Lines in the Sand: A History of the Gulf War
XIII
“I will admit that there have been setbacks so far. That being said, the Iraqi war machine may seem fierce but it can be hunted down and killed like any other creature. The first step is cutting off its food supply.” – General Colin Powell
Excerpt from We Were Soldiers Too: The Rhonda Cornum Story
By Rhonda Cornum with Peter Copeland Presidio Press 1993
I’m not sure how long I blacked out for during and after the crash, but it was still daylight when I came to. The Blackhawk had flipped during the landing and was resting on its side, and I found myself lying with desert sand inches away from my face and the open door of the helicopter facing the pale sky. The sun was drowning out any sort of color, and my world had become the extremes of the black confines of the wrecked Blackhawk and the sheer white of the light streaming in through the doorway and a few bullet holes scattered around the sides and floor. It was impossible to make out anything through the glare, but I could already hear the rumble of approaching vehicles. Our mission had been a search and rescue behind the front lines and it was highly unlikely that friendlies would be in the area to assist us, but I was nonetheless dismayed to hear shouts of Arabic coming near the wreckage. We had been found, but by the enemy. A dozen thoughts raced through my head at once: how many others in the helicopter had survived, how badly were they injured, had anyone gotten away? There was no way that I could plausibly attempt to make a getaway with the enemy so close now and no hope of cover offered in the nearby terrain. Escape and evasion routes in a desert battlefield leave a lot to be desired, and as the voices closed in I could do little more than keep my hands visible and hope that my discoverers were more interested in taking prisoners than shooting the survivors out of hand.
Before long the shouts were right outside. Someone banged on the floor of the helicopter beneath my feet and called out something I couldn’t understand. I had managed to pick up a little bit of basic Arabic during my brief time in Saudi Arabia, mostly for assisting with trips off-base, but ironically there had never seemed to be an imperative to learn the phrase ‘I surrender’. I proceeded to say this in English and tried to appear as non-threatening as possible as a helmeted head appeared to peer into the interior cabin. It was soon joined two others, all black faceless silhouettes against the sun. The first silhouette called down to me and I repeated that I was surrendering. Silhouette Three then said something to Silhouette One, who bobbed his head and clambered down into the cabin with me. He regarded me closely for a moment, and I could make out vague features on his face. His eyes especially stood out as he peered from under the brim of his helmet; they were alert and confident and not scared in the slightest. They were the eyes of a professional doing their job, and I was simply another task for him, the latest in an endless line of missions and crises. He called back up to the silhouettes, then pulled out a knife and began cutting me free from the straps. A moment later I was bodily lifted up and passed onto Silhouette Two, who dragged me over the top and out into the sunlight. Before my eyes had a chance to adjust, more voices around me began shouting and I was shoved roughly to the desert sand. Someone quickly bound my hands behind my back and slipped a makeshift blindfold and gag over my face. The last image I saw was the endless flat desert and dusty boots surrounding me.
I was dragged to a nearby truck and thrown into the back, where I remained for several minutes listening to the idling engine and the distant sound of explosions as the war went on without me. It gave me more than enough time for a quick inspection of my person. There was a small cut on my right temple, but the blindfold seemed to be staunching the worst of the blood flow. It hurt to breathe deeply, which probably meant a few cracked ribs. Definite dizziness, which meant a concussion. All in all though, it appeared that I had been incredibly fortunate and survived the crash relatively intact. This point was driven home as I heard the sound of two more bodies being laid down in the truck bed next to me. I could hear ragged, shallow breathing from the survivor closest to me but couldn’t tell who it belonged to. Within another minute the soldiers returned and climbed into the back with us. One kicked me and laughed as he moved to sit down, but they seemed content to ignore us and settled into animated conversation amongst themselves as the truck shifted gears and began heading north. For the next few hours, I heard only the roar of the truck’s engine and the voices of our captors. Sometimes I could make out the distant boom of artillery or an airstrike, or the rumble of a group of Iraqi vehicles speeding past us heading south towards the front, but my war had become limited to darkness and what sounds I could pick out around me. It would prove to be prophetic of my experiences for the duration of the conflict.
