1st O.C. Area Marine Killed in Action : Casualty: Cpl. Stephen E. Bentzlin apparently had a premonition, detected by his father in Minnesota and his wife who lives near San Clemente.

SAN CLEMENTE —  Just minutes before his light-armored reconnaissance unit was about to head off to the front last week, Cpl. Stephen E. Bentzlin shared his fears with his father.

“I’ve got a feeling I’ve never had before in my life,” he said by phone to Minnesota, an anxiety in his voice that 59-year-old Edward Bentzlin barely recognized in his 23-year-old son.

It was the last time that he heard from his son, a Camp Pendleton Marine who joked that he became a grunt because he watched too many John Wayne movies as a kid.

The exact details of what happened to Bentzlin in the week after he placed that phone call to St. Paul have yet to emerge. All that is known for sure is that on Thursday, he became one of the Orange County area’s first ground combat fatalities, along with 10 other Camp Pendleton-based Marines.

All were killed in fighting that began Tuesday night during a surprise, moonlit attack by Iraqi forces for control of the northern Saudi border town of Khafji, a favored summer vacation place of about 20,000 residents that most of the world had never heard of before this week.

For the families of the dead Marines around the country, the unbearable wait ended and the grieving began Thursday as relatives received the dread news from military officers.

In Bentzlin’s hometown in the rural farmlands of Minnesota and at his adopted home at Camp Pendleton and surrounding communities, his shocked family and friends--their lives changed by a knock on the door, a ring of the phone, or a familiar name on the television--struggled to make sense of the day’s events.

But it was the corporal’s own words, telling a fifth-grader named Daniel in Minnesota about the dangers of being a Marine scout in a Dec. 26 letter from Saudi Arabia, that seemed to ring loudest:

“Should something happen, we would be forward a bit to make contact with the enemy before they get too close,” wrote Bentzlin, who volunteered for Operation Desert Shield duty. “This is not a job I recommend.”

The danger of Bentzlin’s mission was also relayed in a phone call last week to his wife, Carol, at their Camp Pendleton home just a few miles south of San Clemente.

“He was in a good state of mind and felt confident about his training and the other Marines with him. However, perhaps he had a premonition of this tragedy because he wanted to talk about the details, should he not return,” the 28-year-old widow and mother of Bentzlin’s three stepchildren said in a statement.

“He tried to prepare me for this. He said, ‘Somebody’s gonna get hurt, babe.’ But I didn’t think it would be Steve.”

“I loved my husband with all my heart and soul. It’s going to be terrible for our three children and myself,” she said. “But we’ll make it because that’s what Steve would expect. We have lots of family and friends here who are helping. Goodnight, Steve. I miss you. I love you. You’re a hero.”

Capt. Rose-Ann Sgrignoli c a Camp Pendleton spokeswoman, read Carol Bentzlin’s statement while standing on a dirt clearing just inside the base’s heavily fortified main gates. She said the mood turned somber throughout the camp when reports confirmed that the dead were from Pendleton.

“When you lose a Marine, it’s like losing one of our family,” the captain said.

Although Marine officials said they did not know exactly how Bentzlin was killed, Maj. Mark Thiffault, another Pendleton spokesman, said the young rifleman was most likely assigned to a light armored-infantry vehicle as a scout.

Thiffault said the eight-wheel vehicle carries a crew of seven Marines and is generally used in “high speed” reconnaissance missions deep into hostile territory.

As a rifleman aboard the vehicle, Thiffault said Bentzlin’s job was to help clear the way for allied forces as they crept near the enemy. Capable of speeds topping 60 m.p.h., the vehicle carries a mounted 25-millimeter rapid-fire gun and is considered the nucleus of Marine light armored-infantry battalions.

“They’ve got a tough job,” Thiffault said. “They are really good troops.”

It was “the challenge of fighting” that drove Bentzlin, a second-generation military man, said hometown buddy Joel Lafrentz, 24, now a farmer who raises hogs outside Wood Lake, Minn.

Bentzlin was scheduled to finish his service in the Marine Corps in July. But he seemed to genuinely enjoy his five-plus years, which included assignments stateside as well as overseas in the Philippines and elsewhere, friends and family said.

“He really liked it,” Lafrentz said. “Basic (training) sucked, but after he got through that, the only time I could really remember him complaining was when he was based in Florida and couldn’t leave the base.”

When they were in high school playing varsity basketball and football together, Bentzlin and Lafrentz used to go to Marshall, a nearby college town, and hit the Gambler, a popular local dance club, to down beers, “chase girls” and talk about what they would do in the service, the friend recalled Thursday.

Slowed by back problems, Lafrentz never made it to the military. Bentzlin did, and his friend has no doubts now that he carried out their childhood visions with valor.

“There’s a lost feeling for me right now, like somebody ripped out a piece of me,” Lafrentz said. “But I know one thing--when he did go over there, he did well, fought 110%.”

In Wood Lake, a rural community of 400 where local residents say “everyone knows everyone,” the combination of Bentzlin’s death and the national media attention it brought was jarring.

“People don’t know how to react--they’re just stunned,” said Mayor Lou Hagen, a vice president at a local manufacturing plant. “Instead of just getting this through the television set, it’s right here now in hometown U.S.A. It makes it all so much more real.”

The flags around town were flown at half-mast Thursday, not just at the Wood Lake City Hall but at local haunts like BJ’s coffee house as well.

“You can see people are slowed down, somber. . . . They have this questioning look on their faces--like, what now?” Hagen said.

For Steve Bentzlin’s mother, Barbara Anderson, the 48-year-old head of a crisis-intervention network in the Wood Lake area, the “what now?” consists of calm reflections and remembrances of her pregnancy with Stephen and his childhood.

Anderson had a care package for her son ready to go, with balloons, cookies and valentines. She planned to send it today. Instead, she will mail it to another Marine, while she occupies her time reading over the dozen or so letters she got from her son while he was in Saudi Arabia.

In his last letter, dated Dec. 2, the corporal spoke of the “eerie” feeling he had even then--six weeks before the war--that fighting was imminent and the “rumors, rumors” that circulated almost constantly on that subject. But he was upbeat, too.

“How ‘bout them Vikings!” was his closing remark.

Anderson looks ahead, too, longing for the day, perhaps a few weeks away, when her son’s body might come back to Minnesota and wanting--needing, she says--to know just what happened to her son.

“I’m hoping he’ll come home soon,” she said, her voice measured. “I want to know if he lived very long, if he knew what happened to him--that would be enough.”

Times staff writers Tom Gorman and Ray Tessler contributed to this report.

FLAGS LOWERED: San Clemente mourns the 11 Pendleton Marines. A25

MARINE CASUALTIES

The Pentagon identified these Marines as killed in action:

Lance Cpl. James H. Lumpkins, 22, New Richmond, Ohio

Lance Cpl. David T. Snyder, 21, Erie, N.Y.

Lance Cpl. Michael E. Linderman Jr., 19, Douglas, Ore.

Lance Cpl. Thomas A. Jenkins, 21, Coulterville, Calif.

Pfc. Dion J. Stephenson, 22, Bountiful, Utah

Cpl. Stephen E. Bentzlin, 23, Wood Lake, Minn.

Not Pictured:

Lance Cpl. Frank C. Allen, 22, Wianae, Hawaii

Cpl. Ismael Cotto, 27, New York, N.Y.

Lance Cpl. Daniel B. Walker, 20, Whitehouse, Tex.

Sgt. Garett A. Mongrella, 25, Belvidere, N.J.

Pfc. Scott Schroeder, 20, Wauwatosa, Wis.