Air force jets have dropped thousands of leaflets urging regular Iraqi army soldiers to surrender rather than defend Saddam. Here on the battlefield, that sentiment took the form of a Humvee, mounted with a large loudspeaker, that blasted five-minute messages every half hour before the attack began.
Some soldiers felt little solace at the ease of the first fight.
"This was the easiest part -- going into Iraq," said Staff Sergeant James Currence, a tank commander with the 3rd Battalion. "It's going to get a lot tougher."
For the marines, events moved rapidly as the night wore on, with more troops pouring over the border. By early yesterday, the bulk of the forces had crossed, and as the sun rose, tank after tank and Bradley after Bradley passed by in endless columns.
Sergeants told the marines to dig sleeping holes and rest wearing their chemical warfare suits and their boots, ready to move forward at short notice.
The marines' attack began with 155mm howitzer fire at 6:25pm local time as dozens of Super Cobra helicopter gunships rattled toward their targets.
The artillery barrage was aimed at the Iraqi army's 51st Mechanized Division, which held the border area where the marines were planning to cross. Initial reports described the Iraqi resistance as light.
But the marines also said they hoped to "bypass" as many Iraqi army units as possible on their drive toward Baghdad, roughly 370km north, and are hoping many Iraqi units will surrender as they did in the 1991 Gulf War.
On Wednesday, a patrol of light armored vehicles just south of the border encountered two Iraqi armored personnel carriers on the other side. The marines fired on them with machine guns and missiles, destroying both.
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