Day Two Ushers In a Different Reality : Home front: Americans expressed euphoria over early successes. But the war takes a dreadful twist with the attack on Israel.

Thursday, Americans watched their new war, prayed about it, praised it, despised it. It was only the beginning, and it took a dreadful twist.

Early on, many spoke of the conflict as if it were a first-round knockout, awaiting only the ref to count to 10. Then Iraqi missiles pierced into Israel. And a different reality set in, the wake-up call of a counterpunch.

The cocktail hour was underway at a Miami Beach fund-raiser for the United Jewish Appeal. More than 1,200 people were milling about in the Fontainebleau Hotel. Some had pocket radios with earplugs. They heard it first.

The news skipped like a brushfire. At dinner in the grand ballroom, between the salad course and the entree, an announcement was made: The reports were confirmed. Several people ran to the lobby. They huddled around TV screens.

They wept. And they got angry. “Outraged!” said Lou Cohen, 74, a retired exporter. “I’ve been calling that man So Damn Insane for the longest time, but I never thought he’d want to take on 500 Israeli pilots.”

The rest of the evening passed without small talk. People spoke of Israeli friends and relatives now in jeopardy. Paul Richman, an oral surgeon, said American bombers had been too easy on Iraq so far, ignoring civilian targets.

“Believe me, Saddam doesn’t play that way and Israel won’t either,” he said. “This is the Middle East; the rules of war call for ruthlessness.”

What a strange day. And it promises to continue like this, a roller coaster in the dark on a rickety track. Who knows the screams that await?

The war goes on, and so does life. Americans try to keep up with business as usual, though many are so distracted by the distant killing they can think of little else. People cope in different ways.

Dave Smith, a Phoenix window washer, got up at 4 a.m. so he could catch all the latest news before heading to work by 7. What riveting stuff! At that point, reports told of 1,000 sorties and only one plane down. It looked like a cakewalk. Smith was so excited he lost track of the time and showed up late.

“Hey, I hope we kick Iraq’s ass,” he declared, leaning against a newspaper coin box. “This is the 21st Century here. You just don’t go over and take over another country anymore.”

In downtown Pittsburgh, people went to church. The noon mass at St. Mary’s by the Point is usually sparsely attended. But when the liturgy began all seats were filled. Latecomers stood in the back.

There had been a spontaneous sense of need. People were thinking about war. About peace. About the great wheel turning. There was sniffling and blowing of noses--and not all of it was because of the sleety weather.

Roman Catholic Bishop Donald Wuerl led them in the devotions. Then he pointed to a lit candle at a side altar. He said it was the light of Christ, and he invited people to write a name in a book that had been placed nearby.

The top page said: “Remember in prayer.” People filed up. They wrote:

“George Bush”

“Saddam Hussein”

“Pfc Richard Byers”

“All the boys”

At lunchtime in downtown Houston, right in front of Woolworth’s, a group of 20 high school kids rallied businessmen and shoppers. The teen-agers wore jeans and T-shirts. Their signs were orange, white and red. Their exhortation was: “Honk if you support the troops!” One after another, drivers complied.

A distinguished gray-haired man in a Buick Riviera. Beep.

A mustachioed UPS driver, waving his fist. Beep Beep.

Two guys in a blue Chevy pickup. Beep.

A yuppie in a white BMW. Beep. Beep.

“Peace is good. We want peace. But the troops are over there so let’s support them,” said one of the young cheerleaders, Veronica Acosta, 17.

In Seattle, Loren Arnett attended the regular noontime prayer vigil at the University Christian Church. He is a retired executive with a trim beard. It was his third visit to the vigil this week.

He stared at the altar, spare with only a single candle and five yellow ribbons. He listened to the soft choral music. He said: “I came back today because of a sense of hopelessness.”

He had thought the threat of war might turn to vapor. “My prayer now is that the conflict will end soon, that the Iraqis will not suffer too much damage to their homes or their shrines,” he said.

When the music ended, the vigil over, he joined the others in the foyer. Some hugged. Others smiled weakly. They were like mourners at a funeral.

