CRISIS IN THE PERSIAN GULF : Hardened Kuwaitis Ready to Take On Iraqi Invaders : Military: Troops regroup 50 miles from border, waiting to go to war. They tell tales of both shame and bravery and vow to exact revenge.

Head toward the Kuwaiti border, across a moonscape of unwanted and unnamed real estate, and there in the sand, like Bedouin apparitions, are the remnants of Kuwait’s army and the soldiers who seek revenge and redemption.

The wind blows ceaselessly here and from the north, as though carrying tidings of Kuwait on its wings. It makes the sand dance and creates imaginary forms, and Capt. Mohammed Salah, one of the heroes of his unit’s brief, courageous stand against the invading Iraqis, turns his back to it and swats away some flies. He ponders what he has been asked.

“Do I want war?” he asked, repeating the question. “What I want is my land back. And my family. If war is the only way to get them then, yes, I want to fight.”

The men in Salah’s command have grown full black beards--unusual for Kuwaitis--that they say they will not shave until Kuwait is freed. Four months of sun and dust have given the soldiers the look of canvas, rough-textured and earth-colored. Moving among their tents and tanks, they resemble not at all the smooth-skinned, white-robed Kuwaitis one sees by the thousands in the cities, living well and waiting for others to take back their country.

Wilfred Tresieger, the British explorer, wrote of the Persian Gulf Arabs in the 1950s as a people who produce their best under conditions of hardship and “deteriorate progressively as living conditions become easier.”

Although the career officers here may not have read those words, they understand the sentiment. One feels shame, a lieutenant said, seeing your country fall so easily, so quickly. Much of the army, others said, was on vacation when the invasion came, even though the drums of war had been growing louder for two weeks in the Persian Gulf.

They recited the joke about the Kuwaiti who is asked if sex is work or pleasure. “It must be pleasure,” he says. “If it was work, we’d hire a Pakistani to do it.”

Of the 20,000 men in Kuwait’s army on Aug. 1, only 4,500 have found their way back to the units regrouping here. Most of the others apparently have melted into exile. Another 7,000 civilian volunteers have joined a unit being trained by Kuwaiti military experts. But thousands more remain at Saudi universities or are ensconced with their families in luxury high-rent apartments that the Saudi government is providing without cost.

Capt. Salah, a bear of a man with gray-flecked hair, dismisses the possibility that Kuwait’s vast wealth produced a pampered generation. They will come to the front when ordered, he says. Inshallah . If God wills it.

He takes a reporter’s notebook and sketches out his position on Aug. 2. A button-size circle marks his tank; the Xs surrounding it are Iraqi tanks.

As only Arabs could, he and the Iraqi commander had a fairly amiable conversation before their battle began. Salah refused to surrender and said: “If you want my tank, you will have to fight me for it.” There was a standoff, and when the Iraqis eventually got out of their tracked vehicles for lunch, Salah and his men rumbled toward the perimeter, fighting their way into the Saudi desert.

The army is regrouping here, 50 miles from Kuwait, into what it calls the Liberation Battalion and the Martyrs Battalion. With them is a small U.S. Special Forces team providing training and command-and-control coordination with American and Saudi elements to the north and west.

The Kuwaitis in Hafar al Batin said that the attacking Iraqi tanks bore the flags of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a pint-size defense force put together by the gulf’s oil sheikdoms, including Kuwait. “That caused great confusion,” said Lt. Turky Ali al Shammary. “We thought they had come to help us.”

He said that the young Iraqi troops had been told they were going to Kuwait for maneuvers. All the Kuwaitis spoke of inflicting heavy damage and casualties on the attacking force.

“I used to think Iraq had one of the best forces in the region,” said Capt. Nasir al Dwalah, “but I do not believe this anymore. We destroyed most of their 14th brigade. Their losses were much greater than ours.”

Iraq has kept its best units, including five Republican Guard armored divisions, as strategic reserves behind the front. It has filled its front-line defensive units with younger, less experienced soldiers, fortified behind minefields, antitank ditches, small hills, concrete “dragon’s teeth” and ditches filled with oil, which could be set afire to create a smoke screen and obscure the battlefield.

“You’re not going to believe this,” said one officer whose family remains in Kuwait, “but our people escaping across the border tell us Iraq’s front-line troops have been left with no logistics. No food, no water, nothing. The Iraqis are telling our people: ‘Tell us when the war is coming. That’s the only way we can get out alive. The Republican Guard won’t let us retreat.’ I know you’ll think I’m making that up, but it’s fact.”

Since the invasion, the Martyrs Battalion has received 41 Yugoslav-made M-84 tanks, with about 150 more en route. They were accompanied by a dozen Yugoslav technicians now working with the Kuwaitis in the field.

The tanks are equipped with special filters to combat desert dust and are similar to the Soviets’ top-of-the-line T-72 tanks used by Iraq. The M-84’s low design and relatively quiet engines make it suited for desert warfare, and one of the Yugoslavs said they had performed well during recent training exercises.

The officers here speak eagerly of what they see as the coming battle--”I think we will be the first unit to enter Kuwait; we want back every inch,” said Capt. Hamed Sanabi--but the combat effectiveness of the re-formed Kuwaiti army is difficult to judge. Some military analysts believe that its most likely role would be as a backup force to engage the Iraqis after an initial U.S.-led offensive and flanking maneuver.

Despite reservations expressed in some quarters, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf, told reporters Sunday that the Kuwaitis would be included in any military offensive in the region. “We are very effectively designing a campaign plan that, if we are required to use it, will be executed in such a way that we will maximize the contributions of every one of the forces available,” Schwarzkopf said.

“You don’t want to dismiss these folks,” he added. “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight. It’s the size of the fight in the dog.”