The Third Regiment: Memoirs of an Iraqi Prisoner of War - 55

By Mujtaba Al-Husseini
Translated from Arabic by: Muhammad Hussein Zavar-Kaaba
Machine Translation edited by Mandana Karimi

2026-11-8

The Third Regiment: Memoirs of an Iraqi Prisoner of War - 55

By Mujtaba Al-Husseini
Translated from Arabic by: Muhammad Hussein Zavar-Kaaba
Machine Translation edited by Mandana Karimi

***

After one night, I contacted Major Sabah, the regiment commander, using a wireless device located inside an armored vehicle. He asked me to go to that area to check on the unit's health. The next night, I went to the front line in the same communications armored vehicle, driven by a skilled soldier. I sat on top of it for fear of a mine exploding under the armored vehicle's wheels. The armored vehicle was moving slowly due to the marshy terrain. After half an hour, I entered the regiment's tactical headquarters. I met the commander and his deputy inside the command tank that was hidden in the trench.

The regiment was in very bad conditions due to the torrential rains and the lack of shelter. They were positioned in roofless trenches to protect themselves from the Iranian fire. It is worth remembering that each regiment had an armored personnel carrier to communicate and transport the wounded. I had dinner with them and treated some of the injured at the regimental headquarters. At about ten o'clock at night, I left for the third company. First Lieutenant "Kanaan", the commander of this company, was sitting in a small hole. A number of patients gathered there and I gave them whatever medicine I had with me. Lieutenant "Kanaan" asked me to leave the area because, according to him, the danger was great and the Iranian forces were 800 meters away.

At around midnight, I left the area and returned to my relatively safe positions. From there, I followed the events of the clashes in the Chazabeh axis. In our axis, the fighting continued in the form of an exchange of fire with various weapons. The majority of the casualties in our axis were among the members of the 2nd Regiment. As a result of this exchange of fire, Major Thamer al-Uziri, the brigade's political justification officer, was wounded. But fortunately, a helicopter landed in the area and quickly transported him to Basra, saving him from death.

After sleeping in the ambulance for several nights, I decided to build a suitable shelter for myself. For this purpose, I chose a dry canal and built a simple shelter that protected me from the cold and rain.
In those days, I witnessed strange events. For example, one day, several friendly helicopters mistakenly launched missile attacks on the positions of our regiment. Another day, a MiG-23 was hit by a SAM missile from Iranian forces and was shot down, but its pilot survived. He jumped out of the plane with a parachute and, fortunately for him, the wind carried him to the back of our positions and landed there.

The interesting thing was that our forces thought that the downed plane belonged to the Iranian Air Force. They quickly ran towards the pilot. Each one tried to capture him before the others and get the reward. But as soon as they got close to him, it turned out that he was an Iraqi pilot captain. They brought the pilot to the headquarters of the 20th Brigade and from there transferred him to the headquarters of the 5th Division.

During my time there, Captain Abdulkadhim, who had recently been assigned the responsibility of the regiment's counterintelligence, became my roommate under the pretext of fatigue, illness, and the need to rest. My shelter was small and cramped, and his presence weighed on me. For this reason, I was forced to spend the entire day outside the shelter and return there at night to sleep. His presence deprived us of the freedom to talk and listen to the radio, especially Radio Tehran. He was a naive, illiterate officer and a member of the Baath Party.

Here I would like to tell a funny story about this officer. One day a soldier came to him with a letter from the regiment commander. The commander had requested the sending of ammunition. The officer called one of the guards and asked him to inform the administrative staff about the situation. When the ammunition was brought, he began to count it, including the 120 mm mortar shells. I was surprised by his action, because eight months ago the mortars had been taken from our battalion, so how could the army counterintelligence officer have been unaware of this? When the soldier went out, I told him the story. He called the soldier twice and told him: “The 120 mm mortars have been transferred from the battalion.”

He was a graduate of special courses and had not even finished high school when he briefly entered the Reserve Officers' College. Captain Abdulkadhim was with me for a week and then returned to the front line, and thus I was saved from that terrible nightmare.

