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By the next morning, Perkins estimates, his unit had killed more than 1,200 attackers and taken the fight out of the rest. At first light, an Iraqi colonel walked up to an American position and surrendered. "He was a POW in the last Gulf War, so he had practice in surrendering when things are going bad," says Captain Cary Adams. The Iraqi colonel said he had only 200 of his 1,200 men left and claimed that originally there had been two other brigades in the town. One moved out during the night toward Baghdad, he said, while the other was hunkered down in government buildings around the city.
As the Iraqi attacks died down, the 101st Airborne Division began arriving to release the armored units for other missions. Brigadier General Benjamin Freakley, assistant division commander of the 101st, briefed the leaders of the companies that would be encircling Najaf. Everyone expected the remaining fedayeen to attempt a break toward Baghdad even if it meant running the 101st's gauntlet. But if the fedayeen stayed and conscripted the locals at gunpoint again, Freakley faced a moral conundrum: "Imagine someone walking into your home and saying either you fight or we will kill your wife and daughters. They are doing what any man would do to protect his family." It won't be easy killing men who are doing that.
Battle Scars of a Fallen Air Base SOUTHERN IRAQ BRIAN BENNETT
During the preflight briefing, the commanding officer is pounding home the landing advice. "Don't go north of there, don't go east of there, don't go west of there," Lieut. Colonel Mark Casburn tells the gathered crew whose HC-130 I am about to board. "Come in from the south, and leave from the south."
"There" is a newly captured air base in southern Iraq the coalition is rebuilding to relieve pressure on the 200-mile supply line into Iraq from Kuwait that has been subject to constant Iraqi harassment. And getting "there" in the lumbering HC-130, a big, slow target for surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), means flying about 300 feet above the desert and passing through a gauntlet of Iraqi radar systems. Because of all the surface-to-air-missile beacons in the area, alarms go off in the cabin. And one pesky mobile SAM battery has been roaming around and targeting incoming planes for weeks--hence the southern approach, coming in above a stretch of remote desert that is patrolled by coalition forces. When we land, the HC-130 doesn't even pause long enough to stop its four propellers. It dumps a cargo of Air Force engineers, some electrical wiring and tents, and takes off in a hurry.
The Iraqis left this place in a hurry too. Bedsheets are still twisted in the sleeping quarters. Boots lie on the floor, and papers are strewn across airfield offices. But the unfriendly forces haven't gone far. On Thursday about 100 were discovered huddled in underground tunnels, hoping to be found by American and not Iraqi forces. Firefights routinely break out on the front lines, a few miles to the north.