At the Front, a Break for Baseball, Steaks : Military: Spring-like weather brightens the half-holiday, but the shadow of tough days ahead remains.

For an afternoon here, at least, the sound of war was the resounding slap of a baseball upon leather.

Officers sipped near-beer under a brilliant blue sky; steaks sizzled nearby on the grill. And with the giddiness of the first day of May, dozens of soldiers stripped to T-shirts to toss the old pill back and forth.

“There is just something about a nice day and spring,” said Specialist Scott Thompson, 26, who brought his catcher’s mitt to Saudi Arabia with him. “You’ve got to get out and play ball.”

But there remained a strong sense, as Army units basked in the sun, that the lull marked no more than false spring. Even as winter seemed to abate, the shadow of hard times still clearly lay ahead.

“Don’t let your soldiers be deluded,” urged Col. James Riley, as his infantry brigade and much of this 1st Armored Division let itself succumb to the holiday air.

Soldiers, Riley acknowledged, do need time for themselves. But, he made clear, they should be reminded that the question at hand is not whether there will be a ground war, but when.

The rare day off in the desert came as Army units are switching priority from high-speed training to maintenance--taking up grease and wrench to battle machines into readiness for combat.

Such oiling and fixing, commanders were told the other week, “might be the most important thing you do.”

But the attention to detail has kept most companies close to their camps, with plenty of time for what the Army calls personal maintenance. And with the onset at last of clear skies and warm weather, it has become seductive to think that war might forever remain far away.

“Sometimes I can sit here and convince myself the fighting is never going to start,” said Sgt. Forrest Williams, of Jacksonville, Ala., a communications specialist at division headquarters who spends off-hours writing rap music.

That sense, some officers worry, may be inclined to redouble as news reports begin to focus on proposals for peace. With the timing for the ground war still far from certain, there is concern that the combat edge may be dulled.

But in setting aside a day this week for barbecues and sport, officers had clearly decided that indulgence now would make for better battle performance later.

At one camp, soldiers tugged at armored vehicles in competitions of strength, while elsewhere Lt. Col. Stephen Smith, still in battle fatigues, served up steaks to his battalion of mechanized infantry.

While the mood across the desert remained festive, the reminders beforehand about a fight still to come seems to have held any delusions at bay.

At a headquarters company, the Indiana-born Thompson crouched outside his tent and fielded fast balls and curve balls from Specialist Joe Popillo, an aspiring pitcher.

“If you played Army 24 hours a day, you’d go nuts out here,” said Thompson, a former catcher now in the role of military interrogator. But, he added, “The first time I hear ‘Taps’ at some funeral out there, I know I’m going to lose it.”

And just across the desert, a dozen soldiers on their afternoon off put to music a wartime mood in which humor inevitably comes with a black edge.

“We want to be in that number”--the artillerymen warbled to the tune of “When the Saints Go Marching In,”-- “going home in body bags.”