The Last 600 Meters: The Battles of Najaf and Fallujah

ANNOUNCER: This program contains mature content, including graphic imagery of war.

Viewer discretion is advised.

(soldier voices on radio) MAST.

SGT.

ERICKSON: Straight up combat, unconventional combat, we will always win that.

Foreign policy, I don't make it, I just deliver the last 600 meters of it.

(helicopter flies overhead) (rioting in the streets) (car alarm blares) (shouting) (car horn sounds) (shouting) (shouting and chanting in a foreign language) (car horn sounds) BRIG.

GEN.

TOOLAN: I had gotten wind that there were three contractors from Blackwater who had, attempted to ent- enter Fallujah.

There was a large crowd there.

They knew that these folks were coming in and they stopped them and killed the- the Blackwater contractors and dismembered their bodies.

When that happened, when we recovered the bodies, there was discussion now about what are we going to do.

And, as you might suspect, there was an awful lot of furor and anger about the way Americans had been treated.

Not only outside our- my- my organization, but, I think back in the United States there was thoughts of, you know, Somalia and other incidents and just wasn't something that was going to be tolerated.

(shouting) WEST: Major General Mattis said, "I have pictures of the people who did this.

"They were foolish enough to pose "in front of the cameras.

"I will track down each of them with our "Special Forces and we will arrest or kill each person responsible."

And there were about 24 names.

But instead he was told, "No, you don't understand.

"At the top level of our government the order is seize the city."

(tank rumbles) (soldiers talking) SOLDIER: Alright, everybody got it?

SOLDIER 2: First, second, third squad."

LT.

COL.

MCCOY: We got the order on about 8 April to move down there.

We moved the battalion inside of 24 hours, pulled them in, turned over our battle space, road marched about 100 miles down into Fallujah, spent a couple hours refitting, rearming, and then the morning of 10 April, we launched into the attack with everybody else.

(rumbling) (gunfire, artillery fire) (airplanes flying) (helicopters flying) (soldiers talking) LT.

COL.

OLSON: If you're gonna fight a city fight, be prepared to go house to house, and be prepared to start at one end of the city and fight your way through to the other end.

It became evident that if we just took a position and sat there and dug in that we'd leave the initiative to the enemy.

(artillery gunfire) LT.

COL.

MCCOY: It was obvious that the enemy was caught by surprise.

They were making incredibly stupid errors, costly errors, driving right into our- our fields of fire, trying to reinforce.

They didn't know where we were, and- and when you see that happening, then- and- and we're knocking them down like it's going out of style, you know that you have 'em at a complete disadvantage.

(gunfire) (sirens blare) MAJ.

STEVENSON: To add additional chaos to it was we had the Fallujah hospital, which was smack dab in the middle of my perimeter.

And the hospital administrator, what I found out later was that he claimed that we were denying medical attention, denying medical supplies, etc., all of which were blatantly untrue, and no one ever came to ask me were any of these things true, they just sort of got printed and/or televised.

(baby crying) (indistinct conversations) BRIG.

GEN.

TOOLAN: Al Jazeera was right in the city, and they were used as a very effective tool by the insurgents to display a humanitarian crisis.

(indistinct conversations) (indistinct conversations) (man smacks top of car) WEST: Ambassador Bremer had been so concerned in Baghdad by all the complaints of the Iraqis about the images they were seeing on Al Jazeera, that Ambassador Bremer called to General Abizaid who was in charge of all our troops in the cent- in the central area and he said, "You and I have to meet with the senior Iraqis whom I have appointed," whom Bremer had appointed.

And when they did the senior Iraqis said, "You must stop this, you absolutely must stop this.

You're breaking Iraq apart."

And so Bremer and Abizaid agreed to a temporary ceasefire.

(dog barking) (dog barking) BRIG.

GEN.

TOOLAN: The hard part and the thing that we as commanders are responsible for is to be able to relay the reasons for what we're doing to our Marines and sailors and- and it was hard... it was hard for me to do that.

It was hard for me to try and explain to them why we were pulling out of the city yet when we knew that we were probably 30 hours, 36 hours from securing the objectives in the city that we wanted and then begin operations inside the city.

WEST: The operations officer when I was there turned to Col.

