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But the Voice never came. The missile did. The unmistakable high-pitched hissing of a rocket engine sounded at 10:28 a.m. Kuwait time, followed by an explosion and reverberation that shook the walls of the few hardened buildings on camp. The war came home for all the marines at Camp Commando, headquarters of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. It was Saddam Hussein's first shot.

Everyone piled into the bunkers around camp, packed like sardines and fumbling to tighten the straps on their masks. Staring at each other through thick lenses, the troops ensured that those around them had their masks on properly. Not everyone was so lucky. A Kuwaiti man sat inside the bunker without a mask, weeping uncontrollably and mumbling for his mother–"mama, mama." Marines next to the man consoled him, assuring him that everything was going to be OK.

The minutes ticked by. After 20 minutes, fear gave way to gallows humor: "You know, this would be a great time to hit the PX now. Finally, we wouldn't have to wait in line." "I think I'm going to miss the deadline on the report my boss wanted this morning."

Everyone was in it together, and the only way to get through it was to lighten up the situation. Marine reaction teams walked by the Scud bunkers dressed in radiological suits–scanning to see if the camp was under chemical or biological attack. They detected nothing. Then, after 60 minutes in the bunker, the Big Loud Voice came: "Attention Camp Commando... Attention Camp Commando... All Clear... All Clear."

The missile had landed outside the camp, within sight of the young marines on sentry duty at Camp Commando's gate. "All of a sudden I saw a big-ass explosion," says Pfc. Justin Davis, a 19-year-old from Chattanooga, Tenn., standing guard with his squad automatic weapon. "I was a little shook up...but it's time to get serious and start lighting some people up."

It was the first of three attacks thus far, and Marine intelligence officers believe it was a CSS-3 Seersucker missile, a Soviet-designed missile fired from near the southern Iraqi port of Umm Kasar. The missile made a 2-foot-deep crater in the earth outside the camp's perimeter. Twisted metal encircled the bomb blast, and Marine explosive ordinance disposal units and Kuwaiti officers decked out in yellow-green camouflage inspected the 50-foot-diameter blast site.

After a night of bombing in Baghdad, Saddam was striking back with whatever he had. "The only question for us was whether he was going to attack us pre-emptively," says Maj. Michael Lindemann, an intelligence officer with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. "We certainly knew that once we attacked, they'd return with surface-to-surface missile fire."

Military officials believe the next attack, which occurred at 1:30 p.m., was an Ababil-100 missile launched from near Basra and headed for Kuwait City. The third, at 3:37 p.m., was another Ababil-100 apparently aimed at U.S. Army forces in the northern Kuwaiti desert. U.S. Patriot missiles reportedly intercepted both incoming attacks, military officials said. The Seersucker got through without detection, officials say, because it doesn't have the high-arcing flight path of a ballistic missile.

For the troops at Camp Commando, the war is no longer make-believe. The drills are over. As they filed out of the bunker after the first attack, marines pulled off their gas masks and steadied their nerves with their first few breaths of fresh air. As one marine put it: "You know, I'm pretty p---ed at that Big Voice right now."

–With Julian E. Barnes with the Army's 101st Airborne Division in Kuwait.