A LONG WAIT MARINE'S YOUNG WIFE LEARNS HE'S IN AFGHANISTAN BUT OK.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Whatever the U.S. Marines are doing in Afghanistan, Jared Lovell is with them.

Lovell's wife, Jennifer, hasn't heard from her Marine corporal husband since his daily e-mail messages from the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu stopped abruptly on Nov. 26 - a day after news reports that men from his unit were going into Afghanistan.

By chance, less than two weeks later, Jennifer Lovell got confirmation in an Associated Press report that her husband is indeed in Afghanistan.

``I'm a little worried, but I know he's all right,'' she said on Wednesday as she held the couple's 9-month-old daughter, Sydnie, on her lap in her grandparents' home in Lancaster.

An AP writer caught up with Jared Lovell and other Marines digging foxholes - which the Marines now call fighting holes - outside their fortified base in Afghanistan.

The writer talked to the Marines just after they had attacked and destroyed a Taliban convoy.

It was ``a moment I was proud to be Marine,'' the writer quoted Lovell, a 22-year-old former Antelope Valley High School student who joined the Marines after graduation from a Washington high school in 1998.

This is the first time in their marriage that Jennifer and Jared have been separated for so long - apart for Thanksgiving and what will be the baby's first Christmas and New Year's Day. Jared was last deployed overseas before the wedding.

This time he shipped out in August for a six-month deployment on the USS Peleliu as part of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based at Camp Pendleton.

On the morning of Sept. 11, Jennifer was awakened by her grandmother, who told her the United States had been attacked. After learning what her grandmother meant - the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon - she thought about her husband, who had called her from some overseas port at 3 that morning and said he would call back later in the day. But he did not phone again.

She knew he might be headed into action soon in a Marine unit whose motto is ``Anywhere, Anytime.''

In October, while still overseas, he re-enlisted - as he previously told his wife he wanted to do. He plans to make the Marines a career, she said.

His last e-mail message didn't mention Afghanistan. ``It was just normal: `I'm doing good. How's the baby?' He didn't say he was leaving,'' his wife said - but the e-mail stopped.

Military personnel headed into action aren't allowed to send messages home about where they are going, she pointed out. ``They really haven't been allowed to say much to us.''

She has learned through the news media that Marines at Camp Rhino have been unloading supply planes and patrolling in heavily-armed vehicles and with aircraft. Marine helicopters evacuated the special-operations personnel injured by an errant U.S. bomb. Marine aircraft have also bombed Taliban and al-Qaida targets.

The destruction of the Taliban convoy was the first action for Marines on the ground.

Jennifer said she watches television reports on Afghanistan ``off and on - I try not to watch it too much.''

After Jared shipped out, she and the baby moved out of their Fallbrook apartment into her grandparents' home in Lancaster. Her parents and other relatives have lived in Lancaster, and she is a 1999 graduate of Antelope Valley High School.

At Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps has formed a support system among the wives left behind.

Jennifer feels more at home in the Antelope Valley.

``My family's here, and they're real supportive. It's better for me to come home.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Jennifer Lovell shows her 9-month-old daughter, Sydnie, a picture of the baby last August, held by her dad, a Marine corporal.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer

(2 -- color) Marine Jared Lovell, now in Afghanistan, holds his baby for the last time before he was deployed overseas.