The dead officer lay face down in a ditch, his hair capped with a shell of pale mud and his fingers stretched out as if the last thing he had done was to stroke the clay. His trousers were covered in blood and he wore a green ribbed tank top, like the jumpers the British army used to wear.
"He's a lieutenant. Look, he's got a star on both shoulders," said a US Marine standing guard over the body.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The Marines had not yet carried out a count on the corpses in the roadside trench, in the desert south-east of the town of Diwaniya.
One officer said there were a dozen. A Marine, posted with his rifle on the rampart overlooking the trench, said he reckoned 30 or 40. At the bottom of the trench just below him was the corpse of a boy about his age, already beginning to bloat.
The Marine was more upset about the imminent controlled explosion that would destroy a cache of abandoned Iraqi rocket-propelled grenades, and disturb his lunch.
"They interrupt me when I'm eating my fucking meal," he shouted.
By chance, with so many dead bodies around, there was a police officer on hand: Mark Stainbrook, a police sergeant from south-central Los Angeles.
But Stainbrook was wearing the uniform of a major in the Civil Affairs Department of the Marines, and there was never any doubt about the perpetrators of the killing yesterday. It was the Marines.
Here, about 177km from Baghdad, the Iraqis had launched an ambush on Tuesday, as the first armored units of an advancing Marine column felt its way northwards along the road through the first swirls of a sandstorm.
Like most Iraqi attacks on US units, it was effective mainly in that it was launched at all. In every other respect it was a disaster. The Marines appear to have suffered one fatality and several wounded; the Iraqis, many dead, some wounded, and 25 taken prisoner.
"If they fight, they're soldiers," said Stainbrook, standing in the trench with the dead Iraqis lying at intervals along it.
"We've dropped leaflets to tell them to surrender, that we are here to remove Saddam, that we are not enemies of the people," he said.
"I feel bad. I don't want to make people die. I'm just hoping there aren't going to be too many civilian casualties."
Most of the marines who took part in the firefight had continued their advance north yesterday but one squad remained. Their armored amphibious vehicle had taken fire and, making a sharp turn, plunged into a deep ditch, rendering it immobile.
Corporal Jose Pagan said he and the rest of the squad had scrambled out of the vehicle's top hatch and seen their attackers running away. They had fired after them, but he did not know whether they had hit any.
"It was frightening -- exhilarating," he said. "When we fell in we was a little stunned 'cause it's an awkward position."
The fact the Iraqis had failed to take advantage of the accident, running away instead of finishing off the attack they had started, is evidence of how feebly executed, poorly led and low-spirited their continuing guerrilla-style attacks on the US and British military are.
The company-sized Iraqi unit that was dug in by the trench in ambush positions paid the price.
The pathetic remnants of their miserable military life were scattered among the bushes, the sand and mud, the dugouts and corpses, under an ugly yellow fog of dust and steam from yesterday's sandstorm, which was followed by torrential rain.
The Marines keep their protection against nuclear, biological and chemical attack with them at all times, their gas masks ready to hand. They are professional, motivated, well paid, well equipped and relentlessly trained.
Near the Iraqi positions was a little line of their gas masks, abandoned in the dirt. Only a day had passed since their owners had been killed, run away or surrendered, and already the desert was sucking the masks back into itself, with the wind piling the sand up on them and the rain turning the sand into ridges of mud over the rubber.
Up by the road, military police were guarding a group of 25 prisoners. A 26th, a general captured in a previous encounter, was held apart from the others.
The prisoners were exhausted, stupefied, filthy and cold. An Arabic-speaking Marine went among them handing out blankets, food and water.
They sat cross-legged for the most part, the whites of their eyes turned pure red with sand and sleeplessness, their hair slicked with mud and their clothes encrusted with it.
The injured Iraqis were given preliminary treatment in a field surgery set up yesterday afternoon before being evacuated by helicopter to hospitals in Kuwait. There were four Iraqis injured, together with three Marines hurt from another firefight about three miles up the road, which was continuing last night.
Wade Wilde, the head of the surgery, said all seven would recover, and air evacuation would be controlled on a strict basis of need, which meant that the first casualty to be choppered out would be one of the Iraqis.
"I have eight children," said one of the injured prisoners. "They [the Iraqi authorities] came to my house and forced me to fight. They took me by force."
Gunnery Sergeant Toby Boyce, who had heard the testimony of the prisoners when they were interrogated, said they were local farmers who had been forced to fight at gunpoint by a group of four officers.
"The officers were actually shooting these guys, making them fight," Boyce said. This correspondent was not allowed to interview the prisoners.
Last night, at a Marine forward supply unit encamped at the site of the ambush, troops were dug in, ensconced in foxholes behind a screen of armored vehicles and missile-carrying Humvees. Marines fired sporadically with machine guns into the night, and at about 7pm, a cascade of fire shook the camp, but it all seemed to be going outwards.
There was no sign as to whether the insubstantial enemy was there, what he was doing or, indeed, what he was.
"They're getting a little antsy," a major said. "Everything to the west of here is Indian country."
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