The jostling as the truck drove north kept exacerbating the tightness in my chest and a headache that was rapidly approaching migraine levels. I remember lying on my back, my bound hands numb and poking into my spine, and alternating between feeling lucky to be alive and berating myself for my current predicament. I should have done more, been looking in a different direction than what I did, surely I could have helped spot the threat that shot us down. I would later learn that our Blackhawk had been intercepted by an Iraqi Mig-25 on its way to support the push on Dhahran and there was little I could have done to make a difference. At the time though, I didn’t know if it had been an aircraft or a ZSU-23 or some lucky infantryman with a rifle that had brought us down. One moment we were fine and level, the next pieces of metal were ricocheting around the cabin and we were spinning out of control. A falling helicopter usually gives the occupants just enough time to reflect on what a terrible concept of a flying machine they’ve decided to entrust their lives with. I remember thinking about the poor souls on PanAm 307 and deciding that suffering and tragedy was indeed relative and quite biased depending on who was considering it.
In spite of the worsening pains running through my body or because of them I passed out again at some point during the ride. When I came to again, night had fallen and the sounds of distant battle had been replaced by the noise of street traffic. The air was somewhat cooler, which was some small relief for the dull ache of a bad sunburn on my face and neck, keepsakes from my afternoon ride through the desert. The truck turned first one street and then down another, weaving its way deeper into the heart of what I assumed (correctly, as it would turn out) was occupied Kuwait City. Before long the truck screeched to a halt and my injured comrades and I were hustled down and inside a noticeably colder and damper area. We were being led by our captors into Kuwait’s Central Prison, taken and repurposed for use by the Military Governorate to intern and interrogate POWs and other enemies of the Iraqi state. As I was led down the halls escorted by a soldier on each arm like some grotesque mockery of a prom date, I heard screams from residents whose ranks we were now joining. Perhaps they refused to answer questions in a satisfactory manner, or maybe the jailers were just feeling especially sadistic that day, but the echoes of human misery and agony seemed to come from every direction at once. It seemed as if the building itself had been given a voice and it was now pleading to be put out of its misery.
I had been separated from my two male companions shortly after our arrival and my escorts led me down one corridor after another until I heard the metallic clang and shriek of a door opening and I was shoved through. I stumbled and barely managed to stay standing, and I heard them laugh behind me. Then a new voice came out of the darkness; a calm, soothing, and slightly accented voice.
“Welcome to you, dear madam. Please, allow me to assist you with those. You obviously pose no threat to any of us here.” More laughter, and I felt someone move alongside and began cutting through my wrist bindings. Another moment and my blindfold and gag were removed, revealing an unpainted concrete room containing only a simple wooden table and chair bathed in the stark light of a single bulb. It seemed like such a clichéd spy movie image that I almost started laughing in the face of the man now peering intently at me. Rail thin build, immaculately kept uniform and carefully groomed mustache, a disarming smile almost succeeding in distracting from the cold and piercing eyes. From the way he carried himself and conducted himself in relation to the other soldiers in the little room, he had to be part of Saddam’s Amn al-Khas, or military secret police. Responsible for keeping the Iraqi people happy and saluting the President, even if it had to do so over a layer of bodies. Very, very bad stuff.
He squinted at me for several seconds before stepping back and declaring, “My dear, we should do something about that dirt and injuries of yours. The last thing we would want is for those cuts to get infected.” He barked something at the others, and I was brought to a nearby wash basin and allowed to wash off the layers of grime I had accumulated over the last several hours. There was a small mirror to check on the cut on my head, and before long I was feeling somewhat cleaner and following the security man (who insisted that I call him Captain Bob) deeper into the prison. He chatted amiably as we walked, as if it were just the two of us out on an afternoon stroll through the countryside. He seemed rather pleased that such a high ranking American military officer was ‘touring’ the facility, and somehow managed to perk up even more when I explained that I was a flight surgeon.
“A doctor? How absolutely splendid! There is much good that you can do with your talents here!” He murmured briefly to one of our well armed entourage, who nodded and jogged off into the darkness.
Another few twists and turns and we were standing at the entrance of an unassuming metal door, simply one in a line of others along the hallway. One of our escorts unlocked the latch, and I could make out the shapes of three figures in the gloom. One was huddled in the corner and another was crouched over a form laid out on the floor. The crouched figure scuttled back up against the wall as we entered and in the glare of the Iraqi’s flashlights I realized that they were all female soldiers like myself, no doubt captured during the offensive. Captain Bob strode into the room and stood over the prone soldier, ignoring the two against the wall.
