In war's dust, 'fog,' a yearning to communicate

"We are watching TV night and day waiting and waiting for that minute when American troops will kill Hussein and free Iraq," she told an interviewer while shells flicked into a wastebasket. "Then Iraqis will be openly free to embrace their liberators, and the world will see America did the right thing."

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Thursday night it still appeared that Iraqis weren't welcoming American and British troops with open arms, however. Even hunger did not necessarily ensure applause and cheers.

A delivery of water and food to beleaguered Safwan, Iraq, by the Kuwait Red Crescent produced reports of both pro-Hussein cheers and a mad scramble for humanitarian aid.

The image seared itself into Rudolph von Bernuth's mind: mobs of young men descending on trucks and grabbing food. It took him back to 1979, when he himself was trying to get food to refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodian border.

There would have been a riot had not Thai marines been present to fire warning shots into the air.

"We're going to have to work very hard to avoid chaos" in Iraqi humanitarian aid deliveries, said Bernuth, now director of emergencies for Save the Children, to an interviewer on Friday.

He had had a frustrating week. On Tuesday, he briefed top members of his organization for a meeting with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, which was canceled. He had already bought chemical protection suits for the Save the Children staff in Kuwait poised to enter Iraq. On Thursday, he decided to buy them flak jackets as well.

Meanwhile, coverage of events still focused on the military dimension, at least in the United States. He wanted more focus on the misery in Basra, where many civilians had become malnourished even before the war began.

"If you had 10,000 people leave Basra and go to refugee camps," he said, now that would generate an outpouring of giving."

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Friday also saw a lull on People's Pavement, a little spot of protest in the heart of London's Parliament Square.

Brian Haw, a talismanic peacenik who has been fulminating virtually nonstop for a week to any passerby who is interested, is resting his vocal cords. So the motley inhabitants of this place, who have been sleeping rough for days, are napping, or waking from naps, or sipping donated coffee. A knot of protesters listened skeptically to a man from a group called Rainbow Connection, who espoused an "idealistic, futuristic, almost mystical" creed that seems to involve abolishing politics and replacing it with something else.

Edwin Linton took it all in. A noncommissioned officer in the Gulf War, he quit the British Army afterward and since has lived the life of a drifting protester, leaving behind a wife and children for the streets, working for a group that helps troubled ex-servicemen like himself find their feet.

On Friday he predicted to a passerby that soon there will be more work for him to do. Behind every report of firefights and tank battles and skirmishes, he said, there are dozens of human beings who will never be the same again.

"How many are going to come back and end up like I did, because the Army will not help you?" he asked.

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In North Carolina Elizabeth Clingersmith was just waiting for her husband Tom to come back, period.

In the early '90s she did some work in commercials. She'd even been a promotional gorilla for Ape 92, a radio station in her hometown of Flint, Mich.

But her husband is the family movie star. A few years ago, the director of the move "Rules of Engagement" wanted some real marines to serve as extras, and Tom got a part. He's in six scenes , most noticeably where he wrestles another marine in the background as the real stars converse.

On Friday night, Elizabeth slipped her DVD of the movie out of the case, and popped in the player. The house was dark and quiet. She pulled a pillow to her chest. Somewhere in the world a war was raging for real. For now, she would watch her husband's chiseled face flicker across the screen in a Hollywood war.

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