The Lessons of War : Home front: But for some, battlefield experience has given them a clearer picture of what’s important in life.

Through the brutality of the desert, through the chaos of battle, they have emerged cocky and confident, eager to take life with a new passion.

They want to marry and father children, to reach a peaceful old age, to look back fondly upon their days as young warriors.

Mark Brennan, Pete Bellone, David Spratt and many others have come home.

The Camp Pendleton Marines find themselves bound together by their experience in the Persian Gulf War, with its strange combination of tedium and gut-twisting fear. It was a horrible time, yet a time of wickedly funny moments and of solitude amid the violence.

Lance Cpl. Brennan, his Yankee broad “a’s” betraying his Rhode Island roots, recalls the panic of crouching behind his machine gun, scared that Iraqi soldiers might be creeping up on him.

“I didn’t sleep through the whole ground war,” he said. “I thought, ‘is there somebody out there?’ I’m a machine gunner. I stayed awake the whole time. I didn’t leave that gun.”

But the war ended quickly, and, to Brennan’s surprise, he lived.

“I went over there with the feeling I’m not coming back. I was going to die,” the 21-year-old said.

Brennan was at war for only three months, including four days in actual combat, but it was enough.

“I changed a lot,” Brennan said. “Before the war I thought life was a big party. I promised myself over there I’d get a girlfriend and one day get married. Settle down. Get on the police department and have a long life.”

Although many Marines are unsettled and confused since they returned from the war, others have come home with a clearer vision of their lives. They feel that the war was a heady adventure, the experience of a lifetime, and now they yearn to move on.

Lance Cpl. Greg Butler, a round-faced 22-year-old Texan, has a circumspection that makes him the undeclared philosopher of his squad. He will keep the war in a special place in his memory, but refuses to let it dominate the rest of his days.

“This was important, but life comes in chapters, and you have to take each chapter with a new look,” Butler said. “The war has a big significance in my life, but I’m planning to have children. You can’t compare one piece with another piece of your life. They’re different times and different circumstances.”

Many Marines have come home feeling that the mercifully quick war left them without a chance to prove themselves. But Sgt. Cary Hawk, a dedicated 26-year-old Marine from Lafayette, Ind., had just enough action to answer the question that had always bothered him:

Could he face the fire?

Yes, he could.

“I never once thought of turning tail and running,” Hawk said, alternating sentences with long, yellow spits of tobacco juice. “It was a big relief. I cleared it up for myself that I could do it.”

So Hawk, who led a weapons squad, brought back the knowledge of his strength, only to discover the vulnerability of his marriage.

While he was at war, he had grown to realize how important his wife and two children were to him, and how his commitment to duty had left little time to give to his family. Now, he hopes it isn’t too late.

“I didn’t make a whole lot of room for my family, but now that I’m back, that’s all I think about,” Hawk said. “I’m trying to make her realize we need each other around.” But Hawk is sadly considering that he may have to leave his beloved Corps to keep his family.

These Marines are back to their normal routines. They clean their weapons, tramp through the brush in non-lethal military exercises, enjoy cold beer and think about what it all has meant.

The war showed them the value of simple truths about loyalty, brotherhood, the ugliness of killing and, in many cases, gave them a religious reawakening. It also taught them to savor their nation’s adoration but suspect excesses of patriotism.

“I was already in a parade,” said Lance Cpl. Spratt, 23, of Detroit. “That was enough.” Added his buddy, Pvt. Bellone: “It’s nice to be appreciated, but in some ways it’s way overblown.”

First Lt. Vince Swinney said of the public’s effusive praise of the military, “They’re getting rid of all their collective guilt over Vietnam.”

Still, many Marines are profoundly satisfied with the completion of a basic military virtue--that the nation called on them, and they served.

“There is that sense that they’re American citizens, they’re proud to have served the country,” 1st Lt. Rick Hall said.

More than any patriotic outpouring, what many Marines fervently want is for people to believe the war was about something worth fighting for: the liberation of the oppressed Kuwaitis.

“This wasn’t about taking the oil,” Sgt. James Simms, 27, from Seattle, said firmly. “Innocent people were being killed.”

Not only that, but, as Butler put it, “The world stood together for the first time in a long time and said ‘No.’ ”

There are other, more personal satisfactions.

Navy Chaplain Crutcher Evans Jr., came back to Camp Pendleton with greater spiritual beliefs. In the war zone, he baptized 35 Marines and taught corpsmen and field doctors how to tend the dying with compassion.

“One of the most remarkable things that happened for me was a sense of inner peace,” said Evans, a Southern Baptist. “I thought I was really there for a purpose.”

But many of these young men learned some sadder lessons about the horror of war.

Spratt recalled that the Marines had just shot to pieces an Iraqi armored vehicle. The two occupants lay dead on the ground. One had crawled off, trying to bandage his wounds as he died. The other remained, bloody and still, by the vehicle.

Spratt gazed down at his enemy, surveying the wounds and their frozen faces. “They looked just like normal people, like we are. That’s when you find out war isn’t like Hollywood makes it to be.”

Bellone added tartly, “I don’t watch war pictures anymore.”

Another vignette: Bellone recalled the solitude of standing watch while an allied bombing attack lighted up the distance with brilliant flashes. “I was all by myself, watching the bombs fall, watching the insanity. It’s like you’re more alone than ever.”

For all the fear and death, an occasional bizarre crisis injected humor into their experience. Like the night some Marines probed a dangerous forward position, not knowing where the Iraqis might be lurking.

Hawk, moving gingerly, his weapon ready, glanced over his shoulder, looking for the reassurance that his back was covered by another Marine. To his horror, the trooper Hawk thought was protecting him had dropped his pants and was hunkered down for an emergency bowel movement.

“What are you doing?” Hawk whispered in a shout.

“I couldn’t hold it,” explained the Marine, who then tried to comfort Hawk by declaring, “Don’t worry, I can shoot in this position.”

When Hawk retells the story, Butler and Simms pitch and roll with laughter at a story that only comrades in arms can richly appreciate.

“We probably will go our separate ways,” Spratt said. Then, pointing at Brennan and Bellone, members of his squad, friends in war and peace, he added, “But I’ll never forget his face, and his face.”