More Iraqis Cross Lines to Surrender : Defections: Bedraggled troops risk minefields and their own execution squads. They talk constantly about the unceasing bombardment.

EASTERN SAUDI ARABIA —  They straggle across the border in small groups, waving white T-shirts or underpants, their rifles slung upside down in the position of surrender. There were 46 Thursday, a dozen the day before, eight or nine the day before that.

Across a desert sown with mines, these bedraggled Iraqi soldiers come, thinking their American or Saudi captors may kill them, not knowing there is such a thing as the Geneva Convention that protects the rights of prisoners. They talk constantly about the bombing that goes on night and day and jars their senses and brings death to the battlefield and makes sleep indistinguishable from wakefulness.

“They don’t look too good,” said Sgt. John Young, a Marine stationed near the border. “We give ‘em smokes and MREs (meals ready-to-eat). One guy said he had a sister in Detroit. He said he wanted to go to a Burger King.”

At night, across the Kuwaiti border just beyond Young’s foxhole, the horizon sparkles with the flash of exploding bombs and the earth shakes with giant payloads dropped from eight-engine B-52 bombers. The attacks go on for two or three hours and end as suddenly as they begin, the desert becoming dark and silent again as though nothing had happened.

Then they start again, hardly two hours later: The spotter planes darting in to drop flares that cast an eerie green glow across the dunes, the A-10 Warthogs with missiles screaming at Iraqi tanks and artillery, the U.S. Air Force’s radar-jamming EF-111s and the U.S. Navy’s A-6 Intruders and Saudi Tornados and Kuwaiti Mirages streaking northward, obscured in darkness. And high overhead, on missions that can last as long as 17 hours, the AWACS planes, directing the strikes in skies so crowded that some pilots every night must maneuver quickly to avoid hitting fellow allied aircraft.

“Punishment, pure and simple punishment,” the AWACS’ commander, Maj. Lark Speicher, said of what Iraq’s ground forces were enduring night after night.

U.S. and Saudi commanders constructed huge holding areas for thousands of Iraqis whom they expected to surrender. But in the first two weeks of the war, few did, and senior officers admitted they were surprised by the Iraqis’ resolve. Only as the air campaign intensified, with the allies pushing the number of daily air combat missions in Kuwait past the 700 mark, did the number of Iraqis crossing the border begin to increase significantly.

In the past five days, 55 Iraqi soldiers, including several officers, surrendered to the 1st Marine Division. U.S. forces currently are holding 122 EPWs (enemy prisoners of war), spokesmen said. Once the men are processed, they will be turned over to Saudi authorities, who refer to the line-crossers as military refugees. The Saudis are holding more than 2,000 of them.

“The bombing campaign, particularly the 24-hour aspect, the fact they’re not getting any sleep, is affecting them,” Marine Brig. Gen. Richard I. Neal, the U.S. spokesman for Central Command, said Thursday. “Just as important, they’re suffering casualties, losing men and equipment.”

U.S. and Saudi intelligence specialists who interrogate the prisoners have gathered useful information that includes details about precast concrete bunkers moved into front-line positions and troop deployment. But they said the surrendering soldiers are only of limited value because they are not from Iraq’s best units, such as the Republican Guard, and do not include any senior officers. The tenacity of the Iraqi troops still in position is not underestimated by allied commanders.

“Everyone thinks these guys all have on white T-shirts that they’re going to take off and wave and just quit,” said Cpl. Raid Shihadeh, a Marine interpreter in prisoner interrogations. “But I don’t think that’s the case. I think there’s a lot of guys who are going to fight and fight good.”

The attack elements of an allied ground offensive have designated units to handle what could be tens of thousands of Iraqi prisoners. “Our mission,” said reservist Maj. Stephen McCartney, a homicide detective with the Providence, R.I., police department, is to relieve the assault elements (of prisoners taken in combat) as quickly as we can.”

Without units such as McCartney’s, combat power would have to be diverted from the battlefield to deal with captured Iraqis, and the momentum of a fast-moving armored offensive would be slowed. The Iraqis taken prisoner during combat will be held at collection points for about 24 hours before being passed to permanent Saudi EPW camps in the rear.

The Iraqis who have surrendered thus far have risked death to do so--first from Iraqi execution squads who kill deserters and second, from the minefields they must navigate on foot to reach allied lines.

“They’re scared,” said Shihadeh. “They don’t know what’s going on. They think anybody can just shoot them. Very few are briefed (by Iraqi commanders) on their rights under the Geneva Convention. Some catch on real quick. We’ve had some guys come into the interrogation and say, ‘Where’s my cigarettes?’ But that’s the exception.”

Early Wednesday morning, a front-line Army unit--fearing the Iraqis might attempt a surprise attack under the guise of a fake surrender--went on full alert when someone outside one of their tents was heard babbling in Arabic and shouting, “Saddam! Saddam!”

Specialist Leonard Holifield grabbed his night-vision goggles and peeked outside. The Iraqi was standing 5 feet from the tactical operations center, and Holifield, not knowing what else to do, dashed outside and threw the man to the ground.

“He tried to resist,” Holifield said. “I threw him on his stomach. I had him in a wrist and neck lock. . . . I didn’t want to use deadly force, but I very well could have.”

The prisoner was subdued and later told an interpreter that he had walked two days through the desert to reach the allied lines.

This story was written in part from correspondent pool reports reviewed by U.S. military authorities.