It certainly didn’t look like a token fight on Friday morning. The battle unfolded against a surrealistic backdrop: more than two dozen burning Kuwaiti oil wells, each shooting orange jets of flame 50 or 60 feet into the air and throwing off vast clouds of black smoke. The smoke blew across the battlefield from northwest to southeast, forming a thick curtain above the Iraqi positions, against which the fireballs from Iraqi targets hit on the ground and the white puffs of American airburst shells were starkly outlined. The sky above the American positions was clear blue, so that the white trailers of Tiger Brigade multiple rocket-launched projectiles stood out like fat yarns of white wool.
Both sides exchanged artillery and mortar fire, but the Iraqi fire came from fixed, unchanging positions, so the American attackers knew where the fire would land. Two Marines were wounded; two others had what will surely be one of this war’s most miraculous escapes. As Colonel Sylvester described it, “There were two Marines driving in a Humvee, both of them in the front seat. An Iraqi mortar round landed in the back seat, exploding the ordnance in the hummer and blowing the whole thing to shreds. The blast blew both men out of the vehicle and neither has a scratch on him - although you would hardly recognize the thing they were driving in. I think you could fairly call it a case of divine intervention.” The men - Lance Cpls. Robert Grady and William Noland - told another pool reporter that within 15 minutes of their escape, both had inscribed their helmets: LUCKY AS HELL.
The night air attacks on the Iraqis were unrelenting, the rumble of B-52 strikes in the distance mixing with the thuds and bangs from fighter-bombers dropping much closer. During the day, airstrikes, artillery and rocketry rumbled almost continuously. Although they were not fighting especially well, and these Iraqis were not the Republican Guard, they stuck to the job tenaciously. “They’ll certainly pop some more caps at us before this is over,” Colonel Sylvester said. “But when we really punch back at them, they’ll give up. And we’re going to get a lot more prisoners before this day is over.”
