Spouses Left Behind at German Bases Feel Cut Off From World : Military: Stores shut early; coffee shops have closed down. There are bomb scares at the PX.

By JANNY SCOTT

Jan. 28, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES MEDICAL WRITER

FRANKFURT, Germany — The abrupt departure of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers to Saudi Arabia has left U.S. military communities in Europe in a state of intense isolation, eerily quiet and increasingly cut off from the outside world by the threat of terrorism.

Throughout western Germany, the wives and husbands of soldiers deployed to the Gulf War describe a feeling of anxious dislocation--made worse by being on their own in a foreign country that often seems hostile to the cause for which their spouses have offered to die.

Military communities, by nature insular, have turned further inward. Even within their walls, life is diminished. Stores shut early, coffee shops have closed down, there are bomb scares at the PX. In some barracks, there are new curfews and midnight bed checks.

“We feel like we’re in prison. We can’t go anywhere, we can’t do anything,” said 21-year-old Ginger Martin, whose fiance left Germany for Saudi Arabia three days before New Year’s Day. “My mother said to me, ‘I know I can’t tell you what to do anymore. But don’t leave post.’ ”

The U.S. military won’t say how many Operation Desert Storm dependents have been left behind in Germany, the Netherlands, Britain and Spain. But in the Frankfurt area alone, the Army counts 14,000 family members of the recently deployed 3rd Armored Division of the V Corps.

About 90 miles southwest of here, the Kaiserslautern military community includes some 65,000 Americans stationed at an air base, several Army bases and satellite Air Force facilities. All along the autobahn, American flag signs mark the exits for dozens of other U.S. military communities.

Even in the best of times, these are self-contained worlds. They have their own economy, culture, language within a language. They get their news from Stars & Stripes and tune in to the Armed Forces Network. In the land of apple strudel, food machines are stocked with peanut M&Ms.;

Now with the Gulf War and the threat of terrorism, just getting onto a base has become a chore. All cars are searched, their undersides scrutinized with mirrors. Constant checking of multiple forms of identification has become a disincentive to going in or out.

In Wuerzburg, the military has declared German bars and discos off-limits to all personnel. In Frankfurt, parents are advised to keep their children at home when schools are closed for a day. Public service announcements on the Armed Forces Network warn Americans not to dress too American if they venture downtown.

“It’s like a ghost town, it’s just the wives,” said Darla Bull, a 20-year-old mother of two young children left behind in Frankfurt. “There used to be hustle and bustle and military vehicles at all hours. Now it’s subdued. . . . It’s scary, knowing that there’s nobody here.”

“I found myself getting really paranoid. I didn’t want to go anywhere,” said Susan Kelder, 28, whose husband, Mel, left her and three children behind in early January. “The hardest thing (about his deployment) is being here and not in the States with friends and family.”

Meanwhile, military mail from the United States is arriving in Germany weeks late. Letters to Saudi Arabia have not been received. The Army offers free services like “desert fax” and “E-mail to the foxhole,” but family members say even some of those messages haven’t got through.

Because of the isolation, Helen Albano, 26, wanted to take her four children home to Ft. Ord, Calif. But she couldn’t afford the trip. Carolina Williams, who is in the Army, sent her baby to her mother in Norwalk, Calif., then found herself terrified to return to her empty house. Her husband’s tour of duty had just been extended involuntarily.

“I sleep with the radio on. I think most people do,” said Marsha Moore, a 31-year-old mother of five whose husband left Frankfurt on New Year’s Day. “If something happens, we want to know, right now. Our guys are with ground forces, so we’re just waiting for the shoe to drop.”

In some ways, military families here are no different from families in the United States. Many learned at the last minute that their spouse would be leaving, say, on Christmas Day. They put their children to bed, then stayed up all night, holding each other and weeping.

Veronica Hernandez’s husband, an Army cook, was transferred abruptly from his unit to one being deployed. Martha Jimenez proposed fleeing to Mexico. Helen Albano, in desperation, suggested that her husband go AWOL.

“I guess my biggest worry is for my daughter,” said Army Capt. Diane Taylor, whose husband, also a captain, was deployed Jan. 3. Taylor’s parents in Phoenix have their passports ready in case she is deployed, leaving behind her 7-week-old baby.

But in many ways, being stationed abroad intensifies the anxiety and loss.

Some pregnant wives, speaking no German, face delivering their babies in German hospitals now that U.S. military hospitals are on alert and not taking patients. Many wives never took the German driving test. Without their husbands, they must maneuver their families on public transportation.

A trip to the pediatric clinic has become traumatic for some women because of perpetual anti-war demonstrations outside V Corps headquarters nearby. Some mothers “think we’re under attack,” said Joy Crisler, whose husband has been deployed. “We can’t do anything about it. It’s very upsetting.”

Susan Kelder has tried to explain the war to her children--so they “know what’s going on when people are going around saying Americans are dog meat.” Now she worries that her 7-year-old daughter is excessively interested in defense technology, Arab-Israeli politics and Patriot missiles.

In Darla Bull’s neighborhood, in suburban Frankfurt, anti-war slogans have been spray-painted. The area is unfenced to seem integrated into local German life and Bull said she comes home with her children to find hostile strangers loitering in the entryways.

“My security was just ripped away when he left,” Bull said of her husband, Johnny, her high school sweetheart from Ft. Smith, Ark. These days, she receives frequent telephone calls from his father, a Vietnam veteran now angrily against the Gulf War.

“He tells me I’m wrong when I say he’ll (her husband) be home on a certain date,” Bull said wearily on a recent evening. “He says this is another Vietnam. He just gives me unnecessary heartache.”