Awestruck

(7 of 9)

The allies faced surprises of their own. On Thursday Iraqi forces responded to the U.S. strike by setting several oil wells on fire and lobbing missiles toward allied troops massing on the border. Though none hit their target, the Iraqi missiles were enough to unnerve many of the U.S. forces, which were gearing up to begin their invasion on Friday. With each missile alert, frontline soldiers were forced to retreat to their bunkers and don full-protection biochem suits, only to hear minutes later that the bombs had landed in the desert or the gulf. Even commanders in Kuwait held videoconferences with Franks while wearing their gas masks. The haphazard nature of Iraq's response convinced Pentagon officials that the U.S. strike had succeeded in creating a power vacuum inside the Iraqi military command, cutting links between Baghdad and its forces in the field. But the possibility that those forces would panic, firing off more weapons and sabotaging southern oil fields, persuaded the U.S. commanders to begin the ground war on Thursday, 24 hours ahead of schedule.

It didn't seem to matter. Whatever enemy resistance the allies expected to face on their first push into Iraq was gone by the time they got there. Columns of U.S. and British tanks, trucks, humvees and armored personnel carriers fanned out across the southern Iraqi desert on the road to Baghdad. In the war's first days, Bedouin campsites were a more common sight than Iraqi garrisons. Some U.S. troops could barely hide their disappointment at not coming under enemy fire. "What the hell did we come here to do?" asked First Sergeant William Mitchell, 34, a member of Charlie Rock Company, the 3rd Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team, as his crew idled on the highway last week. On Friday members of Charlie Rock burst into the southern city of Nasiriyah, fully expecting a battle with Iraqi forces. As their convoy roared toward the Tallil airfield south of Nasiriyah, the brigade's gunners and dismount crews oiled their M-16s and readied the grips on their .50-cal. turret machine guns. But the brigade commanders ordered the convoy to stop its advance. Mitchell and his unit sat on a highway shoulder for hours. When they finally arrived to seize their main target--the Tallil airfield, an Iraqi military installation--the company found only a weed-strewn apron of rusting, wrecked Iraqi warplanes. "It's just plain embarrassing," Major Richard Des Jardin muttered.

By the end of the week the U.S. military push was making enough progress that war planners were considering slowing down the aerial bombardment that began Friday night. But that was not a sure thing. "They've got lots of stuff to keep us busy," said a Pentagon official of the Iraqis, "and if they hole up, we'll start hitting the holes." In the first two nights of raids, the Pentagon said, U.S. bombs rained down on more than 1,500 targets across the country; in Baghdad alone, hundreds of targets were said to have been hit.