“I was hoping that you might be able to do a favor for me.” He smiled widely, exposing rows of gleaming white teeth. “You see, your fellow soldier here has suffered two gunshot wounds during the unfortunate circumstances of her capture. Nothing life threatening, but most certainly painful. Sadly, most of our doctors are away helping at the front and it may be some time before we can bring in someone to treat her. Perhaps you would be willing to take a look?” He gestured at the form on the floor, covered by a makeshift blanket of BDU jackets.
“I’m going to need a table and more light than this.” I began running down a list of the things I would need to perform the operation, and Captain Bob relayed my list to another of our escorts. Within minutes we had moved her into another room, much better lit, and a tray containing my requested items already waiting. I scrubbed up using a nearby sink and a bottle of alcohol and set to work.
The Iraqis had little in the way of serious painkillers I could use, but I gave her what they had and tried to get her to relax while they kicked in. She was a Specialist with the Army named Melissa whose truck had gotten lost and overrun during the Republican Guard’s breakout. I told her that everything was going to be fine and that I would get her patched up in no time. The surgery itself went as smoothly as it could, considering that my dizziness was still hovering in the background and pain shot through me every time I tried to lean too far over the table. The painkillers were also far from sufficient, and I ended up having her bite down on a coiled rag while I worked, trying to ignore her muffled cries as my instruments probed her damaged tissue. It was risky and far from ideal for operating, but the alternative of the wound remaining untreated and going septic was far worse.
The whole time while I operated the Iraqis had a camera crew in the room recording everything, apparently part of some new propaganda ploy for Saddam to point to and say, ‘You see? See how I take care of your female soldiers? They receive better care than my own soldiers in the field!’ I don’t know how well the shots of poor Melissa clamping down on the rag with tears streaming down her cheeks would play in his strutting; no doubt some extensive editing would have to take place before the tape went out.
An eternity later the simple operation was over and I was ushered away by Captain Bob, who put a supposedly comforting hand on my shoulder and told me that I had done very well. I asked for a chance to clean up at the sink again and he shushed me, saying that we could get to that momentarily. He sat me down in a chair in the next room and pulled up another to face me. I kept glancing from his eyes to my bloodied hands and back to him as he watched me, that ever-present smile on his features.
“You have done a wonderful thing tonight, and both myself and that girl are very grateful to you for your work. There is much good you can still do for everyone to save lives, lives outside the walls of this building.” He scooted his chair closer. “Someone as highly placed as yourself must know much about the state of your troops, their morale, dispositions. Many are suffering in the field right now, on both sides, and any information you give me would help tremendously in ending this war quickly. As a woman of medicine and science, you are duty-bound to ease the suffering of those around you; the prolonged continuation of this war helps no one. Even your President would agree with that sentiment.”
I began to say that my unit had little information on the layout of the American deployment and before I had finished the sentence Captain Bob’s hand lashed out and struck me hard across the face. He never stopped smiling.
“That is a poor and outdated attitude to carry with you in this place. Your friends are not coming for you here. There are only the walls, and us. And I hope that we can become good friends before this war reaches its conclusion. Would you like that? I think that we shall be the best of friends…”
Excerpt from Mother of All Battles: A New History of the Arabian War
By Simon Anderson Naval Institute Press 1995
Exodus
The American pullout from the Dhahran region ran into a snag almost immediately, in the form of the pro-Nayef salient controlling Al Hofuf directly to their south. Before, the potentially hostile presence was a minor problem to ultimately be solved in the long term. Now, it served as an anvil for the descending Iraqi hammer. With the huge convoy of vehicles carrying every possible piece of equipment and munitions from the fledgling supply bases on the eastern coast, it was essential that the region be secured to give the convoy a clear path to their new designated home in Qatar. Diplomatic overtures and pleas to the Nayef government to allow the Americans passage through Al Hofuf were flatly rejected, with the prince declaring that granting the request would do irreparable damage to his regime’s ongoing peace negotiations with Iraq. Advance guard units for the convoy had run into a large defended roadblock cutting across Highway 615 near the town of Al Oyun, and surveillance revealed that several more had been built in the area to block road access and turn the town into a makeshift fortress. While the majority of the defenses appeared to be manned by light infantry and militia, the defenders seemed unwilling to