New Pain for Families of Gulf War Dead : Military: Survivors are having trouble getting personal items returned and receiving death benefits approved by President Bush. ‘It seems like they kind of forget about you,’ one says.

Nearly seven months after her husband became one of the first casualties of the Gulf War, the widow of Marine Cpl. Stephen E. Bentzlin is battling a bureaucracy that has yet to return all his belongings or pay the balance of his death benefits.

The weeks and days since her husband was killed in a battle for the Saudi border town of Khafji, Carol Bentzlin says, have been filled with frustration and heartache. It was only in May that the corporal’s hopeful letters from the desert front line--delayed in the clogged military mail system--stopped coming.

Although she and her three children left Camp Pendleton last month to live in San Juan Capistrano, the 29-year-old widow says she continues to fight layers of military bureaucracy for the return of her husband’s personal items and payment of the remaining death benefits that Marine officers say have been delayed in a tangle of ill-defined distribution procedures.

She also wants the military to respond to her requests for results of a Pentagon investigation which, military officials acknowledge, is expected to find that Bentzlin and the six other members of his rifle unit died when their armored vehicle was struck by a missile from an allied plane.

“I feel like I’ve been beating my head against the wall with the military for months,” she said. “I feel like everybody is patting me on the head pretending they care and then blowing me off.”

Bentzlin’s frustration is apparently shared by surviving family members of her husband’s fallen colleagues. Marine officers say some of them have been calling the Corps’ casualty section in Washington, D.C., looking for the increased death benefits President Bush approved in April but which have yet to arrive.

“It seems like they kind of forget about you,” said Kim Mongrella of Ft. Dodge, Iowa, whose husband, Marine Sgt. Garett A. Mongrella, died with Bentzlin on Jan. 29. “I haven’t been informed about how he died. My brother-in-law has been asking questions, but so far he hasn’t come up with anything.”

In Okinawa, Japan, Everett Allen, father of Marine Lance Cpl. Frank C. Allen, who was also killed in the Khafji vehicle explosion, believes his son’s family may never see the $50,000 extra death benefit payment they have been counting on.

“It was good public relations for the Republican Party and Bush to approve that extra payment,” Allen said, “but it hasn’t put any money in my daughter-in-law’s pocket.”

Officials at Marine headquarters acknowledge that problems have arisen in the distribution of the extra death benefits, prompting a number of calls from surviving families.

First Sgt. Charles Daniels, who has been assigned to the Bentzlin family to assist with the family’s needs, said: “We were doing everything we could” to answer questions about the additional death payment.

“We did not have the answers,” the sergeant said.

A captain in the Marine Corps’ casualty section, who asked not to be named, did have one explanation. The captain said the legislation, which provided for a second $50,000 insurance payment to survivors of those killed during the Persian Gulf War, was found to contain confusing language. The confusion revolves around wording that could be interpreted to exclude some survivors of those killed in noncombat situations.

As a result, the officer said, each military service branch is having to make individual decisions on payment of hundreds of claims filed in the offices of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines.

“Mrs. Bentzlin, we’re about 100% sure she’s going to get it,” said the captain, adding that a first round of cases were to be submitted soon to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service for payment. More delays are expected at that level because there are few guidelines to control the payment distribution.

“Lord knows how long it’s going to take when those claims come in (to the accounting service),” the captain said. “It’s unfortunate. We expected this to happen much quicker than it did. We thought we were on the verge of payment weeks ago.”

On another front, an accounting of events that caused the destruction of the light-armored vehicle and the deaths of the seven Marines is still the subject of a government investigation, although its results could be forthcoming within the next few weeks, said Marine headquarters spokeswoman Maj. Nancy La Luntas.

While there is little doubt that the investigation will find anything other than that the Marines were the victims of “friendly fire,” Bentzlin and other relatives say they do not want the Jan. 29 incident to be forgotten.

“Please do not misunderstand me,” Bentzlin said in an April 12 letter inquiring about the government’s probe. “I am not looking to place blame. I do not condemn the pilot . . . that shot the missile. But why did it happen? And how will it prevent further incidents such as this? What has it taught us?”

Bentzlin said frustration has greeted her at virtually every stop in her dealings with the military, beginning just days after learning of her husband’s death.

She said funeral plans became tenuous when her husband’s military service file, including dental records, could not be located. Later, the return of some of her husband’s personal effects were delayed when they reportedly were delivered to the wrong address.

When the delivery was made, Bentzlin said the package did not include items such as her husband’s civilian clothes and a tape player with a collection of tapes that included personal messages the corporal had said he was recording for her.

“I want them,” Bentzlin said. “It’s all I have.”

Perhaps her greatest jolt came--tragically--on April Fools’ Day, when a letter from the Department of the Navy mistakenly informed her that her husband died under enemy fire and that his death was not part of the ongoing friendly fire investigation.

“April Fools’ to you as well,” she stated in an angry, written response to the Navy’s Office of the Judge Advocate General. “When I saw this,” she said in a recent interview, dropping the document to her coffee table, “I got chills.”

The advocate general’s office followed up with a letter confirming that the corporal’s death was part of a government investigation.

“Wow,” La Luntas said when informed of the initial letter from the Navy. “Somehow there was an administrative error. Those kinds of investigations are sometimes the most difficult subjects to get your arms around.”

Because there was a follow-up letter from the judge advocate’s office, La Luntas said it was possible that the investigation of the incident involving Bentzlin had not yet been referred to that office for review at the time of the first letter.

“These investigations are very laborious,” the major said.

Kim Mongrella, who maintains a long-distance friendship with Bentzlin from Iowa, said the military’s mistakes have become subjects of dark humor they share in telephone calls almost daily.

Shortly after her husband’s death, Mongrella said she learned that his service file also had been misplaced. Like Bentzlin, she said much of the sergeant’s personal gear--civilian clothes, a camera and radio--have not been returned.

“They are little things,” Mongrella said. “But Anthony (their 2-year-old son) will never know his father, and I want him to have those things. That would have been the last things he touched.”

Daniels acknowledged that problems persisted in settling Bentzlin’s case.

“Part of the problem is that the military has a tendency to work in strange ways in getting information to the families,” Daniels said. “We need to make sure that information we’re getting to her is correct. The greatest harm would be in getting the wrong information.”

Of the remaining personal effects, Daniels added, the clothing and other items could not be located and may have been loaned or given to fellow Marines prior to the corporal’s death.

Daniels, who said he has not spoken to Carol Bentzlin since June 30, said he believes the military has been doing a “great job” helping families.

“We try to take care of our own,” he said. “A lot of times you have families and wives who don’t know how the military works.”

Bentzlin said she appreciates the benefits she has received from the military in spite of the bureaucratic troubles. “I really am very lucky,” she said. “The kids are doing good. The people (friends and others concerned about her plight) have been fantastic. But boy, would I give it all up to have him back or even another phone call.

The longing for her husband has given rise to a recurring fantasy she plays nearly every day.

It starts with a knock on the door, and she opens it to find impeccably dressed military officers. They are much like the Navy chaplain who brought her the devastating news that her husband had been killed.

In her fantasy, she says, these imaginary officers have come with different news.

“I’m thinking that they’ll come to my door and say they really screwed up--that there had been a horrible mistake and that he is really alive,” she said. “I’m thinking, how long is this going to go on?

“When I am able to say his name and the word ‘dead’ in the same sentence, I’ll be OK.”