CRISIS IN THE CARIBBEAN : Wounded Haitian Policeman Disputes Marines’ ‘Ambush’ Story : Firefight: Cap Haitien adjutant denies his men had orders to shoot Americans. The hospitalized official fears for his future.

He lay on a thin mattress in the men’s ward at Justinien Hospital, swatting flies with his one good arm. His right leg was tightly wrapped in bandages, and below his knee, three large metal screws held the bone together.

He is Rousseau Pamphile, 44, the Haitian police chief adjutant who was in charge the night the U.S. Marines killed 10 of his men and badly wounded him at police headquarters in this northern city. He is a big man, a proud man, the kind who suffers quietly the pain from three bullet holes and numerous broken bones.

His worry is not his shattered body. His mind is elsewhere--concerned with his family and his future and why the Haitian military far away in the nation’s capital has not provided him the best medical treatment, befitting an officer shot in the line of duty. And why the police force he risked his life to defend has fled the city and is not here to protect him from the pro-democracy crowds hungry for his head.

“God saved me,” he said Thursday in his first interview since the Marines opened fire six days ago.

Contradictions about the shootings continue to swirl here in Haiti’s second-largest city. The bodies of the 10 dead were exhumed Wednesday for a grand military funeral in Port-au-Prince, but the controversy about what happened Saturday night at the police building may never be put to rest.

Pamphile’s version of the incident was the first time anyone from the Haitian police has spoken out about the shootings. One other officer who was slightly injured and five others who escaped unharmed through a back door remain in hiding.

“But where now am I going to hide?” Pamphile asked. “Where am I going to go? I have a broken leg. All I wanted to do was serve my country. I was always there to serve my country. I never killed anybody.”

His account differs sharply from that of Marine Lt. Virgil Palumbo.

Palumbo earlier this week said he and his men started firing on the police because they believed they were about to be ambushed when two Haitian officers suddenly pulled weapons on the Marines.

But Pamphile said only one of his officers was armed, and no orders were given for him to shoot Marines.

“I didn’t pass any orders,” he said. “We tried to remain calm, and we were playing cards. And we weren’t armed. Why should we be armed? We were playing cards and dominoes, and the only one there on duty was a sentinel, and he had an Uzi.”

Pamphile was referring to Rosemond Joseph, a guard posted at the gate of the police building in the center of town--the man the Marines said drew first.

But, said Pamphile, “he was just a simple soldier. And the only movement he would have made would be to shift the weight of his gun on his shoulder.”

The Marines said the Haitians fired repeatedly at them during the firefight, but Pamphile contradicted that statement as well. He said none of his men even had time to fire their guns.

“Impossible for them to do that,” he said. “They never had a chance.”

Indeed, the police headquarters on 20th Street is pocked with holes made by bullets that witnesses said came from Marine guns. Across the narrow street, a row of houses stands without holes or any other signs of gunfire in that direction.

The Marines said they fired into the building from the street, never going inside, but Pamphile remembered that differently too. And there are relatively fresh blood stains on the interior.

Pamphile said he had been relaxing on his bunk and that about 10 of his men were out in front of the building when the shooting started about 7 p.m. At the first crack of gunfire, he said, he rolled to the floor and crouched next to a wall.

“I heard some of my soldiers yelling, ‘Help me! Help me! What have I done?’ ” he said. “Some of my soldiers were running inside to take shelter. The door to my room was open because it was hot, and I took the first bullet while lying on the ground there.

“I never saw him. It was pretty dark. I couldn’t see. But the person who shot me was in my room.”

Lying next to his bunk, he said, was his own .38-caliber revolver, unloaded.

Afterward, the Marines took him to the amphibious assault ship Wasp in the harbor, where he underwent eight hours of surgery. He was shot in the right leg, the right foot and the left elbow. Every bone in the foot was shattered, and his thigh bone was broken in two.

If he walks again, it will be with a limp, doctors said.

Earlier this week, he was returned to Cap Haitien and taken to the hospital. He said he cannot make sense of why the Marines would shoot him and his men. But he noted that the U.S. troops had been at the station for several hours, and he believes they were planning all along to ambush his unit.

“But I don’t know why,” he said.

As people danced outside on the streets of Cap Haitien to celebrate the U.S. military’s restoration of electricity to the city for the first time in about two years, Pamphile worried about what lies ahead. Laid up in the hospital, he cannot support his family, which includes five children. He hears stories of the large, angry crowds massing by day in the streets of his town, and he realizes that after his 25 years as a police officer his fellow citizens have turned against him.

There are no military authorities in Cap Haitien to investigate the Saturday night incident, though on the U.S. side, the Marines’ superiors have already commended the troops for a quick and proper response to a dangerous situation.

Pamphile mused Thursday that Palumbo will probably receive a Bronze Star, while Pamphile, lying under a blood-stained hospital sheet, has for all practical purposes been abandoned.

“I didn’t pull a gun on anybody,” he said. “I am an innocent victim.”