Iraqi POWs Tell of War’s Terror and Fear of Future : Military: They are gradually going home, but what awaits them is potentially as deadly as the conflict.

Felah, the son of an Iraqi sheik and an eight-year veteran of the Iraqi army, rubbed his shin above where his right foot used to be and shuddered to remember the B-52 bombers.

“Oh, my God, it was too much bombing,” Felah said. “The sky was full of planes, like birds filling the sky. They flew so high, but we saw the bombs falling. . . . Every day, every night, 24 hours. . . .

“If it had not been for the bombing, things would not have turned out this way.”

Like tens of thousands of other Iraqis, Felah is a prisoner of war, taken into custody by U.S.-led allied troops in the waning days of the Persian Gulf War. He was captured after he stepped on a small, sand-colored bomb that shredded his foot. His comrades left him behind as they fled northward.

“I was left alone, me with God,” Felah said. “I was very afraid. I prayed to God for someone to come help me, someone who spoke Arabic, so I could explain.”

The rapid disintegration of the Iraqi army in the face of a brutal allied assault was one of the most startling developments in the 44-day war to eject Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait. By the time it was over, more than 63,000 soldiers had surrendered or were captured, numbers that overwhelmed the advancing allies.

After spending weeks in POW camps and military hospitals, the Iraqis are gradually going home, filtering back to Iraq under the auspices of the Red Cross.

The future that awaits them is as uncertain and potentially deadly as the war itself.

In interviews, Iraqi POWs described the reasons they fought the war, the ordeal of constant bombardment, the terror of falling into enemy hands and the relief that came with the realization they would live. And they talked about what lies ahead for them.

During the torturous days and nights of the aerial war, many survived, hidden in cramped bunkers, eating grass and a little rice and drinking rainwater. Others, away from the path of bombing runs, fared better, only to be abandoned at the end by commanders who fled before the final allied onslaught.

The POWs--men with mixed loyalties--include students, farmers, lawyers. There are also career officers whose defiance remains intact. But many of the prisoners say they hate Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and wanted nothing of the military.

A Soldier’s Ordeal

As Iraq girded for war, Felah, who is 26 and the father of two little girls, was ordered to a position 12 miles south of Nasiriyah with his 700-man infantry unit. They formed a front line of defense near Iraq’s southern border with Saudi Arabia.

Several miles behind them to the north was a regiment of the feared Republican Guard, whose mission included stopping deserters.

Felah watched in horror one day as 18 young soldiers, all in their late teens, were lined up against a wall and shot by Republican Guard officers. Their crime: attempting to desert.

“They tried to spring away from our (post) but were brought back,” Felah said through an interpreter. “They were very scared for war.”

Such were the tactics of intimidation that Felah said officers used to keep the troops in line and in position. The other guarantee was the minefields to the rear of Felah’s unit.

“On one side we had the Americans, on the other side the mines. We had two choices: fighting the Americans, or, if you turn back, mines. So, we were caught in the middle. . . .

“Every soldier hated the army,” Felah continued. “They would shoot you for not saluting. From the beginning, they said we were the best army in the Arab world, the best, the best. . . .

“They told us that, if you meet Saudis, they won’t fight: Muslims won’t kill Muslims. But the British or the Americans, they will cut you with a knife.”

Felah spoke, seated in a metal chair outside a tent at the Swedish General Hospital in Al Yarmouk, a short distance northeast of Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The 400-bed field hospital was the Swedish government’s contribution to the allied effort, intended to provide treatment for hundreds of allied battle casualties that never materialized.

Instead, the hospital cared for 160 Iraqi POWs, many starved, shellshocked and afraid. The prisoners interviewed volunteered to talk to a reporter on the condition that their full names not be used because they fear for their families in Iraq.

It is in describing the bombs that Felah, a slight man with curly black hair and a stubbled beard and mustache, becomes most animated. Asked about life under fire, he motioned with his hands to show waves sweeping over his head, the seemingly endless procession of American B-52 bombers and British Tornado fighter-bombers.

The aerial attacks forced the Iraqis deep into the underground sanctuary of their small bunkers, where they hid for up to 16 hours a day. Felah said he and seven other men were crowded into a hole, curling up to sleep and emerging only after nightfall when they thought they could not be seen from above.

The bunker had a tiny window from which they could peer outside. Inside, they prepared to die.

“One soldier, he was very religious,” Felah recalled. “He would read the Koran every time we heard the plane and pray the pilot would die. . . .

“I was thinking, ‘Why do they want to bomb us? What had we done? Why do they want to kill us?’ We thought maybe it was Kuwaitis.

“But it is the will of God to die,” he continued. “You must accept it. Everybody has his day to die.”

Felah and his comrades would creep to the surface every night at about 8 to eat, when the sky was black and the desert a seamless void. This was the only meal of the day, and usually consisted of just a little rice. Felah cupped his two hands together to show how much food each man received.

On one of these dark nights, on Feb. 25, Felah was walking to a food truck to get the evening’s rations when he stepped on a thin bomb, one of scores of unexploded weapons that to this day rest in the sands of Iraq’s desert.

His foot in shreds, he screamed for help and begged to be taken to a division headquarters for treatment. But the other men were afraid to drive at night, to risk another explosion or an attack.

Wait until morning, they told him, we will help you then. Felah slept a fitful night, in pain, probably near shock, losing blood.

“All the night, I hear bombs, planes, artillery,” he said. “I hear too much. I ask what is happening, they say nothing, don’t worry. Those are our planes, they said, we are shooting down the British. . . .”

In the morning, Felah awoke to find himself alone in his bunker. Sometime during the night, scarcely 48 hours into the ground war, the others in the regiment withdrew.

