U.S. Troops Dig In, Adjust to Life--and Fear--in the Desert : Morale: 'It's scary out here,' a soldier says on the first night of training.

L.A. Times Archives

Aug. 19, 1990 12 AM PT

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SAUDI ARABIA — The sergeant is halfway done with digging his first foxhole on his first night in the Arabian desert when word comes to pull back.

He swings his shovel in protest until the reason, transmitted by whisper, makes its way down the line: The platoon is out of position.

“We’re too far out in front of the rest of the company,” the sergeant says. “They could be firing and killing us.”

The shovels are put away, rucksacks are quickly packed and the platoon within minutes makes a short retreat, guided to a new site by a dim fluorescent signal flashed by a sister platoon several hundred yards away.

Platoon 22--the second platoon of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade--digs in again.

A few minutes later, the company commander explains to a reporter that the platoon had taken position far enough out front to be hit by friendly mortar and machine gun fire. The captain isn’t happy, but shrugs it off.

“He’s our newest platoon leader,” he says. “It’s good to get him out here to practice.”

Friday night’s exercises gave the troops a chance to practice on the first night that the Saudi government allowed American troops to train long after sundown. More such drills, including some joint exercises with Saudi troops, are planned.

The first night of desert training, witnessed by two reporters and a photographer, demonstrated the formidable challenges American forces would face in a desert war in the Middle East. And it provided journalists the first chance to spend extended time with some of the young men who would fight that war.

They are a diverse group from throughout America--some eager to fight, some terrified by the prospect. But all share a similar hope that the crisis will soon be resolved, either through combat or diplomacy.

“We’re here sweating because our lives may depend on it,” said one private who carried a 50-pound pack through 95-degree evening heat. “But it’s really not up to us. Our lives are in the politicians’ hands.”

The sun was just beginning its descent when the three platoons began the exercise, walking in a V-shaped formation roughly three miles into the seemingly endless Arabian desert. As the sun dropped off the horizon, a herd of camels traipsed past the curious Americans.

The need to carry more water makes the soldiers’ packs extra heavy. During a break, a 20-year-old medic from Newburgh, N.Y., lightens his pack a bit by taking a few gulps. The infantrymen he is there to help drop into a circular perimeter, their weapons aimed across the darkening terrain.

“Finding the courage is tough--it’s scary out here,” the medic says. “But you’ve got to swallow that and go out and do it.”

Inside his bag are needles with antidotes to certain chemical weapons; the medic prays they will not be needed.

“We just want to go back to the States and be with our kids,” he says.

None of a dozen soldiers interviewed under the sparkling desert sky has any idea when the trip home will be. Some ask aloud whether they will make it. Most hope diplomacy convinces Iraq to leave Kuwait; a few would rather take on Saddam Hussein’s forces now.

“If it would get us home faster, then let’s go kick him out of Kuwait,” one private says. “What we have now is hurry up and wait. It’s frustrating.”

It is so dark that one can move around virtually unnoticed; so quiet that whispers can be heard. Much of the talk is idle chatter.

“The sky is just like the sky back home,” one soldier says to his companion in a two-man foxhole.

The response: “But it just isn’t the same unless I’m sitting out on my back porch.”

A few yards away, another soldier tells a passerby: “My wife is having our baby in five weeks. I wish I could just say hello.”

A radioman with the medic begins a sentence saying, “If Saddam doesn’t pull out of Kuwait. . . .” The medic completes the thought, “ . . . he’ll be squished like a grape.”

The men are barely in their foxholes when they are instructed to head back to their transport trucks, a nearly three-mile walk in the pitch-black night.

Those in the back of the line can see the shadows of just the few men ahead. In training, one sergeant says, soldiers have been known to stop, thinking a tree several feet ahead in the darkness is the man they are supposed to follow.

“That cuts you off from the front,” he says. “And if you get cut off, you die.”

The Saudi desert has no trees, but the going is treacherous in the dark because of short, sharp shrubs underfoot and small dunes that turn a walk to a stumble.

During the trek, most of the soldiers say they understand that they must be here and are ready to fight to defend the Saudi kingdom. These are the troops--airborne paratroopers--who arrived first, when there was little firepower to back them up.

“When they called us out, we thought we were going to drop right into a war,” the medic says.

Helicopters on night flights pass in the distance, a reminder that much more U.S. firepower is in the region now.

As they wait, the 82nd Airborne forces train about 12 hours a day. They have some complaints--the lack of mail is the biggest--but say morale is high. They complain largely because there is little else to do.

“It’s Army tradition,” one sergeant says with a laugh. “But we’re fine.”

A reporter keeps asking what it would be like to fight in the desert. The soldiers keep asking what it’s like back home.

“Please tell them we’ll be back,” a lieutenant says. “We just don’t know when.”