Kuwaiti Official Offers Money to O.C. War Widow

Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States has offered to help an Orange County woman whose husband was killed in the Gulf War and who says that the military has been slow to return his remaining personnel effects and make death benefit payments.

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 that it would begin evaluating the family’s needs for assistance beyond the benefits still due them from the U.S. government. Bentzlin has three children.

“We are extremely concerned with the family,” said the ambassador, who was on vacation in Los Angeles over the weekend when he learned of the family’s struggle with government errors and delays.

Bentzlin said Marine officers informed her Monday afternoon that the remaining $50,000 benefit payment, which officials acknowledged had been delayed for weeks to all survivors of Gulf War combat dead, would be delivered to her within days.

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

Among the items are the corporal’s civilian clothes, a tape-recording system and a collection of audiotapes that Carol Bentzlin said contain personal messages her husband recorded for her before he died.

In addition, Carol Bentzlin said Marine officers told her Monday that results of the investigation into the incident that caused her husband’s death would be released within the next few weeks. It is widely believed that a missile from an allied plane mistakenly hit the armored vehicle carrying Cpl. Bentzlin and seven fellow Marines. Only one of them survived.

The efforts of the Kuwaiti ambassador and the Marine Corps came after a Sunday Los Angeles Times article told of Carol Bentzlin’s repeated and unsuccessful attempts to claim the extra death benefit payment for survivors of those killed in the Gulf War (President Bush approved the benefit program last April); her inability to find help in finding her husband’s belongings; and errors the government made in letters to her about the circumstances of her husband’s death.

The 29-year-old widow said she had been frustrated in her dealings with the government, which, at various times after her husband’s death, misplaced his military service record, delivered a package of personal effects to the wrong address and mistakenly told her on April Fool’s Day that her husband’s death had been caused by enemy fire and was not the subject of an official investigation.

“They told me the check was in the mail,” Bentzlin said Monday of her most recent communications with the Marine Corps. “It’s an interesting turn of events.”

Marine officers had said last week that the delays in distributing the remaining payments were apparently because of confusion resulting from the interpretations of the legislation Bush approved.

A captain at the Marine Corps headquarters in Washington, who declined to be identified, said last week that she believed that the process would take weeks to resolve and that there had been phone calls from families of other Gulf War survivors who had encountered similar frustrations.

“As soon as the problem was known, and we were made completely aware of it, we took action,” Sgrignoli said Monday. She added that Bentzlin’s problems had not been fully known by the corps until her concerns were published in The Times. “Once we found out about it, we got it solved.

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

An aide to the Kuwaiti ambassador said Monday that there is some interest in making some sort of cash payments to Bentzlin and to the families of Marine Sgt. Garett A. Mongrella and Marine Lance Cpl. Frank C. Allen, both of whom were killed in the Jan. 29 incident. Family members had told The Times that they had experienced frustrations similar to Carol Bentzlin’s.

Bentzlin said she was touched by the offer of aid from the ambassador, whom she met in the spring during a tribute to the Gulf War troops at Universal Studios in Los Angeles.

“I was completely impressed,” the widow said of the call from the ambassador’s office. “I think the man is wonderful. Isn’t it too bad we don’t have politicians like that.”

Before presenting the families with any payments, the ambassador said, he would coordinate his efforts with local congressional or Pentagon officials.