As the sounds of shelling stilled, he heard voices in English saying things he did not understand. He gingerly crept up from his hiding place, hands raised to show he bore no weapons. Around him, the camp was in ruins, blown apart or burning.

The British took him captive, gave him first aid and inoculations against infection. Felah said he then passed out, waking up later in a field hospital in Saudi Arabia where his foot was amputated.

Eventually, he would be evacuated to the Swedish facility.

Fears of Surrender

Felah and the others interviewed agreed it was the bombing that devastated their ranks, killing untold thousands, prompting many more to desert. This is borne out by U.S. military intelligence officers, who now believe the aerial raids depleted Iraqi forces by 40% or more before the ground war started.

“Every day, the bombs. Every day, the bombs,” an emotional 23-year-old member of the Republican Guard said as he waved his arms wildly.

The guardsman said he and the men from his unit, based in the city of Nasiriyah, finally gave up when American helicopters flew overhead. From above through loudspeakers came the message in Arabic: Surrender.

“We put our hands up and were flying a white flag,” he said. “I thought the Americans would kill me. But they brought water.”

To a man, the prisoners say they had expected harsh treatment, if not death, when they were taken captive. Months of political indoctrination had convinced many that ruthless allied troops would not spare them. One emergency room nurse at a field hospital described the sheer terror that filled the eyes of POWs on operating tables: The prisoners fully believed they would undergo surgery without anesthesia.

Mudaffar, another prisoner of war, says his unit escaped attack during the war; only in the chaotic scramble to get out of Kuwait as the allied troops swept northward did he face death.

A student from the archeological city of Samarra, Mudaffar, 22, and his 1,500-man unit of Iraq’s Coastal Defense Force were arrayed along Kuwait’s shoreline near Mina Abdallah, about 30 miles south of Kuwait City and flanking the Burgan oil fields.

Most of the allied aerial attacks bypassed Mudaffar’s position, possibly because they were so close to the oil platforms. But Mudaffar and his fellow soldiers could watch as other Iraqis were strafed.

“We were not a special target for them (the allies),” he said. “But another division (close by) had artillery supplies. We heard the aircraft, and we knew the others were being hit.

“We were waiting our turn.”

Although the soldiers had enough rice and sugar for 40 days, food began to get scarce when the air war started. Holed up in their bunkers, Mudaffar and the other men were too frightened to venture out to secure supplies.

In the end, the deepest betrayal came from their commanders, Mudaffar said.

On the night of Feb. 25, little more than a day after the start of the ground war, the leaders of the Coastal Defense Force fled without leaving orders for the rest of the men, Mudaffar said. The troops would only learn of the retreat by accidental word-of-mouth a day later.

“We did not know until the (next) morning,” he said. “They left the night before. We did not know. We did not have any orders. . . . They did not care about the troops.”

Panicked, the men began trying to flee homeward. It was too late. Mudaffar and two others piled into a car and were driving toward Kuwait city when they were ambushed by Kuwaiti resistance fighters who shot out the car’s windshield.

Wounded in the feet, Mudaffar limped from the car about 20 yards across the sand and desperately tried to hide himself behind a palm tree.

The resistance gunmen stopped shooting and called for him to surrender. He complied and was taken to a house for first aid, then to a hospital.

“I knew they were angry about Iraq, and I expected death with them,” Mudaffar, a five-year veteran of the Iraqi army, said. “I was expecting they would kill me in the place where they captured me. . . . It was the most difficult moment.”

To his surprise, he said, “They treated us very well. There are exceptions. But they say we are ordered to come here, and it is not our choice.”

Uncertain Prospects

The International Committee of the Red Cross has bused more than 36,000 Iraqi prisoners of war back to Iraq, and the pace of repatriation quickened last week.

But hundreds have turned around and given themselves up again to American forces in an effort to avoid being pressed into service against insurrections that had been raging in the north and south of Iraq. And there are reports that some returning POWs have been shot by Hussein loyalists.

For many of the men waiting to go home, the trip is full of fear, dread and uncertainty. They will not be greeted by welcoming parades but by a ravaged country steeped in death.

Nervously they read Saudi newspapers that tell of the fierce fighting that tore through some of their hometowns. They know nothing of their families, their homes, their fate.

“I don’t know exactly what I am going to do,” Mudaffar said, fidgeting with his crutches. “I am waiting to go home and see my family, my brothers. . . . I am a student but I don’t think I will study. . . . I have started to think about (doing) something else.”

He said he hopes to return to his family’s farm to grow apples, oranges and pomegranates.

Felah also longs for the life on his farm in Al Hawija, where he owns a big house and a new Chevrolet. But he remains bitter about the war and worries that he will not be able to work and feed his family because of his wounds.

“In Iraq, if you have no leg, no hand, they don’t care about you,” he said.

“I know I am Muslim; I cannot go to England. I dream in life to go to London, but I cannot go. I have two children and I have an old father who is crippled. If somebody knows I want to go to England, they’ll come to kill everybody.”

His father is a sheik, a tribal leader and a religious man, Felah said. He had admonished Felah not to kill and to throw away his machine gun if he was ordered to go into Kuwait.

At one moment, Felah vows to murder any member of Hussein’s Arab Baath Socialist Party because of the disaster the Iraqi regime has unleashed. But at another moment, he breaks down and cries when asked about his children, a 2-year-old and a 6-month-old baby he has barely seen.

“I think of my wife,” he said. “I think she is wearing black and crying. She does not know anything about me. She thinks I am dead. . . .

“I can’t sleep at night, thinking of the children. I don’t know what they are doing. Do they have food? I will go back, even without a leg.”