back down in the face of American demands. Faced with the choice of further fruitless negotiations with Nayef or forcing his way through the barricades, General Schwarzkopf opted for the latter, declaring that ‘dead bodies trump hurt feelings any day in my book’. It was a difficult choice to make, and received the reluctant approval of Prince Sultan after prolonged argument. After giving the barricade defenders one final ultimatum to stand down by midnight on March 27/28, a company from the 1st Marine Division’s now tragically famous 5th Regiment became the first unit to engage Saudi nationals. The marines’ fire caused few casualties, as they had been explicitly ordered to keep opposing casualties to the bare minimum necessary to force a breach through the area. To a large extent they were successful in carrying out this delicate mission, as the northernmost barricade fell within minutes and the defenders forced to flee south into secondary barricades closer to Al Hofuf. Engineering units following closely in the marines’ wake began the process of clearing the roads for use by the waiting convoy. Two Marine battalions were tasked with hitting the area from the north while the 3/9th, fresh from their victory against the paratrooper assault, attacked from the west. In a series of sharp actions the defenders were cleared out from each position, and the final strongpoint fell only seven hours after the attack began. Two American soldiers lost their lives in the assault, but Saudi casualties numbered 47 dead, a large portion of them from a particularly vicious stand near Al Taraf. Only a handful of armored vehicles had contributed to the defensive effort, and several more scattered in positions around the area were found to be in disrepair and serving merely as decoys. Large portions of Al Hofuf were still unoccupied as the first trucks of the convoy rolled through on the morning of March 28, but the local military bases were secured and the highways cleared, opening a path for American forces to Doha.
While the Battle of Al Hofuf was a relatively small engagement on a military level, it caused major political shockwaves on the Arabian Peninsula. Condemnation came from capitals across the Middle East and worldwide over the American action, with Saddam Hussein gleefully crowing that the United States was willing to kill every last Muslim to serve its own interests and could not be trusted to behave like a civilized nation. The most virulent language of course came from Buraydah, the temporary
de facto capital for Prince Nayef’s government. In a fiery speech delivered over the Saudi airwaves, Nayef declared that the Western infidels had shown their true treachery and would not hesitate to turn their guns against other towns that refused to submit to their corrupt ways. He went on to announce that the battle had convinced his government to seek a mediated settlement with Iraq and Yemen at the earliest opportunity in order to focus on this new threat. There is strong evidence suggesting that this had been Nayef’s goal all along and that he had ordered the defenders to stand firm in order to force Schwarzkopf’s hand. By provoking a conflict between Americans and Saudis, Nayef singlehandedly reduced Prince Sultan and his American sponsor’s prestige while greatly advancing his own agenda. The American embassy in Riyadh came under attack from protesters attempting to scale the walls into the compound on the afternoon of March 28 and soon turned deadly when individuals among the mob began firing upon the Marine garrison. The mob was finally repulsed and scattered after a prolonged firefight lasting well into the evening, but embassy staff were ordered to begin preparations for possible evacuation and began burning documents that night. The same day, a convoy of freshly arrived soldiers was attacked as they attempted to leave Riyadh International Airport and were only able to break through after employing tear gas and flashbang grenades to disperse their assailants. The attack would play a large part in CENTCOM’s decision to cease bringing in reinforcements through the Saudi capital on March 30, and all future flights would be diverted to Doha and Abu Dhabi. Across Saudi Arabia, Western refugees still trapped in the kingdom were forced into hiding, and reports of the beating and lynching of Westerners cropped up all too often in the following days.
The alliance itself, already badly shaken by the events in Saudi Arabia, came perilously close to shattering after Al Hofuf. Several nations in Africa and South America renounced their financial support for the campaign effort and Germany threatened strongly to follow suit and pull out of its monetary and logistical contributions, though it was convinced to stay on after several lengthy telephone conversations between President Bush and Chancellor Kohl. There were similar mutterings from Paris and London over supporting the United States, mostly from opposition parties looking to discredit their rivals, and even more ominous rumblings from the most recent and odd bedfellow of the United States: the Soviet Union. Ultimately, frantic diplomatic exchanges managed to keep the alliance intact at this critical stage of the conflict, though not before a failed proposal in the UN General Assembly from the Iraqi delegation to revoke the United States’ Security Council status rubbed in a final bit of salt.
