Allies’ Spirits Soar After Victory at Khafji : Combat: Nerves are rattled, however, by news of latest Iraqi border movements and distant rumble of bombing.

Marine Cpl. Thomas Franco stood with his M-16 rifle next to the first bridge out of Khafji, the abandoned seaside town near the Saudi-Kuwaiti border where invading Iraqi troops staged the first major ground as--sault of the Persian Gulf War.

Only a few Iraqi soldiers remained holed up at the city’s northern edge by day’s end Friday, but with reports of tens of thousands more massing near the border, Franco was preparing for the worst. Dozens of bags of plastic explosives were stuffed under the low highway bridge, and Franco held the detonator.

If and when the word comes that Iraqi troops have crossed the border again and are pushing south, it will be Franco’s job to wave as many allied vehicles across the bridge as possible. “Then,” he says, “it’s really on me, it’s my judgment. If I feel, OK, it’s getting too close, I gotta blow it and take off.”

It is a heady responsibility for a 24-year-old corporal, but there were lots of elevated spirits in this border region a day after allied forces fended off the Iraqi incursion. It took two days of street fighting, with air support and artillery fire, to conclude the action.

Saudi troops, celebrating their army’s first major military victory, smoked water pipes and cheerfully herded Iraqi prisoners into a holding station outside Khafji while chickens pecked at the sand nearby.

Qataris, Saudis and Americans would stop along the road to congratulate each other. “Have a good time, God bless you,” a Saudi commander told two Marine artillerymen along the highway, littered with the carcasses of dead camels.

Yet the backdrop to all the good cheer was the ominous rumble of allied bombing of nearby Iraqi forces, its deep-throated thunder rattling the very ground under the border troops’ feet. Sporadic Iraqi artillery fire peppered the desert in response.

“We heard there was a regular traffic jam up there in the air last night. They had to take turns dropping off their stuff,” said a Marine officer at a nearby command communications bunker of the massive allied bombardment that included B-52 strikes in southern Kuwait. Then he paused. “Made us feel good, though.”

U.S. troops reported a small-arms firefight, well down the road into Saudi Arabia from Khafji, as late as Thursday night. But while the charred remnants of an estimated 33 Iraqi tanks, 28 armored personnel carriers and a few allied vehicles littered Khafji streets Friday afternoon, Saudi military officials said the Iraqis had been driven from a vantage point atop a giant water tower and only a few were left holed up in a building at the city’s northern edge, firing occasionally.

“We can guarantee at least 95% of the city (is safe). We can say 100%, but there are a few Iraqis, and we are waiting for them there,” said a Saudi army commander who asked not to be identified. “They have no alternative--either to be killed or to surrender. They are surrounded by our forces. . . . We don’t want to kill them; we ask them to come out.”

The Saudis reported about 30 Iraqi soldiers killed while allied forces said four allied Arab troops were killed and eight wounded. The charred body of a Saudi soldier was still in the driver’s seat of a smoldering armored personnel carrier Friday morning, and the blackened corpse of a second soldier lay half-in, half-out of the vehicle, a combat pool report said.

An estimated 500 Iraqis were taken prisoner during the battle, reportedly including a few officers and some members of Iraq’s special forces.

As the Iraqi prisoners were hauled out on the main Khafji highway, U.S. Marines lined the road, waving and cheering at the grinning Saudi drivers.

Still, reports of Iraqi troop movements near the Saudi border and the continual rumble of allied bombing sent a nervous ripple through the Saudi and Marine units waiting outside the city.

“We had a 5:30 reveille this morning with the bombs. . . . That’s one nasty reveille,” said a young Marine gunner.

Taking the brunt of the bombing attacks were Iraqi trucks and tanks reportedly moving in southern Kuwait with unknown intentions, said a Marine communications officer, working in an outpost of camouflaged tents with antennas poking out of crevices.

“Basically,” he said, “we just sit here and wait, and hope they (allied bombers) turn that line (of vehicles) into a dotted line, or no line at all.”

As the bombardment continued, interspersed with the sound of occasional incoming artillery, a particularly ominous thud shook one of the bunkers of Charlie Battery, 1st Battalion, 12th Marines, the most forward American battalion in the Khafji region.

“Basically, that’s just air,” explained a young artillery officer. “Our ICMs (artillery) sound like a popcorn machine--Pop! Pop! Pop!--like that. But a B-52, it’s just, boom! You know? Boom! Boom! Boom!”

The trouble started for Charlie Battery on Wednesday night, when Iraqi rockets began exploding in the desert.

“Nobody really knew how they were going to be. Like me, I was wondering if I was going to be scared,” said Franco, who was one of the gunners before he took up his present post at the bridge. “It really didn’t occur to us till they told us we had incoming and we jumped in the hole. That’s when we started getting serious.”

At some point, he said, the order came in for Charlie Battery to begin firing its big 155-millimeter howitzers at the Iraqi armor inside Khafji.

U.S. officials had identified a rallying point at the end of an Iraqi convoy coming into Khafji and Charlie Battery aimed its guns there, he said.

“They came down and they said, ‘Fire a mission. Battery 10, 10 rounds of HE (high explosive),’ ” Franco recalled happily. “Then they came back and said, ‘All 10 rounds on target.’ We said, ‘All right!’ They said there were two tank battalions out there, and after we got done shooting at ‘em, we heard they wanted to surrender. We wiped out 14 tanks.”

The firing was especially furious, he said, after reports that some Marines had been killed in fighting along the border farther west.

“We heard 10 Marines got killed, and after that, they called 10 Battery. Everybody was like, devil dogs, let’s get ‘em! This is for our brothers!”

He thought for a moment. “These guys, you hear the only reason they fight is because Saddam Hussein is making them fight. You feel kind of bad for them when you hear that kind of bombing up there,” he said. “But if they’re going to shoot at me, I’m going to shoot at them. They already attempted it once. So as far as I’m concerned, they drew first blood--it’s our turn now.”

Pfc. Cliff Brown, 22, scoffed at the idea that Iraq would launch any devastating counterstrike. “After we shot, they fired four or five MRLs (multiple rocket launchers) and they hit way over there,” he said, gesturing out into the desert.

“You have to understand, we were the last battery who hadn’t fired in this war. We’ve just been out here waiting and waiting.” When the order came, he said, “I loaded the propellant, I primed it and I fired the howitzer. I just couldn’t wait. I was just going crazy, just waiting to fire that first round.”

Up the road, at a Saudi encampment near the last checkpoint on the road into Khafji, a dozen Saudis sat merrily in the back of a truck and shared stories of what would come to be known as the Battle of Khafji.

“I called my mother in Paris,” said a young Saudi officer, “She said, ‘Khalid, are you in Kuwait?’ I said, ‘No mother, I am still in Saudi. But maybe soon. . . .’ ” He grinned, and tipped his beret.