McCoy and he said, "We're getting phone calls," in other words they were listening to the other side and they're saying, "They're from the south, they're from the west, they're from the east."

He said, "They have lost cohesion."

They being the insurgents.

"We can roll them up and finish this in a day."

And when McCoy called that back he was told, "No you are to stop right where you are.

"You don't have permission to carry this battle any farther."

LT.

COL.

MCCOY: And we sat there for the next 30 days.

Even though it was a ceasefire, combat continued throughout- throughout those 30 days at a pretty good clip, particularly in those first two weeks.

BRIG.

GEN.

TOOLAN: The insurgents kept pressing us.

And it became a back- and-forth thing.

SOLDIER: Hey, there's people getting out of a ******* car.

BRIG.

GEN.

TOOLAN: Every night, every- every night they would move a little bit closer and the next morning, lo and behold, they'd be a lot closer to my- my position fire on 'em and we'd have a firefight.

This went on from- all the way really through April.

SOLDIER: Yeah, they're right down here.

They're to our east.

(gunfire) MAJ.

STEVENSON: We were having a real tough time at some points, battling, the- what we called the three-block war.

We're decisively engaging the enemy, and then at the other end of the- our position we might be, ya know, talking with a seven- year-old kid about whatever, handing him candy, ya know, he's teaching us basic Arabic or we're teaching him basic English skills.

It's just, you know, the Marines had to know which way the switch was.

Was it decisively engaging the enemy or was it, ya know, helping a- a old lady carry a water bucket from the Euphrates River back to her house.

(tank rumbles) (soldiers talking) LT.

COL.

OLSON: There was an element of- surreality to it, where the negotiations did not necessarily match the events that I had seen minutes before on the ground.

Or to leave a- leave a meeting where an agreement had been struck to have the- the bad guys lay down their arms, turn the city control back over to its elected representatives and to its Iraqi Security Forces and then on the way to put that word out to my battalion, to be hit in an ambush or to come up on a company that was in contact with a platoon-sized force of bad guys who evidently had not gotten the word.

(fighters talking) (car honks) BRIG.

GEN.

TOOLAN: Bottom line is is that now there was no security for the city and so something had to be done, somebody had to restore order.

And the negotiators on the Iraqi side brought up a recommendation that they take responsibility, and for the next 30, 45 days they formed this organization which became known as the Fallujah Brigade which was really led by former Iraqi officers, former soldiers put the uniform back on.

(indistinct) LT.

COL.

MCCOY: I thought a lot of them were the guys that we had been fighting, already.

But what's a few RPGs between friends?

And if this is going to be the political solution, then- then we're going to do our- our dead-level best to make it succeed.

(vehicle sounds) Part of the deal, as we turned over the battle space, if you will, to the Fallujah Brigade, was to conduct a meeting.

General Mattis was going to conduct a meeting at the mayor complex in downtown Fallujah.

We went in, we did our job, came back out.

There was, I think, hope at that moment, but in the Iraqi minds, I think they saw that as- as our capitulation, just from the cheers and- and taunts as we drove out of the city.

Cheers that they had- that we were leaving, and taunts that they had turned away the United States Marine Corps.

(car honks) (cheering) RICKS: I was in Baghdad at the time and watched that and as I said I'd listen to- you could hear the sermons on the- on- coming out of the mosque and so on.

It was an extraordinary time in Baghdad.

It was the first time, I think, that a lot of American officials really realized this thing was going very badly.

That, despite the happy talk out of the Bush administration and out of Ambassador Bremer, that Iraq was a much more troubled place than they realized.

I remember thinking, "I thought this was bad.

I hadn't thought it was gonna be this bad."

BOOT: You have to remember, we were fighting- Marines and soldiers were fighting in Fallujah at the same time that this uprising was occurring in central and southern Iraq.

So all of a sudden, it seemed like there was a Tet Offensive going on or worries about another Tet Offensive with the entire country rising up against us.

Muqtada al-Sadr and some of the other insurgent leaders were able to block key highways, these main supply routes, running into Baghdad and so our troops were on the verge of running out of water and ammunition and food and basic supplies.

So this was in- in- in many ways, one of the hairiest moments that we faced in the entire war in Iraq.

