Aura of Inevitability Hangs Over the Crowded Desert : Saudi Arabia: Soldiers talk of little but combat. ‘It would take a counterorder to slow us down,’ an officer says.

A week before the deadline that threatens war against Iraq, an aura of the inevitable hangs over this now-crowded desert, where shipments of fresh weapons fill highways to the front and American soldiers suddenly talk of little but combat.

Skies mostly empty a month ago now seem abuzz with military helicopters. The American front lines, reinforced with still-arriving armor from the United States and Germany, stretch far back from where they once gave way to sand.

Other Army and Marine units have moved north toward the Kuwaiti border, with fuel trucks and other crucial supplies now positioned even ahead of the combat troops in spots from which they could support a U.S. thrust.

And in the sands, amid the countdown toward the Jan. 15 target that some are calling K-Day (Kuwait Day), there are signs of a new tension as soldiers become persuaded that “there is going to be a war, and I am going to be in it,” as Staff Sgt. Thomas Watson put it Monday.

“I’ve basically lost hope for a peaceful resolution,” Watson said in an interview as his unit practiced blowing up a massive earthen berm and other obstacles designed to simulate Iraq’s formidable defenses. “The anxiety’s building.”

Even with a full week to go before the deadline, soldiers say they are thinking ahead in their letters, imagining for their families where they will be by the time the mail reaches the States.

“It’s not like I can pick up the telephone before it starts,” said Watson, a 30-year-old combat engineer from Greenwood, Miss. “So now I write: ‘As you read this, I could be in Kuwait or Iraq.’ ” Others cite a more macabre version they imagine but may never mail. “By the time you read this, I may just be a ghost staring over your shoulder.”

Many soldiers and officers emphasize that they remain hopeful that a diplomatic solution may yet be found. But with the military racing to make troops ready for battle as early as next Tuesday, even some commanders concede that they feel a sense of irreversibility.

“Right now, it would take a counterorder to slow us down,” one American officer said.

Only 325,000 of the 430,000 projected U.S. troops were in the theater as of last week, according to the latest Pentagon figures. Most Marine forces are in place, but crucial Army elements considered vital to any offensive operation are still missing, the Pentagon said.

But men and materiel continue to pour into the country every day in a steady steam that leaves a main highway clogged with vehicles ferrying tanks and other heavy armor to new U.S. battle positions.

At the same time, Army and Marine units long established in Saudi Arabia have given new focus to offensive training, like the exercise here Monday by members of the 37th Engineering Battalion, helping to train Saudi forces to assault Iraqi obstacles.

The effect of such clear preparations for war, officers and senior enlisted men say, has been a nervous tension that intensified with the coming of the new year, when what once seemed a far-off deadline suddenly felt real.

“The distress level will be a little higher,” Capt. Guy Mallow, commanding officer of the unit’s Bravo Company, said of the week ahead.

At forward-based Army camps Monday, many soldiers have already started to pack up in preparation for war, mailing home boxloads of letters, audio tapes and gifts that decorated their tents during months of waiting.

“They’re making their load lighter, in case they have to move,” said Maj. Tom O’Brien, public affairs officer for the 24th Division.

Noncoms in the unit say that in the last week they have seen signs of sullenness and frayed nerves.

“Some people are a little more serious, and some people are stressed,” said Sgt. Harold Reynolds, a 22-year-old demolition expert who Monday morning exhorted his squad with the observation that it is just “eight days till K-Day”--a reminder that he plans to update every day until Jan. 15.

“The tiniest thing will kind of irk them,” Reynolds said. “You have your tension spats here and there.”

More evident in encampments across the desert, however, is the bravado of young soldiers who translate K-Day as “Kill Day” and seethe against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

“We need to go up there and take away all his toys, kick some ass and go home,” said Marine Corp. Anthony Olejniczak, of Buffalo, N.Y., a reservist in the newly arrived 2nd Marine Division.

“There’s lots of big talk,” said Sgt. Patrick Oderaraup, another Army combat engineer. “A lot of guys are trying to get hyped up.”

Yet older officers say that even among the boasters they hear hints of apprehension that they expect to become more apparent later.

At the same time, in an indication of the new camaraderie forged by the sense of shared danger, the interservice rivalries appear--at least for now--to have given way to expressions of mutual appreciation.

“It’s almost against Army regulations to say anything nice about the Air Force,” noted Reynolds, the combat engineer.

But his unit’s assault against Iraqi fortifications would rely heavily on earlier softening-up missions from the skies. Seeing war on the horizon, the Army sergeant said, he and his platoon have changed their minds.

“We love the Air Force,” he said.