GIs Ambush Nighttime Iraqi Probes

They lie silent on the ground all night, scanning the hostile terrain for anyone or anything coming or going, moving or waiting.

“You’re cold and miserable and you just have to wait,” said Lt. John Deedrick.

The Marietta, Ga., native was part of a U.S. Army patrol deployed on three knobs of rock-strewn desert, within sight of the Saudi-Kuwait border the other night. The patrol was waiting to ambush an Iraqi patrol expected to come through the valley that lay before them.

The strategy was as old as war itself. “They’re probing,” said Maj. Ralph D’Elosua, the battalion operations officer. “We don’t want them to have a lot of access to this area. We want to control this valley. Not them.”

These troops from the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade are part of a quiet ground war that has begun already--forays across the border to test each other’s strengths and probe for weaknesses.

Iraqi patrols of 20 or more troops want to know which allied positions are best fortified, where the Iraqis might send through an attack force with the least resistance. The job of the U.S. soldiers is to stop such intelligence gathering by stopping the patrols.

Some of the battles have been fierce, with artillery and small-arms fire exchanged. Last week, an Iraqi patrol ambushed some Saudi troops not far from here. Three Saudis were wounded and an Iraqi was killed before the intruders retreated across the border.

On Friday night, this same outfit from the 82nd Airborne traded machine-gun fire with Iraqi troops who were closer than the length of a football field. No injuries were reported on the U.S. side, and there was no evidence that any Iraqis were wounded.

Mostly, though, these skirmishes and nighttime traps are preparation for the possibility of full land combat. They are a time for U.S. troops to test themselves and absorb the ways of desert warfare.

“They (the Iraqis) know the terrain (and) we do not,” explained D’Elosua. “They know how to fight in the desert. We’re just learning.”

Just before dusk, the paratroopers had set off from their base camp to find a vantage point. Though their mission as scouts and lookouts is an old one, their equipment is the stuff of science fiction.

Night-vision goggles bathe the desert with an eerie green light and enemy troops and vehicles are spotted easily. Ground-surveillance radar detects the vibrations of troop and transport movements miles away. A voice-intercept system tracks signals from enemy communications equipment. Anti-tank missiles and grenade launchers are equipped with thermal-imaging sights that track anything emitting heat.

“We can pick up any enemy movement a long, long ways away,” said Sgt. Michael Bannditini of St. Clair Shores, Mich., a surveillance systems expert.

But sophisticated equipment makes a heavy load for the men heading out across the desert. Sgt. John Kinkeed from Redding, Calif., carried 80 pounds on his back as he headed out. Across the top of his high-tech load he had slung a piece of burlap to mask his outline against the night sky.

Kinkeed was philosophical about what might happen. “It depends on who sees who first,” he said. “No use worrying about it. We’d all have ulcers by now.”

At the ambush point, the patrol divides into three groups and sets up its equipment on three knobs overlooking the border, less than three miles away. The antitank weapons, heavy machine guns and grenade launchers are aimed toward the north and the unknown.

Through the long night, some soldiers try to sleep on the desert floor while sentries stand watch. It can be a long and unnerving time.

“I have butterflies,” said Sgt. Larry Armour of Fayetteville, N.C. “To be honest with you, the only thing I like to do at night is sleep.”

On this night, sleep was elusive. A radio report came in. A vehicle had been spotted. But it never came through the trap. Later, two flares lit the sky. Again, no Iraqis. No one knew who even fired the flares.

The enemy was elusive, too. At dawn, without detecting any Iraqi movement, the paratroopers packed up and headed back to base camp. They would get some sleep and food before moving into the desert again.

This story is based on pool reports subject to censorship by the U.S. military.