Troops Wait Turn to Pack Up, Leave : Military: The men of Charlie Company recall battle scenes as they bide their time at a lonely desert outpost.

The menacing tank barrel says “Infidel Ones,” but the American troops guarding this lonely outpost on the road to Baghdad say they are mostly the homesick ones.

“We’re just hoping to get out soon,” Pvt. Mike Smith, 19, of Seattle said Friday. “This war is history.”

With giant C-130 troop transport planes roaring off for home from a highway-turned-runway in nearby Kuwait, the 178 men and 14 tanks of Charlie Company, 337th Armored Task Force, are holding this desolate desert checkpoint and waiting their turn, two to three months away.

Each day for a week, Army engineers have gone into nearby fields to blow up a vast network of Iraqi sand revetments and bunkers. Early Friday, however, they found Iraqi troops hauling remaining tanks, armored vehicles and other gear away on trucks.

“We were going out this morning to blow the stuff up, destroy everything,” said Lt. Clifton Cooper, 25. “But when we got there, the Iraqis were loading up. So we left.”

One bunker, he said, had a leather easy chair and couch. Another featured marble floors and a Persian carpet. Nearly all were loaded with caches of grenades, artillery shells and ammunition for the battle that mostly wasn’t.

Charlie Company killed 18 Iraqi tanks and took some fire but suffered no casualties in the 1st Division’s three-day, hell-for-leather race west around Kuwait and into southern Iraq in the ground war. The “Infidel Ones” M-1 tank fired, but missed.

“If I never fired a round, I’d be the happiest guy here,” said Sgt. Edward Kralik, 25, of Chicago, down in the turret of his cramped tank, a pinup of Miss April taped by his head.

“No glory for us, thanks,” he added. “I’d rather not die here.”

He proudly demonstrated his tank’s thermal sights, laser-guided targeting and “handy-dandy” computers. “The tank was awesome,” he said. “We could engage the enemy at further range than they could engage us.”

Cooper said he was amazed at how poor the feared Iraqi defenses were. “Their trenches weren’t even as deep as the holes we bury our (excrement) in,” he said.

The biggest danger since the suspension of hostilities, the men said, was the countless unexploded mines, grenades, bombs and bomblets that litter the landscape on both sides. The bomblets, which explode from cluster bombs into hundreds of deadly diamond-shaped pieces of shrapnel, look like brown baseballs or yellow soup cans.

“They’re so tempting to pick up,” Cooper said. “One guy put one in his pocket and blew half his leg off.”

He was dumb but lucky, said Capt. Tim Norton, 33, of Orem, Utah. He said another soldier stashed three bomblets in his duffel bag as souvenirs. They exploded on a troop bus headed to Kuwait city for a parade and killed three Americans, he said.

For now, there’s volleyball, tapes of Waylon Jennings and hand-held Nintendo games to pass the time. There’s also unanswered mail, carefully stored in plastic sandwich bags, from Americans who wrote “Dear Any Soldier” letters.

Thirteen went to the “Infidel Ones,” and the men scratched the names of the female letter writers on their helmets, along with the names of their wives and children.

One letter, dated Jan. 21, came from Staunton, Va. It was addressed to “Dear Serviceman/Friend/Hero” and included a photo of a smiling, blond-haired little girl.

“You are the reason I can sit here safely today and hold my baby daughter in my arms,” wrote her mother. “You will never, ever know how much I thank you for our freedom and safety.”

Deep in his tank, Cooper reread the dogeared letter for the umpteenth time. “That’s my favorite,” he said quietly. “It makes all this worthwhile.”