You Re Here. They Re There. It S Simple.

The First Cav gave up its helicopter gunships when it left Vietnam in 1975, and went back to its traditional I role as a heavy-tank division. It brought its M1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles to the gulf on Sept. 26, and is certain to be a lead division:if war with Iraq does break out. Meanwhile, they wait, wondering if the Bedouin nomads who roam freely through their lines might be Iraqi terrorists in disguise.

Sgt. Bonnie Riddell, a 27-year-old MP from Fort Hood, Texas, spends her nights on perimeter duty. Like the other guards she works 13-hour spells. She is on duty with a male soldier, in a circular, sandbagged observation post, a .45-caliber revolver on her hip, an M-16 rifle at her side, a light machine gun pointed into the darkness she scans with infrared night glasses. Theoretically women don’t fight in the U.S. military, in practice they might have to. As she says, “I’m just as nervous and scared about taking fire as [anyone]. But if it happens while I’m sitting here . . . and it’s a question of me or them, it’s going to be them.”

Shared experience These are polite young people, especially compared with the Vietnam generation. They want to talk to you, even when they know you’re a reporter; in Vietnam, First Cav pilots trusted none except those who shared their experience of destruction and death. Here people will say gently that their last shower was four days ago, so would you please stand upwind. Or they’ll say they have erotic dreams about cold beer (banned in Saudi Arabia). And everyone hates not knowing how long they’ll be in the desert. Says MP Capt. Jeff Harris, from Decatur, Miss.: “It’s not that anyone wants to go home, it’s the uncertainty. Even in Vietnam, you could tick off the days. Here you can’t think to yourself, “I’ll be home by Christmas, or home by spring’.”

But right now, life without combat “somewhere in Saudi Arabia” consists of endless cleaning of weaponry clogged by sand as fine as talcum powder. It means volleyball or soccer in the 110-degree afternoon heat. And it means going to bed early: in the desert, it’s pitch dark by 5:02 p.m. Meals are sometimes hot and I served from a cookhouse, but they’re just as likely to be the Army’s new soft MREs–Meals Ready to Eat, but instantly dubbed “Meals Rejected by Ethiopians.” At least, says a Vietnam vet, Sgt. Norman Nadow of El Paso, Texas, “when you have to hit the deck in a hurry, they don’t break your ribs like the old C-rat cans used to.”

Anything but: The few Viet vets you do meet are happy to talk about anything except Vietnam. And when they do, they are like M/Sgt. Jim Sanders of Waco, Texas, 38 years old, 20 years in the Army, facing the possibility of combat just months before he’s due to retire. “In Vietnam,” he says, “you’d tramp through the jungle for 12 days, nobody knew who you were supposed to fight, or even where they were. Here, I you’re here, they’re there. It’s as simple as that.”

Adds General Franks:“In Vietnam we not only had people who did not want to be in Vietnam, we had people who didn’t even want to be in the Army. We don’t have I that here. Here we have a volunteer Army and our I country has some idea what we’re doing. It’s very pure out here in the desert. Over here we’re doing exactly what we were trained for.”