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, U.S. officials 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 thousands of Marines to the front, the unanswered questions haunted everyone--wives and buddies, ministers and commanders.

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--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 by taking her two children for a walk on the Oceanside beach. She wore a Marine Corps sweat shirt emblazoned with the caricature of a bulldog.

“There’s nothing more I can do,” she said. “My husband’s there. I just pray he comes home safe.”

Maribel Yawn, 21, stayed at home 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. “There’s nothing the wives can do. Worrying won’t help. Some are crying and carrying on, but that’ll 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.”

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 1st Marine Division. 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.

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 Brig. Gen. Michael Neil, the base commander, could tell reporters at an afternoon news 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.”

In the meantime, speculate and hope, pray and wait.

“The wives I’ve talked to are afraid,” said Bailey, 31. “They’re hurting. 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.

Her husband, a 14-year veteran, is deployed with the 1st Marine Division on the front lines; 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.”

Bailey recalled how on Tuesday night “about 16 of us were together . . . 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 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.”

At the family center of the Armed Forces YMCA here, just a few blocks from Pendleton’s front gate, manager Susan Mullins sensed that not everyone was ready to share the heavy weight created by the morning bulletins.

“I think we’re in denial right now,” she said. “The wives are avoiding the subject. They don’t want to think that (casualties) may be their husband or brother. It’s like, we’re waiting right now. Nobody I’ve spoken to knows anything yet.”

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)?”

As she pushed a stroller up the beach, Collins’ instincts made her confident that her husband was safe. But someone’s husband, she knew, was hurt, or dead.

“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, Collins said, “means it’s hitting closer to home. I’m really getting scared there’ll be a knock on my door and I’ll have to tell my kids.”

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

“If you weren’t worried, there’d 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 refuse 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 up mental pictures of her husband, Vernon, to assure herself that he is safe.

“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 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.”

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

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

“I’m a little more nervous now,” he said. “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!’ ”

Yes, it all seemed quite real.