CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. -- You rarely see Marines embrace.
Yet Lynne Gilstrap, principal at the Mary Fay Pendleton School at this Marine base, has seen it happen when troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan. They have every reason to let their emotions flow after missions that were protracted and sometimes scary.
But there's more to it than that -- they're greeting surrogate fathers who stepped in to guide their children while they were gone.
''I've seen grown men actually . . . giving each other a bear hug," the principal said.
On this Father's Day, it should be noted that more than a fifth of men on active military duty -- about 225,000 -- are fathers, according to the Pentagon. The lives of their children, said Nancy Campbell, who works in Army family services, ''are turned upside down."
Untold numbers of men and women -- relatives, neighbors, other servicemen and women -- have marched to the aid of these children as temporary mentors. They play softball and board games, help with homework, and try to ease childhood's troubles with a sympathetic ear until the return of the deployed fathers -- or, sometimes, mothers.
Some join programs like the one run by Big Brothers Big Sisters inside three public schools at Camp Pendleton, the city-sized base south of Los Angeles. Other mentors step forward informally to help brighten a dark time for a child.
''I got to have some time with somebody," said Gage Black, an 11-year-old who was wrapped in a towel after frolicking with other children and their mentors at an end-of-school pool party at Camp Pendleton. ''I'm not so lonely."
His father, who was away in Iraq, has returned -- but expects to ship out again soon.
Gage's mentor, Lieutenant Colonel Sam Pelham, knows more than a little about comforting children: He is a father of three and, as a reservist, has worked in civilian life as an elementary school teacher. As mentor, Pelham would often ask the boy how his family was doing.
''If he was tightlipped, I'd let him be tightlipped," said Pelham. ''It was his hour, and I didn't direct any of it. I was his running mate, basketball teammate, whatever he wanted."
Mentors have visited Mary Fay Pendleton School once a week. Principal Gilstrap said she has seen striking changes in the children: ''They were so excited . . . to tell the 'bigs' what they had done during the week, that their whole attitude toward school and schoolwork seemed to change."