Any Day Now...

By Simon Robinson/South of the Iraqi border

The flat, parched sands of northern Kuwait have grown crowded in the past few weeks. Normally the desert plains are dotted with oilworkers and the occasional weekend tent of a Kuwaiti city dweller connecting with his Bedouin roots. But now the country's northern half is a restricted military zone crammed with more than 100,000 U.S. and British troops. Makeshift firing ranges are double-booked. Patrols practicing forays into Iraqi wastelands bump into one another where their perimeters overlap. When troops from the 101st Airborne Division arrived last week, soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division had to move camp back from the border to make room.

With the prospect of war drawing closer, U.S. soldiers and Marines are concentrating on the basics--eating, sleeping, training. But even the training seems to be winding down. Like athletes resting before a big game, many of the troops have eased off their intense schedules. They spend their time checking and rechecking equipment, packing and repacking bags and contemplating the coming firestorm. "They want to know that they've made peace with their Maker," says Marine Lieut. Colonel Bryan P. McCoy. "And that their families are taken care of in case anything happens--and they've already asked for forgiveness for what we're going to do to the Iraqi army. With that, you can go and fight with a good heart."

No one would mistake these camps for three-star hotels. Nothing is easy here. Blinding, unseasonably fierce dust storms are turning the sky apocalyptic orange. The wind and sand blast the skin and destroy tents. Rain turns the desert into sludge. Troops wash their clothes in cardboard boxes lined with plastic bags, but socks and underwear can go a fortnight between washings. "We're not getting paid to smell pretty," says Lance Corporal Jason Wilebski, 19, queuing for a haircut. In these cramped quarters, tempers chafe. Some soldiers are not coping at all. One young man shot himself in the foot to earn a ticket home. Fights have broken out in food-hall lines. "We feel like we're football players in a three-point stance right now," says Marine Captain Kevin Norton. "We're itching to play."

A few miles to the north, across two trenches and an electric fence, lies the enemy. U.S. commanders on the ground are convinced that the Iraqi soldiers are a force of truly desperate men--a thin line of conscripts, many of them drawn from Shi'ite and Kurdish communities that despise Saddam. Kuwaiti guards report that when Iraqi soldiers swarmed across the border 12 1/2 years ago and began a seven-month looting spree, the first stop for the occasionally barefoot Iraqis was not the luxury-car dealers but the food stores. And back then they were better looked after. Last year an Iraqi border guard fled to Kuwait and pleaded, "Take me anywhere. Do anything to me. Just don't send me back."

No one is foolish enough to believe that all Iraqi soldiers will be so meek. One day last week a platoon with the 101st Airborne spent the morning learning how to treat massive chest wounds. But even as the soldiers were taught the grim procedures for stopping acute blood loss--apply a tourniquet first; administer fluids afterward--they suffered more from the anxious tedium of waiting for war. Some of the guys got into a separation-of-church-and-state debate; others complained about missing March Madness; some looked forward to this week, when the ammunition arrives and live-fire training begins. The most interesting discussion was about whether snipers should shoot the wild dogs that roam the perimeters of the camp. The brigade commander nixed the idea; the dogs are necessary to keep the rats at bay.

At Camp Grizzly in the northern desert, Marines spend the sunset hour of most days throwing horseshoes they've made by bending tent spikes. Some do chin-ups on a 2-by-4 hung from a wooden frame next to their tent. Or they just relax by lounging on a wooden bench they built. Behind the bench, a sign on a pole reads BUS STOP. "What bus are you waiting for?" someone asks. "We're thinking of a loop," says Lance Corporal Josh Hotvet, 21, a Marine Reservist from Albany, N.Y. "Baghdad and then home."

In a tent in a nearby camp, a baby-faced recruit helped Gunnery Sergeant John Bass install power and a light. "Good job," Bass told his young charge. "You're a man waiting to happen." In the coming days, boys on both sides of the border are likely to become men in an instant. --With reporting by Jim Lacey and Alex Perry/south of the Iraqi border

With reporting by Jim Lacey and Alex Perry/south of the Iraqi border