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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