War Suddenly Becomes Real for Marine Families : Camp Pendleton: Base has sent thousands to Gulf. Those left behind can only speculate, hope, pray, wait.

The toughest thing here Wednesday was that nobody knew much of anything. They only knew a war that in some ways had seemed an unreal adventure at once had become quite real, quite lethal and quite frightening.

Twelve Marines had been killed in combat, the U.S. military announced early in the day. Not announced was what base these dead Marines came from--who they were, and who they had left behind. Here at Camp Pendleton, which has sent about 21,000 Marines to the Persian Gulf war zone, the not knowing haunted wives and the base commander alike.

And all they could do was speculate and hope, pray and wait. It hardly seemed enough.

Joey Bailey, a laboratory technician at a medical building in Vista, went to work as normal--but spent her lunch hour driving alone and listening to news accounts of the fighting. “And I just started crying. My chest hurts,” she said.

Coralee Collins sought refuge from the worsening news from Saudi Arabia by taking her two young children for a walk on the Oceanside beach. She wore a Marine Corps sweat shirt emblazoned with the caricature of a bulldog.

And she cursed her lack of power to change the situation. “There’s nothing more I can do. My husband’s there. I just pray he comes home safe,” she said.

Maribel Yawn, 21, stayed at home Wednesday, in the San Onofre base housing complex at Camp Pendleton. Her children were asleep in a back room, but she didn’t turn on the television.

“It upsets me, so I’ve stopped watching it,” she said. “And I don’t want our 4-year-old watching it, either.”

And so it went Wednesday at Camp Pendleton and in Oceanside and Vista--the communities that abut the sprawling Marine Corps base, communities that share the pride of the First Marine Division, the communities that grieve the Corps’ losses.

Many Marine families called the base’s family services center for information--and waited on hold and listened to classical music while anxious callers ahead of them were answered. By day’s end, 320 incoming phone calls had been logged, a base spokesman said.

Even the highest ranks of the Marine Corps couldn’t provide immediate answers.

“The casualties may be from this base; they may not be from this base. We simply don’t have the information,” was all that Brig. Gen. Michael Neil, the base commander, could tell reporters at an afternoon press conference. “In the war footage of what these men were involved in, there was a lot going on. It’s going to take some time for this information to get out.”

So many Marine families on Wednesday ached with the uncertainty of not knowing.

“The wives are frazzled by everything that’s now going on--now that the ground troops are taking the hits,” said Bailey, 31. Her husband is a 14-year Marine veteran who is deployed on the front lines with the 1st Marine Division, and her father and two brothers are on Navy ships in the Persian Gulf.

“I could lose half my family,” Bailey said. “It’s scary. You sit there and watch TV. But, if you live every day scared to death, you can’t function. So you just say your prayers.”

“The wives I’ve talked to are afraid. They’re hurting. They don’t want to talk (to reporters) about it. They know that the war is now real, that it’s no longer exaggerated. There’s a somber, morbid kind of fear.

“The reality has hit--and now that it has hit, it’s like they weren’t prepared for it,” she said.

“About 16 of us were together Tuesday night, and the attitude was that everything was fine. We were happy and laughing. But now there are no more laughs. There are tears, heartache, pain.”

The father of a 21-year-old Camp Pendleton Marine characterized the anxiety, after first calling a newspaper office to ask if news reports had yet identified which Marine unit sustained the war’s first ground combat casualties.

“When I heard that 12 Marines got killed, I got that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach,” said the father, who asked not to be identified. “You hope it’s not your kid, and then you know it’s not your kid. You just know it.

“But, you know it is somebody’s kid, and that there are 12 families out there who know it’s not their kid--but it is.”

Collins, who sought peace at the beach, said she is confident her husband is safe. But someone’s husband is hurt, or dead, she grieves.

“It’s the Marine Corps. It’s our family,” she said. “It could be my husband, or somebody else’s. It’s still family.”

The outbreak of combat, she said, “means it’s hitting closer to home. I’m really getting scared there will be a knock on my door, and I’ll have to tell my kids.

“I cry a lot, but I have the children. I have to go on. I’m going to go home, write my husband a letter about what I did today. Then I’ll put the kids in bed, and turn on the news.”

“There’s nothing the wives can do,” said Yawn, the base resident. “Worrying won’t help. Some are crying and carrying on, but that will upset the kids. They’re all worried, but I’m not. I’m hoping and praying. That’s all I have--God. I’m putting all my faith in God.”

Despite the widespread efforts at stoicism, there is certainty that the emerging combat is taking its emotional toll on the home front.

“I think we’re in denial right now. The wives are avoiding the subject. They don’t want to think that (casualties) may be their husband or brother,” said Susan Mullins, the manager of the family center at the Armed Forces YMCA in Oceanside, a distinctive, white-stucco building with a high pitched roof, just a few blocks from Camp Pendleton’s front gate.

“It’s like, we’re waiting right now. Nobody I’ve spoken to knows anything yet,” she said.

Arlene Pitchford, 33, the wife of a staff sergeant, offered: “Every time a casualty comes across the TV, I know it could be my husband. I’m continually praying.”

Annie Gatheright, 34, said she fielded calls from relatives this morning who learned of the combat casualties and worried for the safety of her husband, Joseph, a gunnery sergeant.

“If you weren’t worried, there would be something wrong with you,” she said. “The public expects us to be groaning and moaning and crying and screaming. And there are people who will be that way. But I refused to let myself be like that until somebody can prove to me that my husband is hurt. Until then, I’m going to be fine. Just fine.”

Dorothy Green said she conjures mental pictures of her husband, Vernon, to assure herself that he is safe, despite the news coming out of Saudi Arabia.

“I was concerned, for one short moment, that he may have been hurt,” she said. “It’s a terrible feeling, but I don’t know if it has really hit home yet for all of us.

“As long as I can see him, in my mind, and focus on him telling me that he’s OK, then I’m OK. That’s what’s getting me through this.”

Adding to the anxiety for some families was a rash of prank telephone calls received by military households--calls that their husbands or fathers had been hurt or killed in combat.

“At our meeting the other night, there was a lot of talk about these calls,” said Joey Bailey. “Whoever is calling must think it’s a joke. We were told by the Marine Corps that this isn’t how we’ll be told. The military will show up in a military car, to our home. It won’t be by phone.

“But these calls are making a lot of us angry. Some wives have disconnected their phones,” she said. “They just don’t want to deal with that kind of a telephone call.”

Karyl Ketchum said she refuses to let the word of combat preoccupy her life. “I haven’t gotten any letters from my husband (Dwight) for some time now and that worries me, but I don’t dwell on his safety. I can’t. And, as long as they don’t come knock on my front door, he’s OK.”

The anxiety of combat wasn’t contained to just the families of troops in the Persian Gulf region.

The Rev. V. Blaine Franklin of Oceanside’s First Assembly of God church reflected on the number of Marines he counts as his members. “I began to think, is it one of my dads here, one of the dads in my church (who is a casualty)?”

Alarick Greek was walking around Oceanside on Wednesday in his Navy corpsman uniform, ready to be shipped out Saturday.

“I’m a little more nervous now. The ground war is gearing up. And I’m the guy who’s going to be right up there when the Marine yells, ‘Corpsman! My leg’s hit!’ ”

Harold England, who spent 24 years in the Marine Corps and was himself injured by shrapnel in Korea, was glued to his television Wednesday, hungry for every detail on the combat.

“I get hyped up,” he said. “Sometimes I wish I was there with them. And then, there are times when I’m glad I’m not.”