''We were dragging the wounded to safety even as their own ammo was exploding all around us,'' Captain Wright said, recalling rocket-propelled grenades flying. ''I remember this one went right by me -- whoosh!''

Their mission, near the village of Debecka, was to capture a crossroads. It easily fell to the Green Berets, but it did not offer the desired control of the area.

''We could see Highway 2, with a roundabout and a tall statue in the middle,'' said Sgt. First Class Frank R. Antenori, a Green Beret team sergeant. ''We could see vehicles driving along as if nothing was happening. We couldn't just sit two kilometers away and watch the Iraqi Army drive back and forth all day long. We were already way beyond our objective, but we decided to occupy that next junction. We figured we could stay all day and shoot up anything that came through.''

The day was thick with haze, when the soldiers saw three trucks approaching, blinking their lights. ''We thought, 'Don't shoot, don't shoot,' they might be surrendering,'' the sergeant said.

But it was the start of a disciplined attack following classic Soviet mechanized doctrine, which Army officials now say was one of the Iraqi Army's last coordinated offensives.

The Iraqis fired smoke grenades. Six armored personnel carriers drove out of the fumes, three on each side of the troop trucks, firing. The Green Berets returned fire with .50-caliber machine gun rounds. The Iraqi vehicles slowed and spread out -- but only to make way for the next phalanx, four T-55 main battle tanks that rumbled from the smoke at a distance of no more than 900 yards.

Realizing they might be overrun before they could arm and fire their antitank missiles, the Green Berets hustled up the ridge to their Alamo. Sergeants Brown and Adamec jumped from their vehicles, and let the Javelins fly. It was moments later when the Navy bomb hit the Kurdish position and Sergeant Adamec left to grapple with its toll. Meanwhile, the Iraqi mechanized assault fell into sudden disarray.