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HADI HASAN, IRAQ

Amid gains, danger of guerrilla attacks lingers

By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff, 4/8/2003

aptain Carter Price, a 30-year-old tank commander with a West Virginia twang, stood in the middle of Highway 1 yesterday, calmly surveying the scene of his day-old victory that shut down the main highway north of Baghdad.

The smoldering ruins of obliterated Iraqi armor littered this place, called Objective Patton. On this field, the Abrams tanks of Cobra Company had pushed aside the regular Iraqi opposition that so far has shown more mystique than muscle.

"This is secure, sir!" Price shouted across to Colonel Daniel Allyn, the Third Brigade commander, who spent yesterday surveying the front lines where his 5,000-member force has strung together the northern piece of the US cordon around Baghdad.

Only minutes after Price spoke, an Iraqi artillery shell exploded about 300 yards away, causing no harm to anything but the captain's credibility. Staring at the smoke where the artillery shell had burst, Price put his helmet back on, shook his head, and said to Allyn: "I guess I got to go kill that fella."

Such is the tenuous hold that US troops have established a few miles outside Baghdad, especially here in the north, where US troops have achieved all their goals except one: the capitulation of an enemy that continues to battle the Americans despite incredible losses of men and materiel.

At another seized highway objective, Captain Stuart James stood 100 yards behind a piece of the front where the fighting had been more severe. "We've got this ground. They ain't moving us off," James, 33, of Wheeling, W. Va., told Allyn.

The scene was almost a duplicate of Objective Patton, with the smell of burning rubber and the smoke from incinerated metal making a hazy day seem even murkier. James's men had driven off Iraqi defenders Sunday with armor and determination, but they continue to face the nightly probability of counterattack on their position, the eastern flank of the Third Brigade.

"Last night it was like Vietnam," James said to Allyn, pointing to a thicket of lush palm trees and tangled undergrowth where the enemy can hide and disappear easily. "Napalm would be the thing. If we could just clear out those fields of fire."

Rocket-propelled grenades are the weapon of choice against US infantry and light-skinned vehicles in the region, but Russian-built T-72 tanks rumbled toward the intersection shortly after the Americans had claimed the ground. One Iraqi tank was destroyed quickly, while six others stopped short of their objective in an indecisive huddle, James said. American air support, radioed from the ground, swooped down to eliminate the remaining armor with lethal precision.

Allyn, a native of Berwick, Maine, congratulated his captain for standing his ground. For the rest of this war, he told James, "the key is not to lose any more combat power while [Hussein] continues to slaughter his army."

When another officer approached him, Allyn put his hand on the man's shoulder and consoled him about the death of an engineer on Sunday. "I'm sorry to hear about your young soldier," Allyn said. "We can't guarantee anything."

Allyn acknowledged that the Iraqis have done a good job of concealing their remaining heavy weapons in the lush landscape around Baghdad. That camouflage, combined with guerrilla tactics that continue to harass US troops with deadly persistence, could mean the war will drag on for days, if not weeks, despite the Second Brigade's bold capture of the presidential palace yesterday.

Almost every element of the Third Infantry Division, which faces Baghdad on three sides, experiences some kind of enemy fire every day. Yesterday, an artillery round from previously inaccurate Iraqi howitzers made a direct hit on the Second Brigade tactical command center south of Baghdad, killing or injuring at least 15 soldiers, military officials said.

And Allyn and his command staff were ambushed Sunday evening in an intense firefight that killed one soldier and wounded at least four others.

"I think we're in for a couple more long days, minimum," Allyn said. His artillery commander, Lieutenant Colonel John D. Harding Jr., agreed. "This is by no means over," Harding told his headquarters staff yesterday.

Sergeant Renee Houston, a communications specialist, spoke yesterday about how quickly the American advances have seemed. "I have one term for it -- blitzkrieg," she said. Her colleague, Corporal Michael Welborn, agreed that the end is near: "I'm sure that this will be over soon," he said.

Behind the front, where these communications soldiers have been deployed, the war seems full of dramatic US advances and insurmountable Iraqi losses that are counted in hundreds of bodies and burning vehicles.

The men on the front lines, however, realize that the enemy remains dangerous. When asked whether he thought he would be attacked again, Price, the tank commander, seemed puzzled by the question.

He turned, looked at the brush that reminds him of Vietnam, and let out a soft whistle. "Yeah," he said, with a slight smile. "I sure do."