Mr Ali spent much of his time repairing the landlines for the field telephones. "The food was poor and there was not enough kerosene for the lamps at night," he said.Mr Hussein said: "Breakfast was lentils and tea. At 10am the soldiers received stale bread and poor quality dates that you would not feed to animals in the south Lunch was rice and soup. Every two days there was a small piece of chicken to go with it.

The only rations which were increased recently was the bread. They started to give us four small loafs instead of three."Mr Ali and Mr Hussein insisted that most of the rest of their unit would have deserted if it could But security men were everywhere. "If you escape field security, the Baath party will catch you and if you escape them it will be the special forces," said Mr Hussein.He was sceptical about an uprising by the Shia Muslims of southern Iraq or mass desertion by soldiers. He said: "Unless Baghdad surrenders, they have to fight because they don't know if Saddam will really be toppled."Patrick Cockburn is a visiting fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. As the sheet of lightning flashed the ink-black desert sky to daylight, a small patrol could be seen trudging in the distance, battling at 45 degrees against the driving rain. Operation Telic, the Ministry of Defence's ironic name for the Gulf conflict, means "comfort", and that has not been lost on the men and women who have come to consider a cold flannel wash a luxury.While the heat has yet to reach its searing peak, soldiers digging trenches in full chemical and biological protective suits have boiled beneath their helmets. At night, the light disappears as fast as the temperature drops.

Without the moon, darkness seems impenetrable, with only the incandescent orange of the burning wellheads of the Rumaila oilfields on the skyline. Figures appear like shadows, and slip silently back into the dark.Hot days are but a fond memory when the sandstorms, which blow up with monotonous regularity, descend from nowhere.The winds create rivers of sand, snaking across the ground before building into ferocious gales. Sudden bursts send grains swirling and stinging, grazing the skin like giant emery boards. A fog descends, cutting sight of the horizon and turning the sun to a watery moon.Tents, with their flaps tied as tightly as possible, are filled with a fine, choking dust that causes a hazy atmosphere and swirls like smoke rings in the torchlight. Newly washed trousers, hung to dry, take on the look of dirty airfield windsocks.Outside, often in the complete darkness of the night, soldiers attempt to go about their business, wearing ski goggles, their faces wrapped tightly in the traditional Arab shamagh.Even so, the invasive grains permeate every pocket, every unprotected gap. Teeth grind with sand, hair mats with dry filth, hands rarely feel clean.Inside the giant canvas tents, food receptacles are layered in dirt, sleeping-bags fill with sand, once pristine possessions take on a yellowish film, and clothes send out puffs of dust when they emerge from what appeared to be airtight cases.The worst came on Tuesday British forces were buffeted by 35-knot gales.

Visibility – vital in an area where renegade armed factions roam – dropped to a few hundred feet as winds whipped up huge clouds of sand.Torrential rain followed with thunder loud enough to drown artillery fire and lightning, which illuminated the night sky in a spectacular array of electrical bursts. Communications masts lit up like red-hot pokers.Pilots from the 16 Air Assault Brigade's 3 Regiment Army Air Corps, on night time missions, were forced to rely heavily on weeks of earlier training in the Kuwaiti desert as they were buffeted by the conditions while the infantry contended with the misery of flooded trenches. All through the night the downpour continued unabated, thundering on to canvas worn enough to let in the odd unfortunately placed waterfall. Damp permeated sleeping-bags and clothing.Rivers streamed through tents, which rocked precariously as the wind ripped out camouflage nets and guy ropes. Poor souls had to face the gales to try to tame the billowing camouflage.