1ST LT.

MOULTON: The terrain was just unbelievable.

It was- it was unlike anything that I ever would have anticipated.

I mean the tombs were all above ground and below ground, but they were big structures.

It's not like an American cemetery where you just have a- a wide-open flat space with- with gravestones, no, these are, these are very elaborately constructed tombs.

And they were practically all built on top of each other.

(gunfire) CAPT.

MORAN: It's just a huge cemetery.

I think it's 15 square kilometers, and people describe it as a- as a New Orleans-style cemetery on- on steroids.

(gunfire and explosions) (gunfire and explosions) (gunfire and explosions) 1ST LT.

MOULTON: It also provided an incredible defensive position for the militia because they could hide anywhere.

I mean they could hide underground; they could hide above us in these little minarets, in these mini-mosques and, they could pop out from behind these tombs, you know, a mere five or ten feet in front of us without our knowing that they were there beforehand.

MAST.

SGT.

ERICKSON: As soon as I got there, told their commander, "Sir, we're- we want to start, we want to start- "we want to start "conducting sniper operations tonight.

We want to infill as soon as the sun goes down."

And, I told him that I wanted to go all the way up to within about 400 meters of the Old City.

I told him I wanted to go down the other end of the gravesite- graveyard basically and he looked at me and said, "Sergeant, you're going to die."

And I said, "Sir, what are you talking about?"

And he got this thousand- yard stare and he told me about how an M1 Abrams tank with a Bradley behind it had gone down one of these small, funeral roads that runs north to south.

Very narrow road, no room for vehicles to maneuver.

And as it drove down a Mahdi Militia man had jumped from behind a grave onto the top of the tank, had shot the commander and the loader, the two Americans on the top of the tank, and had jumped off the other side of the tank before the Bradley fighting vehicle behind it could engage them and had disappeared.

And, because of that it was almost as though there was a boogeyman out there.

They knew during the day watching them with unmanned aerial vehicles that there were small groups of bad guys out in the city, but they knew that there were more at night.

They were hiding down in the catacombs.

(gunfire) 1ST LT.

MOULTON: Definitely, we definitely got the impression that we were being surrounded.

And that night when we set in for the defense was- was very nerve-wracking.

For a while we had a Spectre Gunship above us, circling around overhead and- and sporadically firing into the cemetery just around us.

And that was an incredible feeling, that was a very comforting feeling.

(artillery fire and explosions) And then a few laters they were gone, and there was this- this awful silence and, you know, you really knew then that you were alone and that you had to absolutely rely on that Marine ten feet away from you in the dark to stay awake and be looking through his night vision goggles to make sure that no one snuck up on us cause it would have been so easy, it would have been so easy.

LT.

COL.

MAYER: 120, 130 degrees, fighting there.

So you're in this- this cemetery made out of- completely out of mortar and construction, it just bakes down there, like an oven.

And the- the tankers- it was so hot; the Marine tanks are not air-conditioned.

And so, because of the heat inside of the tanks, we'd have to rotate them out every hour.

And the Marines were rotated every hour, and the battle lasted for three hours, that they ended up putting the I- IV sleeves in their arms and leavin' them there, where they'd be revived.

And then the Marines would, you know, wake up after 45 minutes, after being refreshed, jump back in the tanks, and go right back into the front lines.

(explosions) 1ST LT.

MOULTON: When I was standing right alongside Lieutenant Sellars, I mean our platoons were right together and- and I guess so some Marines from his platoon it turned out, were- were shouting and I went up to see what was- what was wrong and, one of the Marines had been shot.

He'd been shot through the neck and had bled out.

I guess maybe one of the toughest things was that the Marines that couldn't have been more than 10 feet or 10 or 20 feet to either side of him hadn't seen that he'd been shot.

And so, you know, I guess in those last few moments he died alone and that was- I think that was tough for all of us to see, especially tough.

1ST LT.

CUOMO: When I got back on the 5th, my platoon picked me up the morning of the 5th.

New lieutenant was rotating in.

And I pulled back into our base, battalion XO came running to my hooch.

Said, "Scott get your boys, get in your Humvees and get to Najaf, a Huey just got shot down."

"Roger that sir."

And I turned.

