It began as a strong breeze, spinning the fine dust thrown up by tanks and trucks into vortices.
At first, it seemed that the long US marine convoys, picking their way with painful slowness along an unmade-up road north of the river Euphrates, were generating the dust themselves.
The vehicles would stop and the dust would settle, and the forms of small children materialised by the roadside, shouting for the yellow humanitarian ration packs the Americans throw from their trucks. Some children had sacks full.
Their fathers stood alongside them, holding up Iraqi dinar notes with Saddam Hussein’s portrait on them, hoping to change them for dollars.
A gunner on the cab of an ammunition truck was throwing ration packs to the kids as if he was passing an American football, but the children didn’t get it. They just let them fall pat in the dust and gathered them up.
Further north, when the convoys stopped, the dust did not settle. It was a vicious sandstorm, and it blew for most of the day, bringing the US war machine to a halt as it advanced steadily towards Baghdad.
Sand raced in twining rapids along the road surface and in dark ragged sheets overhead. Vehicles had to keep only a few yards distance from each other to avoid losing sight and blundering off into the desert.
Even wrapped up in their NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical protection) kit, helmets and sand goggles, the marines’ faces were blast-coated with a fine layer of brown dirt. When asked how long it was since he’d had a shower, one marine thought for a moment and said: ”Four weeks.”
The convoy in which the Guardian was travelling planned to move 100 miles yesterday. Instead, by nightfall, it had gone 15.
Lieutenant-Colonel Bob Weinkle, commander of the forward supply unit which made up this convoy, confirmed that senior commanders had been obliged to order a halt to most operations by the ferocity of the storm.
BBC correspondents embedded with the two other US columns advancing on Baghdad, the 3rd Infantry Division to the west and other formations of marines to the east, also reported that the sand storm had temporarily shut most military activity down.
Anyone out in the storm without goggles had their eyes stung red raw. Uncovered hair took on the texture of a Brillo pad. Light vehicles rocked on their springs in the wind.
Lt-Col Weinkle said a lot of his men came from the desert base of 29 Palms in California. ”We’re used to riding out these conditions, although not necessarily a day like this, or this large a convoy,” he said.
”The orders are to sit tight until the worst passes. I think it’s definitely affecting the operation. It hampers delivery of logistics but it doesn’t stop it.”
Forward units had two days of supplies, he said, so a one-day break in the relay system the marines are operating for their supplies should not be a problem.
Yet there is no doubt the supply lines are becoming stretched. The marines are a long way from the sea.
Their main armoured troop carrier, an enormous amphibious beast called an AAV, has become a ship of the desert, hardly the role it was designed for.
The Vietnam-era vehicle, made of relatively vulnerable aluminium, was built to carry marines short distances from beach landings. By today some will have travelled 200 miles in six days.
Already many have broken down and are being towed forward in the hope that they can be repaired in the field or cannibalised for spare parts.
When the dust storm blows itself out, the marines will not have water for washing. Their limited supply is for drinking only.
”A marine can typically go up to 30 or 40 days if they have to without any kind of bathing,” said Lt-Col Weinkle. ”Baby wipes are the key.”
As the convoy moved off after dark, lightning flashed and thunder rumbled in the distance across the bleak plains of central Iraq.
Earlier, rain had fallen out of the dust. The weather had provided a reprieve. Tomorrow the flashes and the thunder would be man-made. – Guardian Unlimited Â