Families across California fear a 'forever war'

Military communities in the state feel a familiar chill as Iran campaign escalates.

- ALEX WIGGLESWORTH, HAILEY BRANSON-POTTS AND HANNAH FRY

ALLEN J. SCHABEN Los Angeles Times SHALENA CRITCHLOW said she felt a mix of relief and guilt that her son's Marine service was already over.

Brandi Jones and her boyfriend were both 22 when he first deployed to Iraq with a Twentynine Palms-based infantry Marine unit in 2004.

The next year, they married and prepared a will, knowing another deployment could occur at any time. When her husband returned to Iraq in 2009, their children were 2 and 4.

Seventeen years later, Jones' husband is still an active-duty Marine. And when she learned on Feb. 28 that the U.S. and Israel had attacked Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an old fear overwhelmed her: Could he be deployed again - and could her children lose their father - in yet another conflict in the Middle East?

"I thought, 'If their dad deploys again now and doesn't come home, at least they got to know him and he got to see them grow up,'" said Jones, who now lives in Monterey County and is the organizing director for the Secure Families Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for military families and veterans.

The escalating conflict has sent a chill through military communities across California, which is home to more than 157,000 active-duty military personnel — more than any other state. For some service families, the images of missile strikes and talk of deployment readiness have resurrected the fear and uncertainty of Iraq and Afghanistan-so-called forever wars.

"Families are saying, 'What is the mission?' They wonder, what is the timeline?" Jones said. "And, of course, everyone is fearful that it will be years and years."

A Californian was among the first American service members to die in the war.