AFTERMATH OF WAR : Jarheads Make Jughead’s a Home Away From Home

Sweating in the blasting heat and shivering in the cutting cold, plenty of Camp Pendleton Marines muddled through their desert ordeal just dreaming of Rosemary’s place back in Oceanside.

Jughead’s is that funky brick bar where Rosemary Hamilton always served up cold beer and welcomed the young Marines, often with hugs, free drinks and an open heart to their troubles.

It is sort of the “Cheers” for the local Marine Corps.

Some merchants may shun Marines, but here, they can freely do their off-duty ritual: the patented Marine walk led by the aggressive shoulders, and then slam down brews like rounds dropped into a mortar tube.

Hamilton sees through the youthful ways and says of these Marines--who include the likes of machine gunners, tank killers and other genuinely tough acts--”they’re just great kids.”

“I’d die without ‘em,” she said, patrolling behind the long bar and pulling on a low-tar cigarette.

No wonder that when Cpl. Douglas Cody, a 23-year-old anti-tank gunner, arrived last weekend with the first wave of Camp Pendleton Marines returning from the Persian Gulf, Jughead’s topped his itinerary.

“First thing, I walked in, hugged Rosemary and drank a beer,” said Cody, who wears a ‘30s Don Ameche mustache and, like thousands of other Marines who spent months on the sand with only water and soft drinks, has been craving frothy beer.

So far, about 2,000 Marines have come back among the contingent of 30,000 deployed from Camp Pendleton to fight Iraq and free Kuwait.

Many single Marines are wandering downtown to celebrate the victory and resume their normal lives, but there has been no after-hours hell raising.

“Everything’s been quiet,” Oceanside Police Sgt. Bill Krunglevich said. “The Champagne bottles haven’t been opened yet.”

Cody said there’s little interest in taking the town by storm.

“You come back and just do the things you’ve been doing before,” said the native of Muskegon, Mich. “Nobody’s stressed out. Everybody’s just happy to be home.”

Often, the first recipient of the Marines’ joy is Rosemary Hamilton, who on Sunday celebrated her third anniversary of running the bar that’s owned by her daughter, Kristi.

Jughead’s gained celebrity during the war, as platoons of local and national journalists, including a CNN crew, showed up for interviews, photographs and video footage of the local Marine hangout.

When Cpl. Chris Duran, 24, got back, he made the immediate pilgrimage to Jughead’s, where he had been a regular customer for nearly three years, until the war interrupted for seven months.

He strolled in and spotted Hamilton. “I said, ‘Are you going to hug me or what?’ ” So ensued the reunion.

Cody and Duran recalled their campaign in the desert as an experience that taught them confidence, resilience and how to adapt.

“You weren’t out in the hills of Camp Pendleton doing your thing with blanks, you were carrying live rounds,” said Cody.

“I grew up a lot over there,” he added, but it will take time before events translate themselves into clear meanings. “To me, what we did really hasn’t hit me.”

What’s still fresh in the mind are the seasons of the desert, the intense heat that gave way to the months of cold. The trying to get comfortable. The waiting for mail. Just waiting period--waiting to fight, waiting to go home and not knowing when either would come.

“The friends you made, they’re like brothers,” said Duran, who is from the city of Orange. “I learned I can cope with anything so long as I understand it.”

But for now, they have won the right to slip onto a bar stool at Jughead’s, where the clientele, although mostly active-duty and retired Marines, includes an eclectic assortment of elderly patrons and guys with beards and long hair. The emotional center of the room is Hamilton.

“Rosemary is like mom,” said Cpl. Tedd Stone, who had left Camp Pendleton and returned only last month when he was called back to active duty from the reserves. He was tabbed as a casualty replacement, but wasn’t needed.

“Do you know why Marines like her so much? It’s because we’re treated like humans,” Stone said. “Jarheads are accepted as people.”

Finally, as Stone’s loving rhapsody goes on a mite long, Hamilton smiles, reaches over and puts her whole hand over Stone’s face.

“Drink your beer, Tedd,” she counseled.

Around this grandmother’s neck is a chain holding a gold heart with tiny letters that read “Someone Special.” It was a gift from Marines.

Still, Hamilton can give out reprimands, as some boisterous or overly animated Marines have found out.

“She doesn’t take any crap,” said one patron who asked not to be named. “Marines have a lot more respect for a woman with a soft touch than a 6-foot-9 giant with an iron fist.”

Hamilton said, “Some of ‘em, I had a little trouble with, but we talked and they turned into great kids.”