2 O.C. Marines Get a Hero’s Welcome Home

Lance Cpl. Frank Wursthorn, a 19-year-old bachelor, dodged enemy fire and land mines while pushing north from Saudi Arabia to Kuwait city.

Staff Sgt. Billy Alvarado, a 33-year-old father of two, spent seven months behind the scenes in a dusty Bahrain compound, ensuring that equipment functioned properly and enduring baloney stew.

Sunday, both Marines--the rifleman and the quality assurance representative--came home to Orange County to hero’s welcomes, their favorite foods and the drink they missed most--ice-cold beer.

Flush with victory, Wursthorn returned home to Garden Grove with a book of tales to tell and a deep suntan earned from seven months in the Saudi desert.

“Right now he’s really an American hero,” said Wursthorn’s 18-year-old brother, Robbie, during a noisy welcome-home celebration at the family’s Brookside Drive home.

“I was worried for him,” Robbie Wursthorn said. “Just the thought of him being there scared the hell out of me.”

Two weeks ago, Wursthorn was part of a squad of U.S. Marines that moved across the Kuwaiti border, camouflaged only by the ink-black sky and the acrid smoke of burning oil fields.

Two days later, after braving enemy fire, a gas attack and deadly land mines on his dangerous trek northward, he caught his first glimpse of Kuwait city.

“We could see everything going on,” Wursthorn said. “We could hear the gunfire.”

Wursthorn was one of 100 Marines who returned to Camp Pendleton on Sunday. After the Marines triumphantly marched in front of their barracks, they were mobbed by frenzied relatives and friends waving American flags and showering the soldiers with carnations.

For Wursthorn, once a starting quarterback for the Garden Grove High School football team, the emotional homecoming continued into the night as he talked to relatives and former high school buddies about his exploits.

“Did you shoot anyone?” asked Chris Silva, who was Wursthorn’s wide receiver in their senior year.

The answer was no. But Wursthorn and a fellow Marine, Jon Peters, an Oklahoma Indian, explained the perils of the war to the civilians.

Wursthorn’s tour of duty began on Aug. 6. While others who followed the first Marines to the Persian Gulf set up virtual military cities in Riyadh and Dhahran, Wursthorn and Peters lived in foxholes and traveled back and forth along the front line in armored personnel carriers.

“Our main thing was to watch out for terrorists,” Wursthorn said about his first few months of duty.

At first, the infantry squad was rotated away from the front for occasional short stints. But invariably they were back out in the desert, inhaling the gritty sand, eating cold military rations and enduring the heat.

“We were lucky to get cots,” Wursthorn joked as he changed into his first civilian clothes--a well-worn green T-shirt and acid-washed denims--since he arrived in Saudi Arabia seven months ago.

While family members watched news clips of Wursthorn’s return to Camp Pendleton earlier in the day, the Marine talked about the excruciating boredom that front-line units endured before the 100-hour ground assault that ended the war.

“The only exciting thing was mail call,” he said. “It was the only thing to look forward to.”

By December, the squad was in the desert for good, Wursthorn said.

The Marines took baths by washing themselves in 50-gallon drums of water that had already been used to rinse out their dust-caked uniforms.

“Man, we really stunk,” Wursthorn said.

Peters said that without warning, the squad was ordered to cross the Kuwaiti border and take position, hours before the ground assault was launched.

“Man, was I scared,” Peters said as he sipped a Bud Dry from a can. “Anybody that tells you he wasn’t scared is a liar.”

As they rumbled across the desert, the squad was met by light resistance. The troops encountered hundreds of surrendering Iraqis who climbed out of their bunkers and fortifications and approached them with white flags.

“They were all over the place,” Peters said. “It was weird.”

Last week, the prospect of returning home became more than a distant hope, Wursthorn said. He called home from Saudi Arabia with the good news, then called again when the airliner he was traveling in touched down in Germany and in Maine.

His mother, Cheryl Wursthorn, said she did not know her son was on the cutting edge of the war, and she was grateful to have been left in the dark.

“My son, he doesn’t tell his mother anything,” she said, feigning a whine.

Wursthorn said he is looking forward to the end of his enlistment, and he plans to go to college. But he said he does not regret his decision to join the Marines.

“It was my patriotic duty,” said Wursthorn, explaining that his father was also in the Marines and had served a stint in Vietnam. “I feel that everyone should serve their country.”

Also on Sunday, Billy Alvarado returned to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station with about 70 members of Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 352.

He had left so quickly in August that his wife, Melanie, didn’t have a chance to say goodby. For his return, she had first envisioned an intimate homecoming for herself, Billy and their two daughters, Brittany, 6, and Desirae, 8.

But then Melanie’s parents wanted to come, along with the cousins. And soon it was just like the usual family get-togethers with a dozen relatives from Riverside and Colton swarming around Alvarado as he climbed stiffly onto the Tarmac.

“Daddy, did somebody shoot you?” the younger daughter asked. “No, nobody shot me,” he said. He had only thrown his back out, picking something up.

Children waved and ran alongside the family caravan as it drove up Elder Way, a street of brown stucco houses within sight of the landmark Tustin Marine Corps Air Station hangar. Yellow ribbons decorated several garage doors. At Alvarado’s, three pots of yellow chrysanthemums anchored a sign: “Welcome Home Baby. Get Ready!”

Camille Halstion, a neighbor whose husband has not yet returned from the Gulf, offered a welcome-home hug before the family packed itself into the kitchen to see and hear Alvarado, known to most of them as Uncle Billy.

The talk flowed as fast as the champagne and the beer. Alvarado, still wearing his dog tags and desert camouflage uniform, took it all in quietly. Suddenly, he jumped up slapped a ceiling beam and yelled a single, resounding “Yes!”

Then he leaned against the wall nursing a sore back and a bottle of beer and accepted spontaneous hugs, as his daughters danced around him in brand-new matching outfits with epaulets and military fringe.

“Hey,” he told Brittany, looking at her two missing front teeth, “you’re asymmetrical!”

She replied, “Eric says I’m toothless.”

The girls dragged him out to the garage to see their new bikes.

“You didn’t even need training wheels!” Alvarado exclaimed.

Desirae mocked him, “Like, really , Daddy, like a 12-speed would have training wheels on it.” He laughed with the rest of the family. “I’d forgotten how smart she is!” he said.

The women prepared his favorite dish--chalupa with tortillas--and salad, spicy chicken wings and German chocolate cake with small U.S. flags in it. The fare was a far cry from the military cuisine.

“You do not know what is the worst thing to eat,” he tells them. “The cook made baloney stew.” The kitchen echoed with hoots, and groans of “Ooooh, gross!”

Alvarado also talked about his deployment, which he described as 95% routine and 5% terror.

Once, when Dhahran was shelled, he thought he might not come back alive. But listening to him tell his family the first of his war stories, the worst of it might have been seven months of drinking instant coffee.

Amid the laughter and hugs, he paused a beat and blinked quickly around. “There was times,” he said softly, “when I thought it’d be a long time before this day would come.”