Iraqi Commander’s Diary Offers Glimpse of Desperation in the Bunkers : Combat: A lieutenant’s writings tell of two weeks of growing misery from allied attacks.

For an unknown Iraqi platoon leader who lived in a rudimentary bunker here, life at war with the United States and its allies apparently lasted just two short weeks, a time of small triumphs, narrow escapes and ever-mounting misery.

“Thank God nobody was injured,” the soldier wrote Jan. 28 in what was to be his final hallelujah under intensifying attack, “even though bombing in our area was very heavy.”

From an opening denunciation, dated Jan. 15, of the “imperialistic American-Zionist alliance” to that forlorn entry, a battle record kept by the platoon leader provides a tragic sense of life beneath bombardment.

As leader of an air defense section in the 4th Air Defense Battery, it was the job of the young second lieutenant to help fend off the American air attack.

But more often than not, the platoon leader reported, the U.S. planes would drop their load from well beyond antiaircraft range, leaving his guns to fire only scattered return shots while bombs rained down around them.

At the same time, with food and water running short, the Iraqi lieutenant found little support from his commanders, who seemed to become more scarce as conditions worsened.

So frustrated did he become that on Jan. 24 he even picked up the phone to call his commander directly after neither seeing nor hearing from him in three weeks.

But while the preceding days had been a torment of close calls from the bombing and sobering spectacles--the nearby Rumaila oil field now aflame--the conversation between lieutenant and major seems to have stayed within formal bounds.

“We exchanged conversation about the raids,” the platoon leader reported, “and I congratulated him about . . . the well-being of 4th Battery.”

The hard-bound diary, its calendar-organized pages filled with careful Arabic jottings, was found by American soldiers in the ruins of an Iraqi bunker here, about three miles from the Kuwaiti border.

The bunker was apparently part of a massive air-defense network for the Iraqi facility, a staging area used in the invasion of Kuwait and since then as a support base for Iraq’s Republican Guard.

The green book, whose frontispiece carries a picture of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, was turned over to a field-based team from the Army’s 501st Military Intelligence Battalion. A copy of the translation was made available to a reporter.

Nothing in the journal reveals the name of the man who kept it, nor is there a record of what befell him once the entries stopped. Officers here have taken to calling him “the unknown platoon leader.”

But the abrupt curtailment of what had been a faithful daily record, at a time when entries reported that American bombers had begun almost methodically to home in on air defense targets, leaves strong suspicion that the lieutenant’s two weeks of peril ended in anonymous death.

As early as Jan. 17, the first day that American bombs began to rain down on Iraqi positions here, the young platoon leader survived a close call as his unit shifted bunkers, only to watch the old one erupt in flames.

“If the platoon was in the old position, there would not have been a trace left of it,” the lieutenant wrote soberly. “But we were spared that, thank God.”

The bombing usually began in early morning and rarely ceased.

On Jan. 18, a nearby supply bunker was hit, touching off explosions that lasted more than an hour. The platoon watched in awe. The next day, a bomb fell next to the platoon--but it did not explode.

Meanwhile, supplies were running short: A food delivery was suspended and water was long since overdue.

“But God’s kindness hasn’t left us alone,” the still-hopeful lieutenant wrote, “for it started raining heavily, and we collected adequate supplies which we used to drink, cook and wash.”

And, in another sign that things were going right, he described with obvious pride watching as the “rocket people” aimed three Scud missiles southward toward Saudi Arabia.

But the war quickly began to worsen.

On Jan. 20, he warned a company commander that “the food is not enough,” but there was no encouraging response.

“The enemy launched another air raid,” he recorded.

By Jan. 23, a strike came so close that pieces of “shrapnel (fell) everywhere, and they were very large.” The next day, B-52s flew high above the Iraqi base, and the lieutenant recorded the sightings apprehensively, the English-language designation for the giant bombers painstaking in a sea of Arabic.

Soon the B-52s were back in greater numbers, but their bombs dropped harmlessly from now cloudy skies. The lieutenant and his colleagues congratulated one another on their “safety from the raids.” He began to daydream about a hoped-for pass that would give him five days of leave beginning Jan. 31.

Yet now the bombing reached an even more intense peak.

Fifteen planes arrived at dawn on the 28th and struck throughout the morning, one bomb landing terrifyingly near the platoon.

“Thank God,” the lieutenant wrote in what had now become a refrain, “nobody was hit.”

This time the air raids continued through the night, and then into the next day, igniting another supply dump and raining shrapnel on the platoon leader and his men, who somehow managed to escape again. Again, “Thank God.”

The raids continued through the next day as well. But as the B-52s tried to fly lower, the antiaircraft guns seemingly managed to drive them away. On the 28th, it was F-14s that swooped past at low altitude, and they too were forced to flee, the lieutenant wrote. He was triumphant: “We thanked the efforts of the battalion commander for the heavy and precise fire, and he asked me to convey greetings to all the fighters.”

By the next day, the 29th, however, the American planes had learned their lesson. Now the F-18s and F-14s stayed high in the sky and bombed the air defense site all day long.

More ominous, the lieutenant saw what he thought was a team of F-16s, passing by again and again at even higher altitude, apparently taking photographs of the target site below, helping the American attack to home in on them.

It was a bad day all around. After breakfast, the lieutenant reached to shut off the gas heater that had kept him warm through the frigid nights of war and was burned.

“A flame came up and burnt my mustache and my hair,” he reported on his 13th day under bombardment in the bunker, “and I adjusted it accordingly.”

There were no further entries.