Infantrymen from the division pushed their way in to the main building through a gaping hole in the back of the beige palace complex earlier this week. Military officials here guessed either a JDAM guided bomb or a Tomahawk missile had caused the damage–and the grunts climbed in through the rubble. They found the palace mostly abandoned. The sole straggler: one Iraqi soldier hiding in the refrigerator. “Put him on ice,” an American major, having a James Bond moment, ordered over the radio. (They took the soldier prisoner).

The grunts–exploring by flashlight because the electricity was turned off–discovered that most rooms had no furniture at all. What remained, though, was opulent. Floors and staircases were made of white marble. Huge chandeliers hang in each of the several dozen rooms. A plush banquet room was on the first floor, its huge crystal chandeliers, elaborate ceiling mosaics and light-blue upholstered chairs still intact around a huge horseshoe-shape banquet table.

One soldier posed for a picture in a giant, carved-wood throne, smiling in his Kevlar helmet and flak vest, carrying his M-16. Others lounged nearby on some of Saddam’s living-room furniture. Upstairs on a balcony, troops used pieces of rubble to scratch their names on the palace walls. One wrote KILROY WAS HERE (The soldiers were later reprimanded by their company commander for the graffiti and forced to wash it off.)

The palace is laid out like a donut: three stories with balconies on each of the floors overlooking an indoor courtyard. A six-foot portrait of Saddam Hussein dominated the banquet room before one of the soldiers ripped it down. It showed Saddam posing like a tourist, holding a camera. There were other portraits of Saddam all over the palace compound. Young Saddam, old Saddam, casual Saddam, formal Saddam. Saddam laughing in a sweater vest. Saddam stern in a business suit. Saddam chomping a cigar like fictional Mafia godfather Michael Corleone. Saddam frolicking in a field suggesting a scene from “The Sound of Music.”

Outside, small bridges lined with lampposts span the moat. Some bridges have been reduced to rubble, probably by American bombs or artillery. One unexploded 155mm howitzer shell the size of a human thigh lies just feet from the huge hole it punched in one of the walls of a building on the palace grounds. The compound, which is vaguely reminiscent of a U.S. college campus, is pockmarked with huge holes in the lawn from artillery, huge holes in the bridges spanning the moats. Rubble and glass is scattered everywhere, along with shrapnel. The grunts made the best of their new digs. Some took showers. All happily used the first porcelain toilets they had seen in weeks. Some soldiers cut reeds from the swampy land near the palace and fashioned fishing poles with string and duct tape. They fished in Saddam’s moat and caught and ate a few big ones. (Soldiers claimed they were striped bass; I’d guess they were carp.) Their officers weren’t pleased. “What was up with your fish fry?” Capt. Todd Kelly scolded some of his GIs. “Don’t f–king eat anything out of the pond! Don’t eat anything unless it comes from the U.S. Army.”

There was also a garrison for Saddam’s Special Republican Guard troops on the palace grounds. Grunts used the butts of their M-16s to break open the lockers of Iraqi soldiers and pick through their stuff. They found everything from the dangerous to the mundane. They found glass cases with wooden shotguns and boxes of shotgun ammunition. They found hundreds and hundreds of magazines for Russian-made AK-47 assault rifles and also AK-47 bayonets. The elite troops had obviously been well supplied. The U.S. troops were elated to find cases of German-made GunTec lube oil for their M-16s. The stuff the U.S. military issues them, they say, is not as good.

Some of the other supplies in the garrison were less ominous. It was a through-the-looking-glass experience for some of the American soldiers. They found drawers full of personal items: clothes, ointments, cigarettes, family pictures. In one building, there was still food on the stove. Clearly, the Iraqi troops had left in a hurry.