Two close friends had died and he felt he could not abandon his post.
"I thought I had to carry on to avenge them," he says.
Military honor also played a role, plus the fact that his father was a retired army officer and a member of the Baath party. By April 8, when US forces were in Baghdad, he and five others were the only ones left from the unit of 200. Like many other Baghdad soldiers, Private Hussein used to go home during the war for food and clean clothes. The army supplied nothing. Desertions in his unit were at 90 percent. Around 5 percent were killed.
Threats of execution
One of the biggest battles took place at Baghdad airport. Adel Ali, 29, was with 950 air force troops guarding the perimeter. There were 1,000 infantry and another 1,000 Republican guards outside the airfield. After US land forces reached it on April 5 he estimates that about 100 Iraqis died. The death toll was 3 percent.
To try to stop desertions, soldiers had to sign a declaration saying they understood they would be executed. In practice, no interviewee knew of such cases.
Mass desertions affected every unit including the Special Republican Guards, who experts predicted would mount the fiercest resistance. Many were members of Saddam Hussein's tribe in Tikrit. In fact, they abandoned Tikrit even before Baghdad fell.
Before the war, think tanks estimated the Iraqi military had 389,000 men, including 80,000 members of the Republican Guard. Iraq was also believed to have up to 60,000 paramilitaries and 650,000 reservists, though how many of the latter answered the call is unclear.
Extrapolating from the death-rates of between 3 percent and 10 percent found in the units around Baghdad, one reaches a toll of between 13,500 and 45,000 dead among the troops and paramilitaries.
The heaviest fighting took place around Baghdad and in a few places on the route from the south. The overall casualty rate may lie closer to the lower figure.
Postwar calculations are rough, but they are all there is since Iraqi officials kept no tally. The US also avoided the issue.
"We don't do body counts," said General Tommy Franks, the US commander.
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