As I was quickly moving towards my vehicle I said, "Sir, do I know what I'm doing, where are we fighting?"

He said, "Just get on the road and drive there.

"You'll figure it out on the way.

Drive until you run into Tiger," who was our tank platoon.

And that'd be almost the equivalent of driving from Quantico to Nor- you know, Southern Maryland.

Just get on 95, there are some bad guys in between.

Find Tiger.

Deal with it.

(road noises) CAPT.

MORAN: Very quickly we were reinforced by an Army- two Army cavalry squadrons.

We also received an Apache helicopter squadron.

So all- all of a sudden within a period of a few days the MEU became this- this joint taskforce.

Army helicopter squadron, two cavalry battalions, our battalion landing team, all on the battlefield, all working, sort of, in this now joint environment which was- which was interesting.

(artillery fire) MASKED INSURGENT SPEAKING: I am from Najaf city.

OK.

I like Ali.

I believe God.

Also you believe God.

If you all believe God, not kill Muslim.

You are not believe God... (insurgents chanting) CAPT.

MORAN: The Mahdi Militia is the- the armed military wing of- of Muqtada al-Sadr's movement.

And when- when- when we were there he was trying to control, the mosque in the city of Najaf because of its religious importance and that I think in turn gave him some political power.

(crowd shouting) LT.

COL.

MAYER: Muqtada al-Sadr is the son of the Imam Sadr, his father, who was killed by Saddam Hussein.

Sadr- Muqtada al-Sadr has a large following, largely due to his father's influence.

Muqtada also has a large following of young, military-age Shia who follow his kind of hot brand rhetoric that he puts out against the coalition efforts and against the current Iraqi government.

SOLDIERS: Said there's four people in the house... (explosion) OK, back it up, back it up... LT.

COL.

KELLEY: We were told you can target anybody in that organization except Sadr and so what happened is, as it normally happens with Special Forces, our intelligence does not normally come from some spy satellite or something like that, it- it comes from ground level.

The teams who are out there living throughout Iraq in different areas, they have ground truth, they work with the Iraqis in that area and they- they develop most of the targets.

(commotion) I was able to tell the battalion, "Go after Sadr's lieutenants," and their scouts developed the targets.

(crashing sounds) (soldiers shouting) (gunfire) SOLDIER: Hey, is that room locked?

SOLDIER 2: Yeah.

LT.

COL.

KELLEY: That gave a signal to the other lieutenants, "Okay, we're fair game" and they went on the run.

They went in hiding and Shibani, who was Sadr's number two man, worked his way down to Najaf and was working on getting out of the country, working on escaping to Iran when 512, Captain Tarlavsky's team, developed very good information using their scouts on where Shibani was, where other Sadr lieutenants were and put together a raid with Iraqi Special Forces led by Americans to take down those lieutenants.

And the result of that was Shibani and 43 other senior Sadr lieutenants and about 50 tons of weapons.

(soldiers shouting) (explosions and gunfire) CAPT.

MORAN: During the middle phase of the battle when were doing these- these many raids into Kufa and parts of Najaf to sort of keep the enemy off balance, one of the raid targets on August 15th was Sadr's house and if he was there, we- we were pretty sure he wasn't, but just gain intelligence, or- or see- see what was in there.

As we went in, we finally got into his house and up to his bedroom were amused to see these iconic American tough-guy actors framed on his dresser.

So there was the Arnold Schwarzenegger photograph, the Clint Eastwood photograph, the Sylvester Stallone photograph, the Indiana Jones photograph.

All these were his, I assume, kind of his personal heroes that he had adopted from American culture.

(Sadr speaking) (chanting) (Sadr speaking) LT.

COL.

MAYER: Here you have a site, the Imam Ali Shrine, that's being held hostage by Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Militia.

You want to get rid of the- the terrorists, so to speak, but you don't want to harm the hostage.

In this case, it's a shrine that's important to the Islam faith.

And so, it puts the Marines in a very tough situation.

How do you get rid of the bad guys without destroying the hostage?

1ST LT.

CUOMO: Colonel Mayer will tell you, he- he emphasized very strongly and it paid huge dividends, not just for the MEU and BLT but for, I would argue, our entire strategic mission, in the long war, not just Iraq.

