ORANGE COUNTY AND THE GULF WAR : Home State Grieves for Pendleton Marine Corporal Killed at Khafji

As Marine Cpl. Stephen Bentzlin’s mother was handed a neatly folded American flag from her son’s coffin Wednesday, she recalled his birth 23 years earlier, when she wrapped him neatly in a soft cotton blanket.

“I just had to share that with you,” Barbara Anderson said in a telephone interview from her home in Wood Lake, Minn., after a funeral service in St. Paul.

“It was the same feeling as the day I had Stephen. How carefully and neatly the flag was folded and how carefully it was handed to me. I cradled it. When they gave me the flag it was like the day he was handed to me in the carefully wrapped blanket.

“Although he died two weeks ago, the flag signaled a new life for Stephen,” the 48-year-old mother said in a soft, mellow voice.

Bentzlin, 23, died of multiple shrapnel wounds Jan. 29 in northern Saudi Arabia. Stationed at Camp Pendleton, he was among 11 Marines killed during the Persian Gulf War’s first major ground fight, near Khafji.

The presentation of the flag and a 21-gun salute outside the House of Hope Presbyterian Church in St. Paul marked the end of two days of services to remember Bentzlin and how he died in the sands more than 10,000 miles away.

Bentzlin is scheduled to be cremated and his remains brought back to California today by his widow, Carol, 28, who lives just south of San Clemente. Private services are scheduled for Saturday at a Camp Pendleton military chapel.

About 600 people attended the church service Wednesday under bleak, cloud-covered skies. It began to snow just after the service started and continued to snow during the ceremonies outside the church, his mother said.

Those honoring the fallen Marine included Minnesota’s governor, Arne Carlson, and U.S. senators, Republican Dave Durenberger and Democrat Paul Wellstone. Members of a Dakota Sioux honor guard stood near the coffin along with the Marines out of respect for Bentzlin, who was part Sioux.

Bentzlin was born in St. Paul, and the family moved to the small prairie town of Wood Lake when he was 7.

About 800 people, nearly double the population of Wood Lake, gathered there Tuesday for another service to mourn Bentzlin’s death. Among those attending were Bentzlin’s old high school friends, including one who remembered him as a “guy who ran on adrenaline when things got tough.”

In his last letter home six weeks before the war broke out, Bentzlin spoke of the “eerie” feeling on the front lines even then. He closed the Dec. 2 letter by saying, “How ‘bout them Vikings?”

“Everyone is getting along OK,” Anderson said Wednesday. “It was a very nice ceremony, and we were able to share it with everyone.”

Carol Bentzlin told reporters shortly after his death that she was upset when her husband, who was to be discharged in April, asked for a six-month extension of duty and then volunteered in August to go to the Persian Gulf. She said he volunteered because of his patriotism and his desire to stop Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from retaining control of Kuwait.