Ironically, it proved to be Prince Mansour’s position that benefited the most from the influential battle. While still committed to the defense effort in Saudi Arabia, the governments of Egypt and Syria were understandably reluctant in providing overt support to Prince Sultan and the Americans. With Prince Nayef’s regime attracting more hard-line elements of the Saudi population and distinctly unattractive to Mubarak and Assad’s very secular governments, that left Mansour’s faction as an ideal middle ground to support. Egyptian forces were already working alongside pro-Mansour units along the Red Sea coast and were greatly expediting the consolidation of the prince’s grip over the western provinces. Two Egyptian divisions were now deployed in western Saudi Arabia and four more were scheduled to cross over in the coming months. Joining them would be the 9th Syrian Armored Division, set to arrive in Jeddah by April 12 and to be followed by two more divisions. By providing assistance to Prince Mansour under the guise of the ongoing peacekeeping efforts, the deployment limited their contribution to western Saudi Arabia and remained well outside the American deployment zone. It was a move that played well to their respective populaces at home and helped stifle domestic dissent over helping the West with the larger war effort while also working to secure and preserve the Holy Sites. By the start of April, thanks to his new open sponsors Prince Mansour was in an unassailable position in the west and gathering forces for a major push on Mecca and Medina, as well as working to rebuild a defensive line in the Asir. It soon became clear that the forces necessary to conduct offensive operations against Yemen were far more than those he could muster without extensive outside support, and privately he began intensive negotiations with President Saleh over the potential for a ceasefire.
To the east, a stunning military coup came from the most unlikely of participants: the Iraqi Navy. A near non-existent contributor during the devastating campaigns of the Iran-Iraq War, the Iraqi Navy was miniscule in size and most of its combat power consisted of a single frigate, two corvettes and 40 patrol boats. More ships had been ordered from Italy the previous year as part of a major naval expansion program, but the war’s kickoff had effectively ended the deliveries to just the two new It Assad corvettes. With no naval tradition and already dismissed by allied planners as a non-entity likely to spend the war in port at Um Qasr or Kuwait City, little surveillance was dedicated to keeping track of the IN’s operations beyond daily checkups. With the vast majority of the growing allied naval presence in the Gulf deployed to the east and south of Qatar to avoid the more threatening possibility of anti-ship attacks from the IAF, the waters around Bahrain were relatively clear on the night of March 28. Led by the frigate
Ibn Marjid, nearly the entirety of Iraq’s offensive naval power made a sudden dash south from Kuwait City to link up with several cargo and transport ships at Al Jubayl in the dead of night. The combined task force then moved south hugging the coastline until arriving at their final destination: the northern coast of Bahrain.
It was a confused engagement that followed between the two navies and credit has to be given to the Bahrainis for putting up a spirited defense against a force three times the size of their own. Indeed, several Iraqi patrol boats and one of their new corvettes were sunk by the Navy of Bahrain before they were overwhelmed by the remaining attack craft. With the approaches to the beaches clear and IAF fighters keeping the Bahrain Air Force busy in the skies above, the landing ships began their final run on the beach at Budaiyah on the northwest coast of the island. With light covering fire from the frigate and remaining corvette, the first groups of Iraqi marines went ashore at 0147 hours March 29. Meeting little resistance except for local police and backed up by a company of PT-76 amphibious tanks that landed at the local marina, the landing force quickly secured a beachhead stretching nearly a mile into the island’s interior before the Bahraini Army was able to get a sizable blocking force into place by 0330. The invasion force began taking serious casualties as Bahraini artillery began pounding the area, but were able to inflict some damage in return when a small flight of IAF Su-25s broke through to bomb the hastily improvised defensive lines. By 0425 the opposing forces were in stalemate, though the mobilization of the 5,000 strong Bahraini army would no doubt eventually overwhelm the small landing force.
