- KERBALA, Iraq (Reuters) -
When a young Iraqi boy stooped to pick up a rocket propelled grenade off
the body of a dead paramilitary, U.S. Army Private Nick Boggs made a tough
call.
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- He unloaded machinegun fire and the boy, whom he puts
at about 10 years old, fell dead on a garbage-strewn stretch of waste land.
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- Boggs, a softly spoken 21-year-old former hunting guide
from Alaska, says he knew when he joined the army 18 months ago he might
someday have to make a decision like that.
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- He hoped it would never come and, although he has no
regrets about opening fire, it is clear he'd rather it wasn't a child he
killed.
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- "I did what I had to do. I don't have a big problem
with it but anyone who shoots a little kid has to feel something,"
he said after fierce weekend fighting in this Shi'ite Muslim holy city
that left dozens of Iraqis and one American soldier dead.
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- As U.S. troops take the Iraq war out of the desert and
into the main cities, they are increasingly seeing children in their line
of fire.
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- Many are innocent civilians in the wrong place at the
wrong time and military officers concede that some have may have been killed
in artillery or mortar fire, or shot down by soldiers whose judgment is
impaired in the "fog of war."
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- LEGITIMATE TARGETS
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- But others are apparently being used as fighters or more
often as scouts and weapons collectors. U.S. officers and soldiers say
that turns them into legitimate targets.
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- "I think they're cowards," Boggs said of the
parents or Fedayeen paramilitaries who send out children to the battlefield.
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- "I think they thought we wouldn't shoot kids. But
we showed them we don't care. We are going to do what we have to do to
stay alive and keep ourselves safe."
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- The boy he killed was with another child of around the
same age when they reached for the RPG and came under fire. Boggs thinks
the second boy was also hit but other soldiers think he escaped and that
he dragged his friend's dead body away.
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- Boggs' platoon leader, Lieutenant Jason Davis, said the
young soldier struggles with what happened even if he had no choice but
to shoot.
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- "Does it haunt him? Absolutely. It haunts me and
I didn't even pull the trigger," he said. "It blows my mind that
they can put their children into that kind of situation."
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- Although Boggs plays down suggestions he was upset by
the incident, he also says his view of combat has changed since Saturday,
when his platoon came under intense RPG and rifle fire from the moment
they entered Kerbala until way after nightfall.
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- Before -- like many young soldiers -- he says he was
anxious to get his first "kill" in a war. Now, he seems more
mature.
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- "It's not about killing people. It's about accomplishing
a mission...When we talk, we don't say how scared we were. But we found
out how you feel when an RPG hits the wall just up from you and you think
'Damn, I could have been right there'," he said.
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