross’ Santa Ana headquarters were jammed with calls at 4 p.m. Wednesday, minutes after the news broke that war in the gulf had finally begun. Many of the callers who managed to get through wanted to donate blood, but others sought to have the Red Cross send emergency messages to relatives in the military. Spokeswoman Joan Mueller said she asked that families try back today.

At home in South Laguna on Wednesday evening, community activist Sarah Catz gathered her stepchildren, Lonnie, 10; and Lavy, 6; around the master bedroom TV to follow news of the war.

It was “very, very upsetting,” Catz said. “We all gave each other big hugs.” Although 6-year-old Lavy didn’t really understand what was happening, Lonnie was “glued to the TV,” Catz said.

“It’s just scary. I don’t have any relatives in the Persian Gulf,” Lonnie said. “But in school, we’ve been talking about it a lot. The school has been writing letters to soldiers.”

As 15 people gathered around a van in the parking lot of Heritage Park Aquatics Complex in Irvine, Cindy Dickson, 21, a UC Irvine student majoring in social ecology, talked of the war’s impact on her.

She first heard the news in the lifeguard station over the radio.

“I felt overwhelming sadness. I felt empty and couldn’t believe it was happening,” she said. “I don’t know a better way, but why do we have to be the people to do it?”

Her male friends at UCI are scared, she added, because they now fear the draft will be reinstated.

Howard DeCruyaere, 31, a photographer, was editing slides at his home office in Santa Ana when he got the news over the phone from a friend. He called to his mother out in the garden: “Mom! They’re bombing Baghdad!”

DeCruyaere, 31 and a devout Catholic, is looking to his faith for strength. “Sitting here in Santa Ana, what can you do?” he said. “You can support the troops and you can pray.”

Liz Schroeppel, 34, of Irvine brought her radio to her job as an accounting manager for Toshiba Irvine and heard the first scattered reports as they came over air.

“I was up until 4 in the morning (on Tuesday) talking about it, worrying about it, praying about it,” she said weakly. “I don’t even know what side I am on. In a way, we have to do something to stop Hussein, but, is this it?”

Contributing to this report were staff writers Bill Billiter, Henry Chu, Lily Dizon, Tammerlin Drummond, Sonni Efron, Lily Eng, Ralph Frammolino, George Frank, James M. Gomez, Tom Hamilton, Jerry Hicks, Dallas Jackson, Lanie Jones, James Granelli, Kevin Johnson, Matt Lait, Mark Landsbaum, David Lesher, Kristina Lindgren, Davan Maharaj, Tony Marcano, Gebe Martinez, Jim Newton, Maria Newman, Robyn Norwood, John O’Dell, Jeffrey Perlman, Michaell Reilley, Carla Rivera, Allison Samuels, Bob Schwartz, Lynn Smith, Robert W. Stewart, Danny Sullivan, Dean Takahashi, Kenneth Walker, David Willman, and Herman Wong. Correspondents Mary Helen Berg, Erik Hamilton, Frank Messina, Tom McQueeney and Shannon Sands also contributed.