186                               U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991

"They speculate about when we will go home.  They don't talk about that gray
area in between.'1
   Instead, they lose themselves in long card games.  They gaze across the flat
Saudi desert now covered with the green fuzz of sparse winter grass, and
fantasize about showers they haven't had for more than a month and hot meals
they left behind weeks ago.
   They wiggle into sleeping bags on the cramped floors of personnel carriers
and in tiny tank turrets, and dream of soft mattresses and wives and girlfriends
half a globe away.
   But mostly they work, struggling to keep aging equipment operating in the
gritty sand of the desert, miles from the nearest stocks of spare parts and
supplies.
   "We are constantly, constantly repairing the tank,' said Sgt. Nelson Carter,
25, a reservist from Knoxville, Tenn., the senior non-commissioned officer for
one team of 11 specially designed tanks.
   Both the men and the machines of these mine-breaching teams have been
patched together from different bases across the United States for a one-time
mission: to slice through the minefields that lie between allied troops and the
deeply entrenched Iraqi forces across the border.
   They have stuffed amphibious personnel carriers designed for beach assaults
with the explosives needed to blast mines from the sand, and they have tacked
toothy plows and bulldozer blades to the front of M-6O tanks.
   "The manpower came from wherever they could grab them," said Smith,
whose original team included a cook, a welder, two heavy-equipment operators
and a group of Marines usually assigned to rounding up drunken sailors on shore
leave and returning them to their ships.
   But in two months, they have trained and equipped potent mine-breaching
teams armed with linecharges that will be fired to detonate mines and create
lanes through them.
   Smith, a medical technician in a Baltimore hospital before he was summoned
to active duty late last year, has dubbed his M-8O minescooper "Genesis " --as in
"the beginning. the first one through." Genesis has become home to a tight-knit
crew of four.
   The team members have begun hoarding food--military issue as well as cans
of fruit juice, loaves of bread, cookies, sugar and canned meats.  It is enough
food, according to the crew, to feed the four for a month if supply lines are cut.
   What they don't need to eat they plan to use for barter.  Because their unit
has been culled from several others and finds itself at the bottom of most
equipment-requisition lists, its members have refined their trading skills.  They
swapped an ice cooler for the wrenches needed to fix the tank, and they gave
one of their tool boxes in return for batteries.
   "We've had to fight for everything," Smith said. "We almost stole the tanks
off the ships in order to get them."
   It is the camaraderie forged among these fighting men that helps drive them
during the long hours of waiting through cold, damp nights and hot, windy days.