A well-fed, but seemingly lonesome dog circled the only patch of green grass in front of what appeared to be the commander's residence.

And a cloth bag of small, raw sugar cubes lay scattered next to a wooden chair that most likely was the guard post for a jail cell.

The signs were everywhere that whatever Iraqi forces had been at the Iskandiryah airfield, just 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of Baghdad, had made a hasty escape ahead of the invading US soldiers.

But as elements of the 101st Airborne Division began settling in to make it their new home on Friday, there was still a mystery to the airfield that could serve as an analogy for the fate of many other Iraqi military complexes and their soldiers.

"It is rundown, it looked as if it was something much bigger but it hasn't been used much since the (1991) Gulf War," the 101st military intelligence battalion's Command Sergeant Major, Douglas Sandstrom, told AFP.

Indeed, many of the corrugated iron buildings in the sprawling site are falling down, with rusting petrol cans and automotive parts inside.

The walls of a small sandstone brick house are on the brink of collapse, beaten by the wind and neglect, and the residence is only remarkable for the evidence inside that people had been living there recently.

Sunflower seed shells lie in the bedroom, underneath a single steel grate bed that has no mattress, only a couple of worn blankets.

Above it is the rack with the beret, underwear and an assortment of army green and light brown shirts. There is a work room with chargers running off a truck battery and a manual for a "mobile radio telephone" is gathering dust next to it.

The brand of the phone is "Shinwa" and it is Japanese made. A plastic soccer ball, made in China, rests against some bricks outside.

But not all the buildings are so pitiful and it is inside these that the facade of innocence is betrayed.

One small building near the entrance is surrounded by thick coils of barbed wire. Its two biggest rooms have steel doors and were locked from the outside. Fresh steel shards indicate the padlocks were recently snapped.

Inside the biggest room the windows are concreted over, as are the holes where there were once electrical sockets. The room strangely has tiled walls.

"It looks as if it might have been some holding facility for prisoners," Sergeant Thomas Tricker said Friday as he worked to turn it into a finance office, a day after the rooms were inspected by AFP.

A smaller room next door to the suspected jail cell is full of spent bullet cartridges lying next to a red box that says: "Jordan Armed Forces".

The most modern and well cared for building in the airfield contains a map of the region with red arrows pointing into Iraq from areas where the US forces have invaded since March 20.

Another model of the immediate area, with the Euphrates river on one border and the airfield's landing strip in the middle, is covered with small red stickers with drawings of artillery batteries, presumably Iraqi defence locations.

US soldiers have reported huge caches of weapons and artillery in buildings close to the airfield, with four prisoners of war captured on Thursday trying to protect one site that held thousands of rocket propelled grenades.

Sandstrom said another US military unit, probably the 3rd Infantry Division, attacked the airfield shortly before the 101st arrived, but the lack of battle damage to the site indicated it had been abandoned shortly earlier.

Sandstrom's intelligence unit does not know just where the occupiers of this airfield escaped to, echoing the question marks over the fate of fallen Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and many of his Baath party loyalists who have seemingly disappeared.

SPACE.WIRE