O.C. Military Families Not Ready to Celebrate Just Yet : Home front: They’re on guard against premature optimism. They won’t relax until loved ones return.

As a Marine wife for a dozen years, Melanie Alvarado has seen too many false starts, too many ups and downs, to let news of pullouts and army collapses affect her now.

Even as she listened to encouraging reports Tuesday that an end to the war may be near, the wife of an El Toro-based sergeant said she was “not optimistic about it. . . . Nothing will affect me until I see an airplane pulling in with the other half of my life on it.”

As the nation looks hopefully toward an allied victory in the Gulf, some Orange County and Southland military families share the mood of exuberance. But others, like Alvarado, are taking a more cautious approach, downplaying news of peace, ignoring it or rejecting it altogether instead of risking the pain of disappointment.

Few doubt a U.S. victory; the question seems to be how soon.

“I hope for the best, but I imagine it’s still going to be a while. I can’t imagine things ending this quickly--that’s just a feeling I have,” said Allene Atkinson, 78, a Utah woman who is in El Toro for a few weeks to help her expectant granddaughter, Jeanna Hernandez, while Hernandez’s El Toro-based husband is off fighting in the Persian Gulf.

Added Hernandez, who was due with her third child last Friday: “My phone’s been ringing off the hook the last 36 hours. Everyone’s real excited, and a lot of the wives seem to think their husbands are going to be home by May.”

“But I’m not going to rely on anything,” she said cautiously. “I’ll be happy if he’s home by Aug. 1. In the meantime, I’ll just wait and see.”

A sobering reminder of the continuing danger was an Iraqi Scud missile that hit a U.S. military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabai, Monday night, killing 28 soldiers and injuring 99. Marine wife Cheryl Gurule, 35, said: “All this positive feedback is helping our spirits, but the minute something negative happens--like the bomb at the barracks--it’s like yanking the floor out from under you. . . .”

News of Baghdad’s withdrawal announcement and the stunning success of U.S. ground troops in driving back the Iraqi army has been the talk of local military bases since Monday.

Mothers like Debbie Brunner, a Marine wife at Twentynine Palms, gather at the base bus stop after trading tidbits about the war. Wives try for hours to get telephone calls through to husbands overseas.

And always, they stay tuned to news reports to listen for the latest shred of information about the progress of the war effort--although some have to sneak in their news.

After her husband first left in August, Alvarado said she would “get visibly upset watching the news, so my oldest daughter, Desirae--she’s 8 1/2--she tells me, ‘No, Mom, you can’t watch the news.’ . . . So now I have to listen to it on the radio on the way to work.”

The news since Monday has been met with unqualified relief by some.

“I’ve talked to about three or more families in the last three or four hours,” Kathy Collier, an Army mother who organized a support group in Anaheim, said Tuesday afternoon. “And we really think we’re on the downside of an emotional roller coaster--I think the Gulf War is on its way out, and it’s such a relief. I’m very, very optimistic.”

John Kelso, whose 33-year-old son, John, is a Navy doctor with a Marine battalion in the Gulf, said he was “very elated at the success of our military. . . . I don’t think there’s any (worry of) false hope militarily. They’re retreating.”

Kelso and other military families interviewed Tuesday voiced skepticism about Baghdad’s announcement Monday of a voluntary withdrawal, but many said they believe that the swift success of the allied ground assault and the massive surrenders it has produced will produce victory nonetheless.

The apparent ease of the 4-day-old offensive has surprised even some military personnel.

The long-awaited ground war was expected to cause massive casualties among allied forces, with ground and air support Marines from El Toro, Tustin, Camp Pendleton and elsewhere in the area among those thrust into a position of risk. The start of the assault Saturday meant tense times and taut nerves for loved ones at home.

“Having a husband over there is a great diet, lemme tell you,” quipped Capt. Betsy Sweatt, the public affairs director at the Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro, whose husband is an officer in the Gulf.

But considering the bloodshed predicted before the ground campaign began, Sweatt said: “You couldn’t ask for better than this. It certainly takes an edge off the worry. . . .”

“If you’ve got to fight a war,” she added, “there’s nothing you’d rather see than (Iraqi troops) giving themselves up and our guys doing what they went over there to do.”

O.C. TROOPS IN THE GULF

Local Marines have been playing an important role in the ground offensive to retake Kuwait, from flying sorties over Iraqi positions to slugging in out on the ground.

* Military sources at the Pentagon said F/A-18s from the El Toro-based 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing were over Kuwait battlefields to hit targets called out by forward air controllers in low-flying OV-10s.

* Cobra helicopters from the 3rd Aircraft Wing stationed at Camp Pendleton were flying ahead of the Marine divisions to knock out enemy tanks and bunkers. Troops from the 1st and 2nd Marine divisions were being resupplied by large CH-53 and CH-46 helicopters from the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station. No helicopters from Tustin or F/A-18s from El Toro have been lost.

* 1st Marine Division troops from Camp Pendleton entered Kuwait city late Tuesday after a daylong advance from positions in central Kuwait. They were the first U.S. troops in the city since the U.S.-led ground offensive began three days ago. By midnight Tuesday, Marines under the command of Maj. Gen. J.M. Mike Myatt had cut off retreating Iraqi troops, liberated outer districts of the city and were fighting for control of Kuwait International Airport.

* The 5th Marine Amphibious Brigade from Camp Pendleton remained poised off Kuwait for a possible amphibious assault.

* Attack and transport helicopters from Tustin and Camp Pendleton remained aboard a 31-ship task force in the Persian Gulf, in anticipation of an amphibious assault.

Compiled by Times staff writer George Frank from staff, wire and pool reports.