Kuwait Envoy Offers to Aid Gulf War Widow : Home front: Ambassador says financial assistance would be in addition to delayed U.S. benefits.

Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States has offered financial help to a Persian Gulf war widow who claims that the military has been slow to make good on her husband’s death benefit payments and to return his remaining personal effects.

Sheik Saud al Nasir al Sabah said Monday that his office had contacted Carol Bentzlin of San Juan Capistrano, widow of Marine Cpl. Stephen E. Bentzlin, and would begin evaluating the family’s needs for assistance in addition to the benefits still due them from the U. S. government.

“We are extremely concerned with the family,” said the ambassador, who had learned of the family’s battle with government errors and delays while he was vacationing in Los Angeles.

And on Monday afternoon, within hours of that phone call from the Kuwaitis, Bentzlin said Marine Corps officers informed her that she would soon receive the remaining $50,000 benefit payment, which officials explained had also been delayed for all survivors of Gulf War combat dead.

Bentzlin said she was touched by the offer from the ambassador, whom she had met in April at a tribute to Gulf War troops.

“I was completely impressed,” the widow said. “I think the man is wonderful. Isn’t too bad we don’t have politicians like that?”

Since the war ended, Kuwaiti officials in the United States have given cash assistance to families of other Gulf War dead, but would not specify any amounts or say how much they might give to Bentzlin.

Capt. Rose-Ann Sgrignoli, Marine Corps spokeswoman at Camp Pendleton, said Monday a new search will begin for personal items that were not returned after Cpl. Bentzlin’s death Jan. 29 in the battle for the town of Khafji, on the Saudi-Kuwaiti border.

Those items include his civilian clothes, a tape recorder and a collection of audiotapes that Bentzlin said contain messages her husband recorded for her.

In addition, Bentzlin said she was told by Marine Corps officers Monday that the results of investigation into her husband’s death would be released in a few weeks. Cpl. Bentzlin and six others are believed to have been killed by “friendly fire” when an allied missile mistakenly hit their armored vehicle.

The efforts of the Kuwaiti ambassador and the action taken Monday by the Marine Corps came after Bentzlin told The Times about her repeated and unsuccessful attempts to claim the extra death benefit payment, her problems in tracking down her husband’s belongings, and the errors in government letters explaining how he died.

The 29-year-old widow said she had been frustrated after the government misplaced the corporal’s military service record and delivered a package of personal effects to the wrong address. She also was mistakenly informed on April 1 that her husband died under enemy fire and that his death was not the subject of an official investigation.

“They told me the check was in the mail,” Bentzlin said Monday after talking with the Marine Corps again. “It’s an interesting turn of events.”

Sgrignoli, who said the Marine Corps had not been aware of the extent of Bentzlin’s problems until her concerns were published, added: “As soon as the problem was known, and we were made completely aware of it, we took action.

“The thing that needs to be remembered here is that the Marine Corps will not turn its back on these families,” Sgrignoli added. “If there is a problem, we want to right it.”

An aide to the Kuwaiti ambassador said Monday that there is interest in making some sort of cash payment to Bentzlin and to the families of Marine Sgt. Garett A. Mongrella and Lance Cpl. Frank C. Allen, who were killed in the same Jan. 29 incident.