CAMP 93, Kuwait -- Jan Beamer expects her baby brother, Matt O'Brion, to raid her Oxnard refrigerator. With 15 years between them, she's always mothered him. Feeding him brings her joy.

So when he came to her tent recently looking for handouts, it really wasn't all that unusual. Except that the brother and sister Seabees haven't seen each other since August. Except that they are in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert preparing for war. Except that she's a chief and he's only enlisted and he can still stand at her tent flap and shout out, "Jan, anything to eat?"

Beamer is the 37-year-old stern steelworker chief with Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 5. O'Brion, who has a goofy "aw shucks" kind of smile, is a builder third class with NMCB-4. Both battalions are based out of Port Hueneme, but their deployment schedules are on exactly opposite six-month shifts, so when he's at home, she's off in Japan or Guam or Spain. Ditto for her. But then, her deployment in Kuwait got extended.

So even when war seems imminent, folks near the front try to make the best of it. And sometimes that means family reunions in the oddest of places.

There's been more than one reunion for Battalion 4 while at Camp 93.



Hospital Corpsman Chief Sandra Cosico ran into her husband, a Marine hospital corpsman, as she was walking through the Camp 93 medical tent. The Camarillo couple hadn't seen each other in two months. They had an hour together, then he went back to his unit.

Tuesday, Battalion 4's Petty Officer 3rd Class Alejandro Gonzalez got to see his wife, a reserve Marine fuel specialist, when she showed up at Camp 93 on a convoy.

The family reunions, though, often are unexpected. O'Brion, 22, knew his sister was in Kuwait when he got orders to go there. He thought it was so unlikely they'd see each other that he didn't even pack current pictures of his sister's children.

"I knew she was in the area," he said, "but I didn't know where and I thought chances of meeting were slim to none."

But Beamer, 37, used her pull to find her brother and get him on a convoy from Camp Castle to Camp 93. Her battalion is preparing to leave Kuwait.

"We don't know what will happen," she said. "Tomorrow it could be someone's time to ship out."

She said when she heard her brother's battalion was coming to Kuwait, it was just a matter of time before they got to punch each other's shoulders again and verbally spar over little family jokes, like their arguments over whether he's really a "little brother" when, at 6-foot-3, he towers over her 5-foot-5 frame. He's living in a shelter half, an open-tent contraption that affords little protection from the elements, so he teases her about her posh digs in a Bedouin tent with electricity.

"Basically we just give each other a tough time when we can," O'Brion said.



Their last meal together in August was Beamer's favorite, the family's special manicotti recipe. But their first meal together in Kuwait is in the camp galley: boiled chicken and potatoes, chunks of limp lettuce without salad dressing. And unlike in Beamer's kitchen, they altogether skip dessert. It's the cardboard-tasting cousin of chocolate brownies.

But they don't let the dry, dusty taste of the food and the stark, sandy look of the landscape sour their family togetherness. They catch up, reminisce and laugh.

"You take the time you get and savor it," Beamer said.