NEAR THE SYRIAN BORDER, Iraq - It was by far the scariest moment of the war for Capt. John Hudson, 32, commander of A Company, 54th Combat Engineer Battalion, out of Bamberg, Germany.

On April 7, Captain Hudson was in the tactical operations center of the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade, to which his engineer company had been attached, checking e-mail. The operations center was in a walled compound housing two warehouses and a two-story building about 20 miles southwest of Baghdad.

The mood was jovial: Second Brigade troops were in downtown Baghdad, having that morning taken Saddam Hussein's palace and the Ministry of Information. A 2nd Brigade tank had destroyed a statue of Saddam.

“I heard a very loud whoosh and a huge explosion,” Captain Hudson said. “The explosion blew me out of my chair and onto the ground. I could not see the front entrance due to fire and black smoke.”

The center had been hit by what was later identified as an Iraqi Frog 7 missile. Four were killed: two soldiers and journalists from Germany and Spain. Seventeen were hurt, several seriously.

The captain crawled out a side entrance to check on the soldiers in his platoon, who had been camped on the outside of the compound wall. All were all right. Several had seen the 30-foot-long black missile. Eleven of Captain Hudson's engineers had rescued wounded and helped fight the fire.

Organized into three platoons and mounted chiefly in armored personnel carriers, A Company engineers had been in the war from its start, serving in support of all three brigades of the 3rd Infantry Division as it roared up from Kuwait to make the initial assault on Baghdad.

Like their predecessors through history, the engineers are among the most versatile and least heralded of combat troops. On the attack, combat engineers clear obstacles such as sand berms and minefields. On defense, they set obstacles to impede the enemy.

A principal job of U.S. engineers in Iraq has been to destroy the arms caches the military has uncovered and to blow up unexploded ordnance, particularly bomblets from cluster bombs dropped by planes that did not explode upon contact.

The engineers have examined bridges to make sure they could take the weight of U.S. armor and have helped scout safe routes, a task also performed by cavalry units. One reason U.S. combat engineers have been effective in Iraq, however, has been the relative ineffectiveness of Saddam's forces. A Company engineers witnessed only a single serious military action taken by Iraqis forces, Captain Hudson said - the Frog missile attack on the 2nd Brigade operations center.

The brigade had been in constant contact with enemy forces for three straight days without ever having fought a real battle. Iraqi regular army and Republican Guard units, heavily degraded by air attacks before the 3rd Infantry closed in on Baghdad, largely avoided fighting U.S. armor, the captain said. “Sandstorms were more of a challenge than the Iraqi army.”

At least one destroyed Iraqi tank or fighting vehicle littered each kilometer between the Karbala Gap and Baghdad's suburbs, but few of the vehicles had been occupied when they were hit.

“We passed foxhole after foxhole that were empty except for two sets of Iraqi uniforms in each,” Captain Hudson said.

Third Infantry units were attacked by Fedayeen Saddam and Baath Party militiamen. These supporters of Saddam were brave, but ill-led, the captain said. He estimated thousands were killed without inflicting a single casualty on the Americans.

After forces gained control of Baghdad, Captain Hudson and his A Company engineers were sent to support 3rd Armored Cavalry peacekeeping operations in western Iraq. The captain will relinquish command next month to attend graduate school at the University of Kansas.

The Block News Alliance consists of The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Jack Kelly, a former Marine, was deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan administration. He is traveling with 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in western Iraq.

First Published May 11, 2003, 10:52 a.m.