But Sehmat Ugu was seated on a chair at 9:00 o'clock last Saturday night outside a US marine compound hoping to find out news about his son. Mohammed, 18, had been shot in the leg a few days before.

"My baby, my baby," he said to a sympathetic major. Ugu's plight illustrated some of the problems facing the US military as they clean up the rubble from their invasion of Baghdad.

The US forces are taxed when it comes to humanitarian matters.

Major Cal Worth explained through his translator that Ugu's son was taken to a US army field hospital in southern Iraq where he was listed in stable condition. His translator named the place as in Jalaba.

But Ugu had no idea where this field hospital was.

His son had been shot last Thursday when he was traveling in a blue van that mistakenly sped past a barrier toward Saddam Hussein's Azimiyah palace, which marines have converted into a command post.

"My baby loves America. He hates Saddam Hussein," Ugu said, waving a miniature US flag and a white surrender banner that Iraqis use to approach US military checkpoints.

He was nearly hysterical and Major Worth reassured him again and again.

The major had been trying to phone the marines' civil affairs team, designated to handle humanitarian matters, so that they could arrange for Ugu to make a phone call to the army hospital in southern Iraq.

Worth could get no one on the phone, nor could he spare a vehicle to take Ugu to the Palestine Hotel where the civil affairs team is based.

Instead, he wrote a letter explaining the situation and told him to hand it to the officers guarding the hotel, who would let him through.

"We've got to get him to his son," Worth said.

But the Palestine Hotel is barricaded by barbwire and crowds always teem around the barricades hoping to get through. Many of them wave hand-written notes and shout a million requests.

Ugu thanked Worth but there was no real guarantee he would solve his problems that night. The major told him to return the next day if things did not work out.

But the father did not return.

"It must have worked out," Worth said Monday.

SPACE.WIRE