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From Desert to Back Home: It’s Sort of a Shock

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Fresh from seven months in the Gulf, Marine electrician Billy Alvarado opened his family’s dishwasher and realized he couldn’t remember where anything went.

He resumed responsibility for chores like taking the trash out, only to find that his wife, Melanie, had already done them. He wore the same clothes two days in a row, forgetting that he now has a full closet. And simple questions like, What do you want for dinner? can overwhelm him.

“You’re like the kid with all the toys at Christmas,” the 35-year-old soldier said of his return home. “It’s so easy, in a way, when you have no choice.”

From forgetting their gym-locker combinations and phone numbers to remembering the glory of a coastline dotted by swimsuit-clad joggers, hundreds of troops are facing adjustments great and small upon returning home from war.

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Orange County troops are only just beginning to come home, and the more profound psychological adjustments to returning from the desert battlefield may not emerge for a while. But re-tailoring of the nip-and-tuck variety is already happening as the Marines rejoin the suburban rat race.

“They need to think about what they say, their language, their actions,” said Major John L. Sayre, director of the Family Service Center at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, where 7,000 troops were deployed to the Persian Gulf. “You got a bunch of Marines who’ve basically been with a bunch of Marines, and they’re going to have to get back to family life.”

The re-entry will have its fits and starts. One soldier forgot how to work the stereo he has owned for 15 years. Another officer said he returned home to find a power outage had wiped out the memory on his VCR, but he couldn’t remember how to reset the clock.

Lt. Rick Crocker of San Clemente, standing earlier this week in dirty desert camouflage fatigues after landing at March Air Force Base, tried to offer his telephone number. “Um . . . I can’t even remember it’s been so long.”

On Wednesday, Staff Sgt. Frank Karasienski called El Toro Marine School in a panic from New Jersey to get the work phone number of his wife, Theresa. He had forgotten it and didn’t have much time to call. He wanted to tell her he was coming home, and on a commercial versus military plane.

“All he could remember,” recalled Dan Graham, principal of El Toro Marine School, where a majority of the students are from military families, “is his children went to this school.” Frankie Wursthorn was only at the family home in Westminster for two days before returning to work at Camp Pendleton. On both days, the 19-year-old awakened like he was back on desert duty, his brother said. And “he took maybe three or four showers in a two-day period too,” Robbie Wursthorn said.

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In his short breather from duty, Wursthorn managed to enjoy his first “real food” in months--”pizza, hamburgers, London broil. He went through quite a bit of soda and beer too,” he added with a laugh.

Others, like Sgt. Chris Buccilli, an El Toro-based crewman on a C-130 transport plane who left for the Gulf Aug. 14, had no problem adjusting to simple pleasures: a languorous, 11-hour night of sleep, the comfort of ordinary tasks such as paying bills.

Capt. David Lemley, 30, aircraft commander of a KC-130 used for midair refueling of attack jets, said the readjustment has been “a lot of fun.” He’s gone out to dinner with his wife, Janie. They’ve taken their 9-month-old son for a four-mile walk near their Mission Viejo home.

“It’s just so nice--no sand, and you can smell cut grass, and see mountains, and you can hop in your car and go wherever you want.”

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