Among the injured is 21-year-old Specialist (Spc) Onica Branche of Johanna Cecelia, on the Essequibo Coast, who sustained multiple lacerations to the face, including the loss of several teeth, among other injuries listed as severe.

Branche, who, according to U.S. military jargon is classified as 'walking injured', left here with her mother and two of her five siblings in May 2001 to take up permanent residence in the U.S.

At the instigation of a cousin, Germain Shury, who is also seeing active duty in the war, she joined the U.S. Army less than a month later. She was among the first batch of U.S. military personnel to be stationed in Kuwait since last October to await the battle signal, and among the first to enter Iraq when finally it did come.

She was among those troops who had been moved close to the Iraqi border two weeks before the orders to move in were given, and had even weathered the notorious sand storm just days into the war, her mother, Patricia Branche, said.

Speaking with the Chronicle shortly after 07:00 hrs yesterday as she was preparing for work, the elder Branche, whose last position while here was Head of the Allied Arts Department at the Abram's Zuil Secondary School, also on the Essequibo Coast, said the two were in conversation on the telephone when the incident occurred. It was around 03:00 hrs U.S. time, she recalled.

Branche said the instant the phone went dead, she somehow knew that her daughter was in serious trouble. "I had that gut feeling that only a mother gets when something goes wrong with one of her offspring," she said.

'Nikki', as Onica is called, and her colleagues in the Special Command Platoon, to which she was assigned at the time, had just taken command of the communications centre, she said.

A Food Specialist by profession, the young soldier is also called upon on occasion to serve in many other capacities, the distraught mother said. All day Tuesday she couldn't eat, she said.

Her worst fears were confirmed late the afternoon when she got home from work and her mother told her that 'Nikki' called around 10:30 hrs, in near hysteria, saying she was injured when the hotel came under fire.

Branche, who is still pursuing a teaching career at Grace Lutheran, a private school in Malvern, Long Island, said her mother had not called her at work to tell her what had transpired, knowing that she was to be tested that day in the Final Teaching Practice for College examinations.

She said she is in constant contact with officials at Fort Stewart in Georgia, where her daughter's platoon is usually based while in the U.S., and that when last they spoke, 'Nikki' was back in Kuwait receiving medical attention and had not been flown to Germany as was originally intended.

Depending on the doctors' findings, however, she may yet go to Germany or back to the U.S. for further treatment, which may entail extensive plastic surgery.

'Nikki' herself also called later in the day, but all they could get out of her was: "I want to talk to my brother," this being O'Brien ('OB' for short), who, at 11, is the baby of the family and her favourite. He is also the only boy in the family.

A loving sister, she dotes on her little brother, and buys him whatever he asks for, no matter how expensive.

She is also a favourite with niece, Johari, who had had some premonition that something had gone awry with her aunt. She was having her hair combed, when at around 12:10 hrs she heard the news on CNN that three journalists had been killed during fighting in Baghdad.

Suddenly, she broke into tears, which was quite out of character, her grandmother said, as she was accustomed to watching news about the 'War on Iraq' and arriving at her own childish conclusions.

Between sobs, she said: "I don't know when this war go'n' end. I have an aunt out there; I don' want anything happen to 'Auntie Nikki'."

Alarmed, her grandma tried coaxing her, but to no avail. The only solution was to switch channels.

Meanwhile, 'OB' is not taking his sister's being injured too well. Neither is youngest sister, Odessa. "She is unusually silent," her mother said. "I know she's grieving inside."

And, family members and close friends, both here and in the U.S., are still offering a silent prayer not only for 'Nikki', a past pupil and former Prefect of Abram's Zuil Secondary, but for Germain also, who is somewhere out in Iraq.

When last he spoke to their mother, which was Monday, sister Rosamund said, he was alive and well, but could not disclose his whereabouts.