One afternoon in late February, Major Ibrahim came into my shelter and, before sunset, with the help of a number of soldiers, prepared some firewood and lit a fire. Then he put some large fish on it to roast. We had dinner from the same fish. Major Ibrahim sent the rest to the regimental commander in order to establish a close relationship with him. Everything went well until at ten o'clock at night the major took a bottle and some fruit out of his bag. I asked him: "What is this?"
He said: "It's whiskey.”

I was surprised by this answer. I said, “I don’t drink.”
He replied, “I know you don’t, it’s mine, I want to drink it myself!”
I told him angrily, “I won’t let you drink here, and if you insist, you’d better leave the shelter and sleep somewhere else.”

After a heated argument, I forbade him from drinking. The major slept soundly. The next day, Major Ibrahim returned to the front line and presented Major Sabah with a bottle of whiskey and other things as a gift.
Two days later, Captain Salam, who had been wounded and hospitalized in December 1981, returned. He was suffering from severe mental distress. I welcomed him and we had lunch together. I asked him, “Why did you come here?”

He replied, “I just got back from sick leave and I want to meet the new commander.”
I said, “Then you should go to the front line!”
He was silent for a moment and then added, “I want to contact him by radio.”
I said, “This is not right, you should go and meet him.”
He became worried and sad upon hearing this. I said to him, “Call Lieutenant Mohammad Javad, the deputy commander, and ask him what you should do!”

Major Salam contacted the said person. He also asked the major to go there.
At sunset, Captain Salam asked me to accompany him to the front line. Out of compassion, I accepted his request and we both went that night and returned. The regimental commander agreed that Captain Salam would return to the same battalion administrative area.

Despite the cessation of the main operations on the Chazhabeh axis from February 17, 1982, our brigade remained south of the Maysan River for about a month. During this time, there were no significant casualties to the regiment, except for one soldier being wounded in the head by mortar shrapnel and an armored personnel carrier being destroyed by a TOW missile. The fact that the armored personnel carrier was targeted by a TOW missile was not surprising, but rather surprising because after several months, this type of missile had been brought to the area again. Therefore, the crews of the tanks and armored personnel carriers again experienced increasing fear and panic.

What happened was about the southern axis of the Maysan and Karkheh Kur regions. But on the Shib-Chazabeh axis, the fighting was carried out by infantry and artillery. The Baath regime sent tens of thousands of special forces brigades and thousands of military personnel into this area to advance through the Chazabeh Strait - which was a land route inside Hur al-Huwayz - towards the city of Bostan. The Iranian forces showed great courage and bravery and forced Iraq to retreat. These clashes continued for 9 days and resulted in the deaths and injuries of thousands of our forces, especially. One of my doctor friends said: "I received 1,400 bodies in just one day at the headquarters of the 14th Division, which was located in the Shib border area near Chazabeh."

During the fighting, Saddam traveled to Al-Amara province several times and monitored the fighting for several days. But after becoming disheartened by the prospect of victory, he ordered a halt to the offensive and left the city. One eyewitness said: “Saddam looked at the bodies of his thousands of dead as if nothing had happened!” As he looked at the dead, Saddam never took his cheroot cigarette off his lips. Saddam returned to Baghdad and, in a televised speech, blamed the soldiers for the defeat, who instead of staying in their positions were trying to save the wounded. He urged the Iraqi army to continue fighting until the last bullet, regardless of the wounded. In his words: “Put the spear on the rifle and fight hand-to-hand with cold steel.”

He wanted to convey that the life of an Iraqi citizen has no value, but rather that his wishes must be fulfilled at any cost. Of course, he was right, because when a soldier was hit, other soldiers seized the opportunity to help him escape from the battlefield and carried him behind the lines. But this was not because of the cowardice of the Iraqi soldiers, but because they did not believe in war.

On 3/13/1982, the order was issued for our regiment to retreat to the “Hamid” barracks. The unit retreated slowly and settled in the abandoned brigade positions, located south of the Hamid barracks on the Ahvaz-Khorramshahr road.

To be continued…

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