It’s Nervous Time as U.S. Troops Pull Out of Somalia : Africa: Most of the ground force will be gone by week’s end. They leave behind escalating chaos and fear.

A U.S. Marine sniper team peered through gun sights atop the Empire State merchant ship Sunday afternoon, scanning the horizon of a city slipping deeper into chaos by the day, as 277 American soldiers flanked by the high-powered cannons of two Bradley fighting vehicles quietly marched up the gangplank.

On Tuesday, another ship will dock at Mogadishu’s seaport, the Greek cruise ship Mediterranean Sky. Also amid strict security, more than 500 U.S. troops will march aboard, bound for the Kenyan port of Mombasa and a passenger jet for home.

By the end of this week, the bulk of the American ground forces assigned to the long and sometimes painful U.S. military mission to help save Somalia from self-destruction will be gone--most of them ferried out by sea in a costly yet discreet withdrawal operation designed to limit further U.S. casualties in a land where most Americans believe that too many have already died.

At an added cost of about $13 million, the ferry service is “an additional measure of protection” against “somebody who might like to take a parting potshot” at a more visible American target in the air, said Army Col. Steve Rausch, the U.S. military spokesman here.

The high-security naval withdrawal marks the first time the United States has redeployed its forces in such a way since the Vietnam War, according to Military Sea Lift Cmdr. David Heim.

For many in the Somali capital, that fact is symbolic of the escalating chaos and fear that the U.S. military is finally leaving behind.

In recent days, Somali gunmen have ambushed civilian aid workers and U.N. positions with increasing frequency.

For the first time in months, Somali militiamen tried to fire a rocket grenade into the sprawling U.N. compound in Mogadishu late Friday night.

Half an hour later, two pickup trucks packed with armed Somalis opened fire on a checkpoint manned by Egyptian soldiers. The Italian Embassy was attacked several hours earlier.

Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of the spiraling violence and accompanying jitters now surrounding the American pullout came just hours before the U.S. troops marched onto the Empire State.

A U.S. Marine sharpshooter at Mogadishu’s airport, where the last of the American troops are bunkered waiting to go home, spotted a Somali teen-ager pointing a pistol at an Egyptian sentry about 300 yards away. The Marine fired a single round from his M-40A1 rifle, wounding the boy holding the gun and fracturing the skull of another Somali youth standing nearby.

The pistol, U.S. military sources later confirmed, was a toy.

Somalis injured during such incidents in the past routinely were taken to the sophisticated U.S. Army field hospital for emergency treatment. But that hospital officially closed on Saturday as part of the American redeployment.

So the wounded boys, both about 15 years old, were taken to the Romanian military hospital, which turned them away. A Romanian doctor explained that his hospital was closed for decontamination on Friday after an outbreak of viral infections.

The boys were finally taken to the Egyptian field hospital, which had to transfer one of them to the Pakistani field hospital because it was not equipped with an X-ray machine.

At the heavily guarded Mogadishu seaport, there were few signs of that chaos as the troops boarded the Empire State for home.

Rather, most of the troops seemed satisfied that they were leaving after a job largely well done.

None wished to speak about last year’s prolonged, U.S.-led military hunt for Somali warlord Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, which climaxed last Oct. 3 in a bloody firefight that left 18 American soldiers and hundreds of Somalis dead and reversed U.S. policy in Somalia.

After the battle, President Clinton abandoned the U.N.-sanctioned hunt for Aidid, who was the prime suspect in an earlier massacre of 24 Pakistani peacekeepers, and ordered a massive military buildup to cover America’s withdrawal before March 31.

The pullout is expected to be completed a week early.

None of the troops would comment on widespread criticism that the U.S. military intervention in Somalia was, at best, a setback in America’s efforts to define its role in a new world order at a time of growing regional conflicts.

“I don’t see a lot of starving Somalis dropping off like flies,” said Lt. Col. Keith Stafford, commander of the 4th Aviation Battalion, who insisted on shaking hands with every soldier under his command as they approached the gangplank of the Empire State on Sunday.

“I see hundreds of thousands of healthy Somalis now. We did something that needed to be done.”

Most of his soldiers seemed to agree.

With each handshake, the colonel asked each one, “Did you have a good time here?” Typical responses included: “Yes, sir,” “It was better than Saudi Arabia” and “Well, I’m feeling pretty good right now.”

Warrant Officer Mike Lamee, 28, a helicopter pilot from South Dakota, preferred a nonverbal response. Protruding from his backpack was a teddy bear and a large American flag his wife had mailed to him last month.

“The flag pretty much says it all,” Lamee said. “Duty, honor and country. That’s what it stands for.

“The people who make the decisions, I believe in them, or else I wouldn’t be here in the first place.”