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Weary troops end elusive { April 5 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/05/international/worldspecial/05INFA.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/05/international/worldspecial/05INFA.html
April 5, 2003
For Weary U.S. Troops, the End Is Still Elusive
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
AT THE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Near Baghdad, Iraq, April 4 — The capture of Iraq's principal international airport just west of Baghdad today left many American soldiers feeling more exhausted than elated, with a dull sense that the end was not yet in sight.
"Why do I not feel any closer to home?" asked Master Sgt. Russell B. Carpenter, who is handling liaison between Air Force and Army units with the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division.
After months in the Kuwait desert, after more than two weeks in Iraq, after the occupation of the airport by the Army's Third Division, the question went to the heart of the persistent anxiety here over how the sprawling city of Baghdad will be brought under control and President Saddam Hussein ousted.
After units of the Third Division took part of the airport on Thursday night, thousands of American soldiers poured into it today without a clear sense of what military mission lies ahead. The troops — mostly from the First Brigade — expanded but did not yet establish complete control over the airport's terminals, hangars and a warren of tunnels and bunkers.
The seizure of the airport raised one pressing question that even commanders here said they could not answer: What comes next, now that American forces have effectively blockaded Baghdad from the south and southwest?
"This was the end of our plan," said the brigade's executive officer, Lt. Col. Steven E. Landis.
But not the end of the war. The sun rose today with the quaking blasts of Air Force bombs dropping less than a mile away, as pockets of Iraqi resistance announced themselves with sputtering bursts of rifle fire and periodic mortar blasts.
Two soldiers were killed today — one on Route 1, leading to the airport, and one on its eastern edge — and several others wounded in the fighting, officers here said.
Iraq's government, however, did not or could not, carry out its threat to launch a large-scale counterattack. But some troops expressed fear of artillery attacks, terrorist attacks or gas attacks.
Many troops sprawled on cots in what little shade could be found in hulking maintenance hangars, but the resounding blasts of artillery and the detonation of caches of ammunition around the airport echoed through the steel shells, making sleep impossible for all but the most exhausted.
The airport, dusty and deteriorated from lack of use, was covered in a smoky haze that did nothing to block the scorching sun. Plumes of thick black smoke rose from thunderous detonations of captured munitions.
Conditions were arduous, with no electricity, and with the water here still being tested to check that it has not been poisoned. Baghdad was invisible, a few miles away but still out of reach.
Fighting erupted in and around the airport early in the day, heightening a state of anxiety that dulled what jubilation might have been felt after the first American units reached their objective here. Iraqi forces harassed the long lines of military vehicles trying to reinforce and supply the troops here, who have made the deepest American advance into Iraq.
The fighting dissipated by this afternoon, as armored units steadily cleared pockets of Iraqis, some of them Republican Guard troops but most members of the airport's thicket of air-defense batteries.
The relative ease of the battle for the airport — which commanders had long considered a strategic target because of its association with Mr. Hussein's government — relieved commanders here who had feared fierce clashes with Republican Guard divisions.
"We think they woke up this morning and, like General Custer, said, `Where the hell did all the Indians come from?' " said Col. William F. Grimsley, the First Brigade commander. American officers now refer to the airport as Baghdad International Airport, having renamed it.
The Iraqi response was modest. Three Soviet-era T-72 tanks approached from Baghdad's center, but were quickly destroyed, two of them by soldiers launching shoulder-fired missiles called Javelins. Airstrikes called in by observers destroyed another dozen armored vehicles northwest of the airport, while other strikes hit Baghdad itself.
More than 50 Iraqis, some of them soldiers, others simply airport workers caught at work when the attack came, had been captured and were being held as prisoners this evening.
In the 24 hours after the attack began Thursday afternoon on the eastern shore of the Euphrates River near the village of Latifiya, the First Brigade lost 3 soldiers killed and 14 wounded, Colonel Grimsley said.
Even as clashes continued around the airport's edges, the brigade's engineers began clearing the airport's two main runways, preparing the way for an airlift of more reinforcements and supplies.
The Iraqis piled sand and gravel on the runways, apparently in an attempt to prevent aircraft from landing. The United States Air Force did a more effective job, leaving several craters, each 15 feet deep, along both of the main runways.
Aside from the craters and the burnt wreckage of at least two airliners, however, the airport appeared to have suffered little lasting damage.
Most of the hangars, the traffic control tower and the main terminal remained largely unscathed, though troops had not yet checked to see if the terminal was cleared of all Iraqi troops. At least some remained, their presence indicated by stray bullets, one of which struck near the brigade's new command post.
Six green-and-white jets of Iraqi Airways stood idle near the terminal, as if waiting for passengers to board.
Lt. Col. Thomas P. Smith, commander of the brigade's engineers commander, said that the airport could be ready for at least limited use within a day, though experts from the Air Force will have to survey its runways before larger aircraft can arrive.
"You've heard it a hundred times," he said. "That was the intent: to minimize infrastructure damage."
In the bunkers that have been cleared so far, soldiers found large caches of weapons, which they blew up through the day and into the night.
"You can tell they were preparing for a larger force," said Spec. Gary T. Griffin, an intelligence analyst who scoured some of the bunkers. "But they never completed them. They got out of here quick."
Soldiers also searched the airport for booty, like cigarettes made with "Vergina Tobacco." Most popular, however, seemed to be the ubiquitous portraits of Mr. Hussein.
The center of one large portrait was cut out. Otherwise, it would have been too large to carry home inconspicuously. Army rules prohibit collecting war trophies.
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