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Marines killed during faked surrender
Edited for length
AN NASIRIYAH, Iraq â As they waited in a convoy Monday to cross the Euphrates River, the Marines were tense, fingers on the trigger. Two bloody battles a day earlier near An Nasiriyah, 230 miles from Baghdad, had deepened their sense of just how treacherous the drive to the Iraqi capital could be. Some of the Americans had been killed by Iraqis pretending to surrender.
| They did this last time, too. The lefties denigrate the concept of honor among military men, but it has its uses. One of those uses is that adhering to the rules of war — one of them involving honoring white flags — you don't set up a situation where subsequent surrenders are rejected... |
The convoy of hundreds of vehicles — including tanks, TOW missiles and armored personnel carriers — was backed up along the road leading to a pontoon bridge, and Marines with scarves around their heads lay in the sand on either side of the line of traffic, pointing their M-16s toward the desert. Anyone who approached faced close scrutiny. The point man for one set of vehicles, a young Marine with a quiet Southern drawl, seemed typical of the mood. As he spoke, his gaze was fixed straight ahead, his finger on the trigger of his rifle, ready for whatever might lie across the sand. His eyes looked tired. He had had about an hour of sleep a night over the previous few days as the convoy pressed ahead. "It's going to be a long day, I think," he said. Asked if he had drawn any fire, he said "Not yet. When we reach Baghdad, I think." Like other Marines interviewed Monday, he refused to give his name. Such was the mood.
| "Piss off. I'm a Marine. That's what counts." |
Another Marine, from the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base in California, was in the 1991 Gulf War, and noted the change in mood this time. "When you're at war in someone's homeland, it's a different story," he said. "Last time" — in Kuwait — "everyone was happy to see us. We were liberating the country. So we did it, we won, everyone was happy and we went home." But here, there is constant anxiety about disguised Iraqi soldiers waiting to attack, and constant wondering about just who is the enemy. "We saw some black berets hanging up in a tree, and we went to investigate and we saw all these uniforms hanging there. I figure half these guys you see walking around are soldiers. They've discarded their uniforms," the Marine said. "They're out there, they're watching us and they're planning small counter-attacks."
Posted by: Kerry 2003-03-24 |
