April 3, 2003	Thursday	Muharram 30, 1424

LANDSTUHL (Germany), April 2: Three wounded US Marines told on Wednesday how they were “kind of confused about who the enemy is” after being confronted by Iraqi soldiers posing as civilians while fighting in Iraq.

Speaking at a news conference at the US military medical facility at Landstuhl, Germany, they also described their exhaustion after going without sleep for days at a time when battles became drawn out.

Gunnery Sergeant Bill Hale, 35, of Pennsauken, New Jersey, and First Lt. James Uwins, 26 of South Pasadena, California, were ambushed near Nassiriya, scene of some of the fiercest fighting to date.

“This battle was only supposed to last six hours. We were fighting five days straight, 24 hours a day,” said Hale, who is in a wheelchair after suffering concussion, nerve damage and injuries to his lower back and knee after being blasted into the air by Iraqi fire.

The constant artillery fire and the need to be alert to attacks left them unable to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time in 36 to 40 hour periods, they said.

“That’s the thing that really gets you — it’s the slow burn,” said Uwins, who has shrapnel in his legs and left arm and joked about setting off the metal detectors at airports.

Uwins was about to put his head down when the attack began on the compound where about 120 US Marines had settled.

“I was pulling my sleeping bag out and we started having sporadic fire,” he said of the ambush at an abandoned gas station in which his group were hit with rocket-propelled grenades.

WHO’S THE ENEMY?: The Marines said separating civilians from the military was proving particularly difficult. Some Iraqi soldiers dressed as civilians, they said.

“We’re kind of confused about who the enemy is,” said Hale.

He said Iraqi soldiers wearing civilian clothes would pass through checkpoints and go behind the US troops to retrieve hidden gear and supplies.

First Sergeant Bruce Cole, 39, of Beaumont, Texas, who was shot in the arm in a separate battle, also said it was difficult to differentiate between soldiers and civilians.

“The difficult point was trying to return fire, figure out who to shoot at,” he said, adding he was disgusted by the Iraqi soldiers’ choice of disguise.

Hale said the Iraqi resistance contrasted starkly to the welcoming reception Kuwaitis gave US troops in the 1991 Gulf War, in which he also served. But he said he still felt his mission was to liberate, not to fight.

“I’m here to do a job, which is to liberate a country, not to shoot,” he said.

The three also countered recent criticism that the United States had deployed inadequate ground troops.

“I think we have what we need to get the job done,” said Cole. “Any more and we would be tripping over ourselves.”

The Landstuhl medical facility, America’s largest hospital outside the United States, has handled 221 injured troops, including 95 wounded in battle.

FORWARD AIRBASE: The US Marines have set up a forward airbase in Iraq with a 100-kilometre pipeline transporting fuel from Kuwait to keep an array of aircraft flying in the assault on Saddam Hussein’s regime.

It took 2,000 marines nine days to turn a sandy strip in Iraq’s western desert into an airbase on which Hercules C-130 transporters can land.

A huge fleet of helicopters including Cobra gunships, Hueys, Sea Knights, Sea Stallions of the Marine Air Group 29 thunder in and out of the Jalibah Forward Operating Base, which will soon also feature a hard-standing pipe pumping fresh water from Kuwait.

The aircraft guzzle more than 300,000 tonnes of aviation fuel a day, fed by the pipeline stretching back through vast tracts of desert to Kuwait.

“We spent two and half months waiting on a ship to play, so hitting the dirt and getting to do our part is all we’ve been waiting for,” Marine Gunnery Sergeant Jeff Christie said.

Helicopters from Britain’s 3 Regiment Army Air Corps will this week base a forward arming and refuelling point (FARP) at the airstrip, which is surrounded by a sprawling city of tents.—Reuters / AFP