The soldiers came under some small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars as they rolled up to the airport. The battalion took some of its first casualties on the way; I understand that there were three or four, but the number is still unclear at this point. Some kind of explosive, probably an RPG, hit the back of the Bradley I’m riding in around at noon (4 a.m. EST), but it didn’t do much damage.
It’s been a long journey here. This unit left the Euphrates River crossing yesterday afternoon and moved through the night. At first the march was fairly easy. As the convoy started rolling north out of the lush farmland near the river and into the urban outskirts of Baghdad, hundreds of civilians came out of their adobe homes. Many waved and smiled. Kids asked for food, making an eating motion with their hands. Some waved MREs that the U.S. soldiers must have thrown them–even though they’re not supposed to. One man wore a Guinness beer T shirt. Another smiling man came out of his gated compound and walked right up to the Bradleys.
But as the convoy moved closer to the airport, it passed a point with many dead Iraqis. Usually the soldiers try to clean up the bodies quickly, putting them into blue body bags. Someone had missed these corpses, though. There were also a lot of dug-in fighting positions with sandbags along the road. The soldiers in my vehicle wondered where all the troops who had dug in those positions had gone. “It’s making me nervous,” said one.
By the time the soldiers got to the airport, they had been packed in their Bradleys for more then 12 hours since their last stop. That was half a day of sweating profusely, urinating in plastic bottles, breathing a mist of fine sand, trying to catch a few minutes of sleep and bouncing around in the dark. That’s why–even though they could hear the sound of artillery and small-arms fire and see plumes of black smoke billowing above the hangars–they’ve been hopping out into the humid air without even waiting to put on their helmets and protective gear. But every time they get out of the Bradley someone seems to open fire and they have to jump back in very quickly.
Right now the troops are still in the process of clearing the airfield. They’re moving out some of these dug-in fighting positions, bunkers that the Iraqi soldiers had used to defend the airport, and they’re finding some stores of ammunition. One of the Bradley crew found a small lawn chair in one of them, but no soldiers.
More ominously, the soldiers have also found some briefcases in one of the airport buildings. They contained unopened gas masks, new chemical suits and decontamination kits. That’s obviously troubling to this unit’s commanders–and to everyone else.
