Sand and scorpions as forces grind north

2003-03-25 20:16

In Southern Iraq - The sand is in your food, in your toes and in your toothbrush. The last decent meal was a long time ago. And night-time means the chore of digging a trench to sleep in - and prayers the scorpions keep away.

Daily life in a desert war is not exactly glamorous.

As US and British forces press toward Baghdad, grinding north across the desert with hundreds of tonnes of imposing metal, every day seems like the worst road trip ever.

Sometimes that road is a well-paved highway, and sometimes just marsh banks and army bridges set up to cross large muddy pools of water.

The Humvee may be a status symbol in Beverly Hills, but in military form it is a bone-jangling mode of transport with no air-conditioning, heating or legroom.

When the sun comes out, it is sweltering inside. At night, the freezing wind blows right through.

Progress can be agonisingly slow: proof that the terrain of central Iraq will be harder to operate in than the flat, featureless desert of northern Kuwait, where the last Gulf War was fought and won.

Every single marsh and mudflat seems to have been bulldozed to provide cover for tanks and ambushing units.

The roadside is littered with crushed packs of cigarettes, cans of soda, and half-eaten bags of rations.

One soldier reads a book on a makeshift toilet - an upturned can of ammunition - oblivious to the passing traffic.

Fresh-faced generation

Moving metre by metre, kilometre by kilometre, private fears remain unspoken. The soldiers do not say how they feel, they just say they want to "get the job done." They are moving forward and that is all that matters.

Many are teenagers straight out of training. Whatever deadly improvements technology has made to the weapons, wars have always been fought by this fresh-faced generation.

Sometimes they joke about the dangers they face. It is a black humour full of chilling harshness, but it helps. They will deal with the truth when they have time.

Sometimes troops come across smiling and waving Iraqi civilians, probably happier at the prospect of free food and water than the US and British invasion.

They live in ramshackle mud-huts. Adults, children and pets alike look malnourished. Their robes flap in the wind as if on coat hangers.

They make peace signs and point at their mouths.

Young POWs cry silently

And sometimes the Iraqis seen by reporters are prisoners of war, like dozens of men sitting cross-legged in the sand, heads bent forward, hands behind their backs, in various stages of physical and mental ruin.

Some of the younger prisoners cried silently to themselves, the tears making dirty lines down haunted faces. Their peers painted on blank expressions, as if only too accustomed to the privations of war.

Some of them may have seen service in all of the last three decades: the strength-sapping Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the Kuwait invasion and subsequent expulsion of 1990-91 and finally this present and final stand by Saddam.

This war might - just might - end their fighting years for good.

- AFX