The Few, the Proud, the Online

The wife of a Marine for almost 10 years, Maria Quillicy dreads the lengthy separations from her husband, Rick, during his frequent deployments to the outer reaches of the Pacific Ocean and beyond.

Contact with him was once limited to letters, which took forever to arrive, and the rare phone calls he was able to make when his ship docked.

Maria, 33, said she became a “phone slave,” practically chained to their Mission Viejo home, waiting to hear from Rick during his absences.

Earlier this year the couple discovered cyberspace and the Internet. Rick’s six-month deployments, though still emotionally taxing, are easier to endure, said Maria, because she is in daily contact with him via electronic mail.

“I message him at the end of the day and recount our day’s activities,” she said.

The couple, who have two young children, bought a personal computer before Rick deployed in August.

“E-mail has really made a difference for me,” Maria said. “I no longer feel isolated and alone while he’s gone. If a minor emergency crops up that I can’t handle, he’s still there to help out, even if he’s on the other side of the world.”

E-mail came to the rescue in September, when Maria’s car wouldn’t start. She messaged Rick, who correctly diagnosed a dead battery, saving the couple unnecessary maintenance costs.

Rick, a captain and CH-53 pilot assigned to the El Toro-based HMM-164 squadron, is on the amphibious assault ship Peleliu in the Persian Gulf.

Like thousands of others in the armed forces, he will not be home for the holidays. Still, thanks to the information superhighway, many sailors and Marines will feel closer to their families and, perhaps, be able to help solve a minor crisis or two on the home front.

A spouse and computer are not standard issue in the Marine Corps. But Marine officials are becoming aware of the important role personal computers play in the lives of troops away from home and their families.

“The Marine Corps recognizes that e-mail and unit Web pages are becoming an important morale issue,” said Capt. Doug Powell, spokesman for the Camp Pendleton-based 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU). “The military realizes that the Internet is not just a fad. It’s a tool, and we try to exploit it as much as possible.”

The use of private e-mail is relatively new in the military, but it’s rapidly gaining in popularity as personal computers become more affordable for, especially to young enlisted troops.

The Pentagon began encouraging GIs and their families to use the Internet about two years ago.

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“We received an order from Marine headquarters in Washington that said Web pages are to be used to keep families informed about their Marines, where they are and what they’re doing,” Powell said.

Though the Web pages are informative and Marines are encouraged to use e-mail to stay in regular contact with their families, both are closely monitored.

Electronic messages can be sent and read in privacy, but they are also checked randomly to ensure operational security.

“People have been disciplined for sending classified information in their e-mail. These are cases where people were just careless,” Powell said. “And if we get a warning order to do a real world mission, the phone lines and e-mail on a ship will be shut down.”

Despite the military’s close monitoring, there are few restrictions on e-mail use. Anyone with a computer can send e-mail to service personnel anywhere, as long as the GI has an e-mail address and access to a computer.

The Navy provides e-mail addresses to each sailor as a way of improving “quality of life” during long deployments at sea, and its Web page explains how to send e-mail to a sailor aboard ship.

(The military does not have a central e-mail directory of its members, but the Navy Web page explains how to find a sailor’s e-mail address.)

Marines and sailors are allowed to use computers at their work stations to send and receive private e-mail aboard ship. Most ships also have a room set aside with a bank of computers for off-duty crew members.

Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Gerety said sailors and Marines teach each other how to use the computers.

“It’s the best thing that’s happened to us while we’re on deployment,” said Gerety, 34, based at Camp Pendleton. “On my last deployment, my wife sent me photos of my daughter through the Internet instead of by mail.”

The Defense Department does not keep statistics on e-mail usage, but Gunnery Sgt. Craig Larson said he would not be surprised if e-mail eventually makes mail call, long the military’s biggest morale booster, obsolete.

“Our deployment that ended in September was the first where we had e-mail,” said Larson, who works in the 15th MEU public-affairs unit with Powell. “Previously, we relied on mail call, and I would get five or six letters at a time. In my last deployment, I only got one or two letters a month from my wife because we used e-mail every day.”

Larson, 32, and Lance Cpl. James A. King, 24, were aboard the amphibious assault ship Boxer when King’s wife, Heather, gave birth to their daughter, Reily, on April 24.

When Heather King went into labor, she called Larson’s wife, Alice, and asked her to notify King. Alice Larson turned to her home computer and fired off an electronic salvo that told King he was about to become a father.

On that day, King, a captain’s cook, was asleep in his berth. Gunny Larson, who was at his work station, received a computer message from his wife that read: “Go wake up Lance Cpl. King and get him to a [ship’s] phone. His wife has gone into labor. More to follow.”

Larson remembered running through the berthing area, yelling for King.

“When I found him, he was rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, and I told him to get topside to a [restricted] phone because his wife was having a baby,” Larson said.

King called the Navy hospital at Camp Pendleton, which promptly put him through to his wife, who “told me that we’d just had a baby.”

“She was still breathing heavily, but she described what the baby looked like and told me everything about the birth,” King said. “We were kidding that because of e-mail I could’ve still been her Lamaze coach even though I was in Bali.”

One day after his daughter’s birth, King was notified of her arrival the same way U.S. servicemen have traditionally received similar news: a printed Red Cross message.

King is now a believer in e-mail and computers. With a lance corporal’s pay and a new dependent, he and his wife are expecting a sizable tax refund next year.

“We’re buying a computer,” he said.