IRAQIS VS. THEIR LEADERS:

Sun man sees surrender (The Sun, 3/22/03)

PHOTOGRAPHER Terry Richards, 52, has been with The Sun since 1980 and has previously covered the Afghan war.

This time Terry, of Essendon, Herts, joined 40 Commando Royal Marines on HMS Ocean and followed their attack on Al Faw in Southern Iraq. Here is his amazing report and pictures.

IRAQI troops shot their own commanders with Kalashnikov rifles — so they could surrender.

I overheard a Marine reporting to an officer what the captives had admitted to him. And I don’t blame them for it.

Not when you have just witnessed the awesome sight of 40 Commando Royal Marines capturing a key oil refinery — and seen doomed Iraqi fighters crumble at their gunposts.

Faced with the astonishing firepower and determination of these elite Marines, even hardened soldiers would crack.

As for this poorly-equipped Iraqi force, it takes just two hours for Our Boys to blast a devastating hole through their shattered morale.

Scores of demoralised men with fear in their eyes and white flags waving above their heads capitulate under a barrage of bullets at the Al Faw refinery.

Hopefully the beginning of a trend--it would be very healthy for Iraqis themselves to start dispatching their oppressors.

MORE (PAJ): Conscripts shoot their own officers rather than fight (Times of London, 3/22/2003)

IRAQI conscripts shot their own officers in the chest yesterday to avoid a fruitless fight over the oil terminals at al-Faw. British soldiers from 40 Commando’s Charlie Company found a bunker full of the dead officers, with spent shells from an AK47 rifle around them.

Stuck between the US Seals and the Royal Marines, whom they did not want to fight, and a regime that would kill them if they refused, it was the conscripts’ only way out....

Two [prisoners] were a general in the regular Iraqi Army and a brigadier. They came out from the command bunker where they had been hiding after 40 Commando’s Bravo Company fired two anti-tank missiles into it. With them was a large sports holdall stuffed with money. They insisted that they had been about to pay their troops, to the disbelief of their captors.

These were the men who had left their soldiers hungry, poorly armed and almost destitute for weeks, judging by the state we had seen them in, while appearing to keep the money for themselves....

Every time you turned around, a new trickle of silhouettes emerged from the horizon walking slowly towards us. One Marine joked: “Oh no. They’re surrendering at us from all sides.”

The Iraqi soldiers know their friends from their enemies.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 22, 2003 7:27 AM