BAGHDAD

Battles come in bursts, and concerns linger

By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff, 4/11/2003

long the road yesterday from Umm Qasr to the Iraqi capital, children scampered along passing vehicles, selling fruit juices, and offering to exchange Iraqi dinars for dollars. A 12-hour journey from Umm Qasr to Baghdad showed pockets of Iraq seemingly untouched by the gunfire and mortar fire -- but not by war itself. Checkpoints dotted the route, which was dominated by lumbering military fuel convoys. Outside the capital, hundreds of American tanks patrolled Highway 8. Groups of looters emptied industrial warehousing factories, picking their way around the burnt hulks of Iraqi tanks. At points, the roads were entirely blocked by rows of Iraqi military vehicles, forcing travelers to drive through a ditch to get by.

The 3/15 Infantry Division set up camp for the last two days at the turnoff from the international airport in western Baghdad. This is the site of the "battle of the bridge," where two days ago the division's Bravo Company said it killed about 300 Iraqi soldiers in a 12-hour firefight. "It's still going on in my mind," said E-4 specialist William Scates.

According to Scates and other soldiers who fought in that battle, the war planners divided Baghdad into three areas and gave them codenames. Objective Moe, Objective Larry, and Objective Curly. This area was Objective Curly.

Even yesterday evening, small groups of Iraqis continued to attack the company's position beneath the overpass. At about 6 p.m., a single gunman launched rocket-propelled grenades at the camp. A Bradley tank peeled through the dust and ripped up concrete toward the neighborhood from which the fire came. Twenty minutes later the tank returned. "He is not a problem anymore," E4 Specialist William Scates said about the Iraqi who had been shooting.

Last night, the soldiers fired several warning shots at an unidentified truck that came cruising toward their position. It slammed to a stop and turned around.

The soldiers are still sleeping in their tanks, parked next to 1,750 pounds of C-4 explosives that they use to breach minefields.

"It's not the regular Iraqi army we worry about so much, it's the radicals that don't know when to stop," said Private James Murray.

On Tuesday, Murray and his company had visited Saddam Hussein's main presidential palace in downtown Baghdad. "I went in and laid down in Saddam's bed and smoked a cigarette. It was the first bed I laid down in in months," Murray said.

This story ran on page A39 of the Boston Globe on 4/11/2003.
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