Allied Fire Confirmed as What Killed Marine : Gulf War: Widow gets official word of missile mistakenly hitting armored vehicle. Kuwaiti ambassador helps family with money.

It was Tuesday morning when the Marine Corps formally confirmed what Carol Bentzlin had suspected for months: Her husband, Cpl. Stephen E. Bentzlin, died when an allied missile mistakenly struck the armored vehicle carrying him and seven other members of his unit.

“What can you do?” Bentzlin said after hearing the official confirmation in a telephone call. “It happened and I need to come to grips with that.”

On Tuesday night, Bentzlin met at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles with Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States, Sheik Saud al Nasir al Sabah, who has been vacationing in Los Angeles.

The ambassador offered to provide Bentzlin and her three children, who live in San Juan Capistrano, with an undisclosed amount of money, in addition to what the family is due from the government.

Saud said he has already begun issuing a check to her, although he declined to make public the amount.

“It is a breadwinner who has been lost,” the ambassador said. “We want to help in any way we can.”

He also offered to bring Bentzlin and her family to Kuwait for Christmas, and he gave the children Operation Desert Storm wristwatches.

The news of how Stephen Bentzlin died, delivered to his widow by Camp Pendleton officials, came as the Pentagon announced that 35 of the 148 servicemen killed in the Persian Gulf War were victims of “friendly fire.”

Although the circumstances of the corporal’s Jan. 29 death were widely known before the Pentagon’s announcement, formal notification brings to a close an exchange of correspondence between the government and the widow, who has been critical of the military’s handling of the inquiry into her husband’s death.

Responding to her initial inquiries last April, the government mistakenly told her in a letter that the corporal had been killed by enemy fire and that no investigation into his death would be conducted.

“I have always wondered what really happened,” Bentzlin said, adding that few details of how or why the missile struck the Marine armored vehicle were provided. “I don’t think we’ll ever really know. I don’t know what to think.”

Six other Marines were killed with Cpl. Bentzlin in the accident and one survived. At the time of his death, Bentzlin’s unit was involved in the battle for Khafji, a northern Saudi Arabian border town seized by Iraqi troops.

Ambassador Saud called deaths by friendly fire tragic but inevitable.

“It happens in every war,” he said. “It is unavoidable. There were over 700,000 allied forces there. I’m sorry it had to happen, but that is the fate.”

The ambassador said he was impressed with how the families of the war victims have been dealing with the tragedies.

“It is a blessing from God that they have done well.”

Bentzlin has called attention to her case because the military has been slow to return the corporal’s personal effects and make death benefit payments.

The Marine Corps said Monday that the 29-year-old widow had received the $50,000 balance of the benefit payment, which had been delayed for weeks to all survivors of Gulf War victims. Officials also said a new search would begin for the corporal’s remaining personal effects.