Marines stay wary despite Iraqi friendliness

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The cardboard signs read, "Spring Break 2003."

It's a popular joke among young Marines throughout the war - the signs decorate the grilles of numerous Marine supply trucks.

The scene in Baghdad these days is a bit like spring break: palm trees, sand, hordes of elated people walking the streets, waving, yelling and cheering at passing vehicles.

That's where the similarity ends.

Crowds of Iraqis coming to and going from Baghdad, looting businesses and thanking troops for freeing them from Saddam Hussein have their liberators feeling ill at ease.

Marines have to walk a narrow line between embracing friendly Iraqis and defending themselves from the few who still want to kill them.On Wednesday morning, as a group of Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based Marines from Combat Service Support Company 111 prepared to haul fuel, water, food and ammunition into Baghdad, Cpl. Daniel Kim reminded them that their lives are still at risk.

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"Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of them are good people," he said of the Iraqis. "But that point-one percent can come up to your truck with a grenade."

"Everybody's thinking the war is over because we're moving into Baghdad," Sgt. Dunnis Jolly, 24, told the Marines. "We're moving into Baghdad, but (it) ain't over. We're up against the die-hards now, people who don't care if they live or they die."

That night, after moving into the city, the company sent trucks back out to a supply station. The trucks didn't return until after dark. While waiting to cross a bridge, Marines found a grenade under a fuel truck.

A few minutes later, something exploded beside the convoy, in a Marine camp beside the road. No one was injured.

"I don't trust these little (guys) any more," said one Marine who asked not to be named.

On Thursday morning, in a convoy of nearly 90 vehicles, they crossed over the Nahr Diyala riverinto eastern Baghdad on a bridge badly damaged at one end. The bridge was able to handle only a few trucks at a time.

Thick, gray smoke billowed overhead and filled the air with a rotten stench. A fire had been burning on the Baghdad side of the bridge for days, and Marines weren't sure whether it was emanating from a tire factory or an oil well.

Throughout the drive into the city, masses of Iraqis walked on both sides of the road, giving Marines the thumbs-up sign, waving, whistling, cheering and pumping their fists above their heads in victory.

Children coming out of the city heaved boxes as big as they were. Women in black robes and burqas carried stuffed bags on their heads. A group of men pushed a cart loaded with mattresses, and one man drove a truck pulling a trailer full of refrigerators.

Inside and outside the city, civilian trucks and cars passed by with drivers holding out white rags that flapped in the wind, a sign of their friendliness to Americans. Boys made their way along streets kicking oil drums and rolling tires. Men dragged metal pans loaded with boxes, televisions and radios that scraped against the pavement as they went.

Families led donkeys pulling wooden carts stacked to their brim with furniture.

On the Baghdad side of the bridge, the looters smiled at the military convoy as they walked past empty Iraqi tanks and the makeshift graves of Iraqi soldiers, buried under piles of stones with reeds for markers. The area had seen heavy fighting and still stank of decaying bodies.

Cpl. David Shea, 22, rode inside the cupola gun mount atop a logistics truck hauling tanks of fuel. A cardboard sign on the front read, "Spring Break 2003/ Marines gone wild/Iraq."

He said that after weeks of pushing north in convoys and repeatedly taking fire and firing back, seeing the locals so happy boosts his morale and he believes the Iraqis' gestures of support are genuine.

"To see someone waving, someone smiling, it lets me know I'm doing a good thing here," he said. "Before we came here, there was an election, and the results they released publicly said 100 percent of the people voted for Saddam. That told me something was really wrong here."

The convoy stopped inside the city and parked outside an empty warehouse to meet up with combat units needing supplies. Smoke spewed in the distance from points all around. During the afternoon and into the night, the Marines listened as artillery exploded in the city and heard the constant "rat-tat-tat" of firefights.

Lance Cpl. Valencia Curry, 21, had a souvenir - a poster showing Saddam holding up a rifle.

"I think all these people are happy for us to kill (him)," she said. "I don't know, I think they want us here. They're going to live 100 percent better after we rebuild their country."

--From the Friday, April 11, 2003 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle