Deep in Iraq, Perils Temper GIs’ Jubilation

The rifle pointed, nose down, into the battle-trampled sand, a helmet perched atop it, a pair of empty boots behind. A battalion of soldiers stood at stiff attention in a fierce desert wind as a first sergeant called out the roll to his assembled scout platoon. There was no answer when he shouted, then repeated, the name of Specialist Clarence (Johnny) Cash.

Then, across the desert, to a backdrop of explosions from a demolished ammunition dump, the bugle-strains of taps began to sound in a tribute to Cash, a soldier from Ashland, Ohio, who had fallen just a few miles away on Iraqi sands now occupied by the United States.

For Army forces who now sit in awkward limbo here, on a barren piece of enemy territory still littered with burned-out tanks and the unexploded remnants of an allied bombardment, this is a time of mixed emotions.

There is continued jubilation in this armored division over a victory whose swiftness still leaves commanders in a state of disbelief. But there is also great impatience to move beyond this war-scarred nether world. And the transformation from the role of fighting force to occupying Army has not come for the troops without unease and some discomfort.

“I will tell you,” said Maj. Gen. Ronald H. Griffith, commander of this 1st Armored Division, in an interview only hours after the hostilities halted, “there is no one I know wearing a uniform that has fallen in love with the Persian Gulf or wants to stay here any longer than he has to.”

He told his commanders on Sunday: “We’ve got to get out of this minefield we’re living in.”

And, indeed, there were indications later Sunday night that the division might, as early as Monday, pull back into Kuwait.

But already, in the four days since the halt in fighting brought this armored division to a sudden stop deep inside Iraqi territory, the accidental triggering of cluster bombs the Air Force left behind has seriously wounded at least three soldiers.

And with the future far from clear, soldiers and officers have struggled to adjust from the stresses of war, while occupying a battlefield marked at nearly every place with other signs of the violent combat that preceded this uncertain peace.

“Dead bombs, dead bodies and scorched earth everywhere,” observed Lt. Shaun Kodula, 27, of Montpelier, Ida., as he surveyed the land now held by what has become an American occupation force. “If this isn’t hell, I don’t now what is.”

Griffith and other commanders have made no secret of their desire to move to safer ground. But as long as the peace remains impermanent, “they tell us we’ve got to stay in place until all this is worked out,” said Maj. Guy Adams, operations officer of this division’s 1st Brigade.

In some senses, the halt in the fighting has brought a sense of calm, a return to normality, even here.

At an outdoor service Sunday, a chalice of sacramental wine sat balanced on top of a Humvee in the first Catholic Mass celebrated for some troops since the shooting stopped. At division headquarters, helicopters began to ferry in the mail that had been held back while the fighting raged. Officers flew to Saudi Arabia to visit soldiers who had been wounded. At dusk, a massive American tow truck could be seen hauling an intact Iraqi T-72 tank across the sands, an apparent battle trophy to be sent home to Germany.

But there remains an eerie sense here--on what only days ago was an Iraqi military staging area--of living among the dead, with stretches of sand now dotted with hasty graves dug by Iraqis for their fallen fellow soldiers.

Every few hundred yards lies what is left of an Iraqi bunker, its roof sometimes reinforced with Air Force bomb casings gathered, apparently in a last-ditch attempt at shelter. U.S. soldiers, spelunkers of a sort, prowl beneath the surface, finding journals, clothing, furniture--but also some floors stained with blood.

And each time word spreads of another American grievously wounded by stepping atop a U.S. cluster bomb, officers cringe and wonder aloud when they might leave this place behind.

“Look where you’re walking,” Lt. Col. Michael Leehy, an artillery battalion commander, urged members of one battery the other day, warning of the dangers posed by the thousands of bright-yellow Air Force canisters that lie intact in the soft sand. “Let’s take every soldier home with everything he came with. Don’t leave any hands or fingers behind.”

Of the three soldiers in the division who have been wounded in the accidental explosions days after the fighting ended, two have lost parts of their feet. In a neighboring armored cavalry unit, one soldier was killed; another lost both hands.

Special explosive ordnance disposal teams have begun to clear sites near U.S. encampments. But with unexploded bombs and larger munitions of up to 2,000 pounds spread for miles across the desert, there is no expectation that the cleanup will be thorough.

“There’s so much stuff around here that if it’s not directly interfering with operations, we’re just going to leave it,” one munitions expert said. “Hell, this is Iraq.”

That recognition--that this remains enemy territory--has added to the apprehension, leaving some soldiers unnerved by the prospect of a retaliatory attack.

Officers remind soldiers to remain on guard, their weapons loaded and ready. But at least twice since the hostilities have halted, units here have scrambled in pursuit of what turned out to be phantom Republican Guard tank battalions.

Late Sunday, senior officers here were briefed on the arrangement, apparently discussed in the meeting earlier that day between allied and Iraqi commanders, permitting free passage to non-hostile Iraqi units whose vehicles displayed an orange banner.

In another source of some unease, the very speed with which this Army division has come to sit so deep within Iraq has caused Griffith and some senior commanders to express concern that their victory might somehow be downgraded.

“The press said this guy was 8 feet tall--we took him down in four days,” the two-star general said in an interview, voicing a theme he was to expand upon in after-action talks to his field commanders. “But I hope that we don’t now say that this guy was a paper tiger because our guys steamrollered all over him. I hope somebody says that our guys were pretty good.”

Perhaps more than anything else, however, it was the solemn battlefield service in memory of Cash, a soldier killed in action, that has checked the sense of elation here, a moving reminder of the human cost of victory.

“We chose to do what soldiers do--dangerous, in a foreign country, with no prospect of going home,” said Chaplain Timothy Kikkert, as the 4th Battalion, 86th Armored Regiment stood in honor of Cash, the “two-steppin’ country-western kind of guy” whose friends called him Johnny.

The young soldier, driver of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, was killed in the waning hours of battle last Wednesday as his scout platoon pushed forward, hoping to clear the way for a further advance by the battalion. An Iraqi armored vehicle caught the scouts by surprise, firing from point-blank range with a main-gun round that tore Cash in two and severed the leg of a sergeant who stood in a turret behind him.

At the conclusion of the service, each member of the battalion, many fighting tears, filed past the rifle, helmet and boots that symbolized the fallen soldier to render one last salute.

This report was reviewed by military censors.