Consensus Among U.S. Troops: ‘The Bullets Are Going to Fly’ : Reaction: For soldiers listening to word from Geneva, the prospect of war suddenly is made chillingly apparent.

As grim reports of the impasse in Geneva reached soldiers in the Persian Gulf region late Wednesday night, those gathered near a television set in a hotel ballroom here shook their heads and swallowed hard.

An hour before, some had still held out hopes for peace. Now, to a man, their young faces suddenly serious, they said those hopes had been dashed.

“We’re going to war,” said Spec. Jerry Baughman, a 22-year-old communications specialist from Indianapolis. “The bullets are going to fly. There’s no way around it.”

“The way they talked, I don’t see any alternative,” said Sgt. Theron Brown, his jaw tight with new tension. “To me, it means there’s going to be a war.”

And for the Saudis, who have not experienced war since King Ibn Saud and his Bedouin warriors united the desert kingdom 60 years ago, the prospect of war--perhaps as near as the oil fields next door--was becoming chillingly apparent.

“I think war is very soon. There is no other way. There are only a few days left, and I don’t see any hope in solving this thing peacefully,” said Mohammed Khayat, a Saudi Information Ministry official.

“We have to keep our fingers crossed,” Khayat said. “Maybe something works out, maybe he (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein) suddenly comes to his senses. If not, it’s all over. There is no other way. It’s not any more half-empty or half-full. There are only a few drops left.”

“Oil prices will go up, Dow Jones down, and war is coming,” joked another Saudi official.

Khalid Myeena, editor of the Jidda-based Arab News, said it is clear that both sides have become so firmly entrenched that compromise is unlikely.

“Nobody has backed off. (U.S. Secretary of State James) Baker has said there is no compromise; he spoke of Iraqi inflexibility. At the same time, (Iraqi Foreign Minister) Tarik Aziz did not even mention Kuwait. If you take all of these lines, war is the only solution now.”

At the same time, none of the Saudis appear ready to rule out the possibility that Iraq will stun the world and initiate a last-minute pullout from Kuwait. “In this conflict, you can reach deadlock three times, four times, but in the end you might open the door very widely,” Waheeb Jhorab, a Saudi journalist, said hopefully.

A spokesman for the Kuwaiti government’s information office agreed. “This is typical of Saddam’s regime, to press as hard as they can up to the end, with their fullest,” said the official, Hussein Essa. “So what we are anticipating basically is on the 15th . . . he will decide to withdraw from Kuwait, and eventually we will see a peaceful resolution to this whole thing.”

A sense that battle is near had already hung heavy in the desert, the war mood among the troops fed by orders to pack up their non-essentials and by new “time of combat” rules under which Marines are no longer required to salute.

But on Wednesday night, the ballroom crowded with military personnel, reporters and Saudi officials turned silent as news reports from Geneva made the lack of diplomatic progress apparent, and the somber mood spread downstairs to soldiers standing in a line, hoping to call home one last time before the shooting starts.

“I want to do what’s best for my family,” said Staff Sgt. Tony Cox, his eyes red-rimmed after finishing a call to Germany, where his 3rd Armored Division is based. “But now, I think there’s going to be fighting.”

Huddled in small groups in military fatigues to talk the news over before heading back to the front, some of the Americans seemed to regard the breakdown as almost a relief, a signal at last that their real business was at hand.

The meeting in Geneva, scoffed Spec. Jeff Roberts of Pittsburgh, was “a waste of hopefulness.”

“Everything has already been settled,” he said. “Iraq took over a country, and we’re going to take it back.”

“If the war happens,” said Spec. Aaron Basicker, another Army communications expert, “it needs to happen now. We don’t need to wait around any longer.”

But there were others who approached a reporter later to talk about their new-found fears, wondering aloud what they would do if they come under chemical attack and had to don protective gear and administer antidotes.

“Can you stick that needle in your leg?” asked Baughman, the communications specialist. “A lot of guys might freeze up.”

And as diplomacy appeared running out of time, with the message from the Bush Administration that the baton may soon be handed to the military, there were many soldiers who made clear that they would rather not take up their turn just yet.

“Everybody needs to stop and think about what they’re doing,” said Pfc. Mark Pierson, an Army intelligence specialist. “They think it’s just them up there pushing buttons and such, and think we’re the little toy soldiers out here.”

“Neither side can really back down now because it’s really just a pride thing,” said a colleague, Spec. Lee Burdick.

“I think if they had sat down and really talked it out, they could have come up with an agreement. Now, even though they gave it a deadline, I think they should give it a little bit more time.”