In mid-town Manhattan, personnel counselor Mary Jane McGahee took off her tan wool coat and genuflected before the altar at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The stained glass windows were kaleidoscopes of color. Incense sat in the air.

She is 57 now. During her lifetime, each war America has fought seemed like the one that would be the last. She squeezed into a pew and knelt in prayer.

An image came to mind. She thought of three women in the service that she had seen on a TV interview. They were in the Middle East.

“They looked desperately afraid,” she said.

In Portland, four sheet metal workers gulped down a lunch of hamburgers and fries. “We should nuke ‘em and shoot them when they start to glow,” joked John Bricker Jr. He heard that wisecrack last Tuesday, at bowling night. It got plenty of laughs.

The laborer wiped his chin with a paper napkin and got more serious. After all, this was a day to mark on the calendar of history. He had bought a New York Times and a USA Today so he’d have the front pages to save.

“We are doing the right thing,” Bricker said. “We’re not doing this for oil. We’re doing this to keep peace in the world, so the next guy doesn’t think he can do what Saddam did.”

There were protests all over the country Thursday, some big, some small, some that were even answered tit-for-tat. In Chicago, at the downtown Klucynski federal building, dozens chanted “peace now,” and many of the office workers did not approve of that.

Irene Ervin came out of the building. She carried a hastily made sign that read: Support Our Troops. “I don’t want war any more than the next person,” she said. “But I want to show my support for the President and the troops.”

There were plenty more like her. When the protesters sang, “We Shall Overcome,” they countered with the Pledge of Allegiance.

At VFW Post 1 in Denver, they sold all 22 of the American flags they had in stock. They ordered more. Veterans were coming in all day. They are tough men, battle-hardened. Many wept.

“Not every person in this world can take a gun and go out into a field and kill another person,” said Doug Murray, 66, the post’s senior vice commander. “That’s why we’re bonded together. We have a special bond with the boys and girls over there.”

There were combat patches on his jacket and a yellow ribbon pinned to his dress hat. “I’m a kinder, gentler person for the people I’ve killed,” he said. “I have no rancor against the Iraqis. Their soldiers are doing their job, but our soldiers need our support.”

Across the country, yellow ribbons were de rigueur in certain circles. They were pinned to lapels like corsages at a prom. In Tempe, Ariz., workers at a car wash asked drivers for permission to tie them to their antennas.

At the Pepsicola Southwest plant in Phoenix, yellow bows were affixed to the shrubs and trees and the doors of the administration building. Inside the front door, receptionist Darlene Kometh sat behind a bow so big it was hard to see her face.

“Our employee reaction has been very good,” Kometh said. “They thought it a very good gesture, a nice way to recognize our troops in the gulf.”

She spoke easily about the war. It was midday. No Iraqi missiles had yet found their mark. Saddam seemed worse than a paper tiger. He was a paper kitten.

But soon after nightfall, the news changed. There were scenes of Tel Aviv after the attack. Joyce Sneath, 49, was emptying a beer at a Denver bowling alley. She was pretty worked up about it.

“I think we should hit (Iraq) with whatever it takes now, even an atomic bomb,” she said.

In Canonsburg, Pa., over at VFW Post 191, Jack McMurlen, 67, was thinking things over, too. The retired coal miner fought with Gen. George S. Patton Jr.’s armored division in World War II. He was sipping Budweiser from a can, saying Americans had been a little silly earlier in the day to think this new war would be easy.

“They’re nuts when they say that,” he said. “It’s getting worse instead of better. It’s just the beginning. I believe that.”

The following staff writers and correspondents contributed to this story: David Treadwell, Doug Conner, Ann Rovin, Donald Woutat, Lee May, Edith Stanley, Lianne Hart, Paul Feldman, Tracy Shryer, Anna M. Virtue, John Laidler, Bill Steigerwald, Stuart Wasserman, Mike Clary, Rhonda Hillbery, Laura Laughlin and Ted Cilwick.