At 0445 however, Sheikh Isa Al Khalifa ordered his military to stand down. While the battle had been raging on his island, he had been engaged in a lengthy telephone conversation with Saddam Hussein. Playing on the sheikh’s fears, the Iraqi president noted that with Saudi Arabia imploding and the protective buffer of American soldiers in Dhahran now gone, nothing stood between the small island state and his military, particularly the inevitable rain of Scuds now that the local Patriot batteries were fleeing south with the pullout. The marine landing was simply a demonstration to show that even blowing the causeway to the mainland would not protect him, and that far more soldiers waited in modified cargo ships offshore to conquer the island if necessary. Iraq’s aim was not to occupy the island however, but merely to convince Bahrain to remove itself from the alliance and declare its strict neutrality for the remainder of the conflict. In return, Saddam promised, Iraq would faithfully respect Bahrain’s waters and airspace and even support its territorial claims to the Hawar Islands, part of an ongoing dispute with Qatar. The sheikh was won over at length and relented, choosing the survival of his nation over the much riskier path to continue the fight against the Iraqi juggernaut now right off his shoreline. Bahrain announced its subsequent ceasefire with Iraq and neutrality in a radio speech at 0800, while visibly relieved Bahraini troops escorted the landing force south to the causeway and watched them cross back over to the mainland. The Iraqi naval group had departed the area some hours beforehand, already racing back to the safety of Kuwait City before the allies could unleash their air power upon the flotilla. They were only partially successful, as a combined flight of RAF Tornados flying from Oman and F-18 Hornets from the USS
America intercepted and sank 11 patrol boats and the remaining corvette. In addition, two of the Iraqi landing ships and all five of the ‘modified transports’ were taken out, leading CENTCOM to assume that they had managed to kill an estimated two brigades worth of men and material. At the time it was unknown which unit the backup landing force had belonged to, a mystery that would persist until after the war when it was revealed that the cargo ships had been empty all along and quite incapable of disgorging Iraqi armor on Bahrain. The entire operation had been an exceedingly clever sham and not only managed to break Bahrain from the global alliance but also convinced CENTCOM to divert disproportionate resources towards watching the remnants of the Iraqi Navy much more closely in the future.
The Marines and airborne troops managed to hold onto what was left of Dhahran until the morning of March 29, when a thrust by the Tawakalna Division captured the western suburb of Al Fursan and placed Iraqi forces within sight of Highway 40. Fearing the possibility of being flanked and cut off, all remaining American and Saudi forces in the coastal port pulled back and retreated south to establish a new defensive line 20 miles south at Buqayq. To the west, the 82nd Airborne Division similarly pulled up stakes and moved south to Judah, site of the recent catastrophic airborne assault. This new position served as the westernmost tip of the new defenses while still shielding Riyadh from an assault via the coast. In their wake the armored brigade of the Al Faw Division followed at a cautious distance, with scouting units occasionally exchanging fire but refusing to commit more fully. They eventually halted at the town of Shifyah some 40 miles north of Judah and were instructed to hold in place and watch the 82nd until the rest of the Al Faw Division could be brought south to join them.
There were two pieces of good news for the allies in the frantic, bloody closing days of March. First, air attacks were finally breaking through the IAF screen and starting to cause significant damage to the Iraqi ground forces. While some squadrons were dedicated to close support for the retreating allied army, most of the air assets were tasked with taking out the numerous supply convoys working to keep the Iraqi assault moving. Each truck destroyed translated to a Republican Guard vehicle that couldn’t move or soldiers that couldn’t fire their weapons, and pilots were ordered to press the attack in the face of strengthening air defenses. 5 allied fighters were lost on March 29 to ground fire alone, and another 3 on March 30, but planners were noting a marked slowdown in the pace of the general Iraqi advance as the days progressed. Second, after a long journey that had taken them around the African continent to avoid the Bab el Mendab blockade, the ships ferrying the 24th Infantry Division had finally arrived at Doha on March 28. It would take several days to unload the division’s equipment and get everything matched up, but they were expected to be ready for combat operations by April 4 and would greatly bolster American firepower on the ground.
Throughout this new phase in the conflict, CENTCOM was quick to notice that all Iraqi attacks thus far had carefully avoided areas controlled by Prince Nayef, and all missile attacks into the interior of Saudi Arabia had ceased for several days. It wasn’t long before their fears were confirmed. In a radio statement on (ironically) April 1, the Nayef government proclaimed a ceasefire with Iraq in order to ‘focus on the great internal threat to the kingdom’. Within hours of the announcement, two Iraqi mechanized divisions were moving south from Hafar al Batin, driving towards King Khalid Military City and, 300 miles beyond that, Riyadh.
It's still possible that they gain territory given the mess Saudi Arabia has fallen into, but now they have to beg.
