Footnotes From the Front

By DAVID ELLIS/

The gulf crisis makes headlines, but it has also produced a crop of strange and little noticed war stories:

PROPAGANDA MILL. Saddam's flacks are telling radio and TV audiences that American soldiers "are drinking alcohol, eating pork and practicing prostitution." A clandestine radio station claims that 40% of U.S. servicemen are infected with the AIDS virus.

WHERE'S THE BEEF? More than 650,000 cans of corned beef were recalled from Jordanian refugee camps after local health officials determined that it was "not fit for consumption." One examiner noted that the product, a gift from the European Community, was "full of hair."

SUIT ENVY. British Aerospace has equipped its gulf-based employees with state- of-the-art protective gear. A British expert contends that the lightweight suits, which have a porous charcoal lining that breathes in the searing desert heat, are "much better than anything our own soldiers or the Americans have."

BEASTLY FEAST. Hungry Iraqi soldiers have stormed the Kuwait zoo, killing and eating dozens of gazelles, antelope and other mammals. The World Society for the Protection of Animals has reports that some of the zoo's larger predators are roaming the streets and that a child was killed by a lion.

MINISTRY OF MORALS. Women in Saudi Arabia who drive cars or show too much leg are routinely persecuted by the mutawain, the country's dreaded "morals police." Now non-Muslim women are rejoicing at a rumor that a U.S. servicewoman pulled her 9-mm sidearm on a mutawain zealot who tried to stop her from driving a military vehicle near the Dhahran air base. The mutawain officer has reportedly been suspended.

With reporting by Sidney Urquhart