He came down, "Scott, your platoon will not shoot the mosque."

"Yes sir."

"Do not shoot the mosque."

"Yes, sir."

"Scott, do not shoot the mosque."

"Yes, sir."

OFFICER: (indistinct) speed of departure since we wish not to die in this man's company.

We will return safely tomorrow morning.

Who will rouse himself every year on that day.

Show his neighbors his scars and tell him (indistinct) stories of all their great feats of battle.

And these stories you will teach your son.

And from this day, until the end of time, we shall be remembered.

ALL IN UNISON: We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

Whoever sheds his blood with me shall forever be my brother.

OFFICER: And those men too afraid to go, will think themselves lesser men, as they have heard how we have fought and died together.

OFFICER: Alpha!

MARINES: Radiers!

SOLDIER: Go, go, go, go, go.

Move, move, move, move.

(gunfire and explosions) SOLDIER: Okay, roger, Basher, gimme a- you got a visual on those tanks right there?

Yeah, roger, I saw that, too, just to the... 1ST LT.

MOULTON: The gunship came in and, I don't know, I guess I expected to see it shoot a little farther away and it, you know, no kidding, I mean they were, they were dropping those rounds about 50 yards ahead of us.

SOLDIER: Looking a little east of those tanks though, Basher... (gunfire) BASHER: We knew that we weren't to hit the mosque and also we weren't to hit within a certain distance of the mosque, to make sure that our weapons effects didn't hit the mosque.

That's one of the- the great aspects of the gunship is we do fly at an altitude, and our weapons are such that it does engage us to allow precision engagement, I mean, we have the awesome capability that we're flying over, and we can look at it; we see the target and we can say, "We'll shoot that car, and not that car."

(gunfire) We can shoot close to friendly troops and say, "We're shooting within 40 meters of your position.

"We won't hit you, "but we'll kill the guys that are trying to kill you."

(explosion) LT.

GEN.

METZ: We very quickly were beginning to put together a plan that would force the militia out of the Imam Ali Shrine.

Because by that time the- the fights in the- in the cemetery were- were pretty well over and we- we controlled everything outside of the Old City of Najaf.

But essentially we were going to have to deliver the 36th Commandos, Iraqis to go in the Imam Ali Shrine.

So the rehearsals and the- the tactical part of working with the 36th Commandos was the focus of the- of most of the days as we developed that plan.

CAPT.

MORAN: The Old City which was a- a small circular city that surrounded the mosque.

And that circle was only a kilometer across.

So any- any modern weapon on- on the battlefield, and we had many, we had three battalions worth of heavily armed soldiers and Marines.

Any- any weapon could shoot across that kilometer easily.

So the- the- just the geometry of converging three units on a circle, if you think about it, they're all- end up shooting at each other, became just a- a geometric nightmare.

(loudspeaker voice calling people to prayer) (explosions and gunfire) LT.

COL.

KELLEY: This was some of the most compartmented, complex, urban terrain that I have- I have ever seen.

So what was worked out, what was proposed and what was accepted is that our snipers could take the shot as long as they were not- the enemy was not standing in front of or on the Imam Ali Shrine and what- what that did is that very quickly changed the complexion of the battlefield because you went from enemy who had complete freedom of movement anywhere they'd want to go with weapons to enemy who knew that if I'm in the street with a weapon or if I'm standing on a rooftop with a cell phone and binoculars adjusting mortar fire on the Americans, that there's a good chance that I will be killed.

(gunfire) MAST.

SGT.

ERICKSON: The plan was to use my snipers in a overwatch position to cover the Iraqi counterterrorist force and the Iraqi 36th Commandos as they did the final assault on the mosque.

The hard-line fighters, the more experienced ones were going to be right there around the mosque.

That was going to be the final showdown, and we recognized that they outnumbered our Iraqi Commandos a lot.

LT.

COL.

MAYER: We pretty much did what we called squeezing, not a tactical term, not a military term, but we all understood it.

And it was, gradually shrink this exclusion zone around the- around the mosque, so we squeeze 'em- we squeezed the Mahdi Militia further and further inside the shrine.

And once they were completely boxed up in the shrine, we- we would drive and get it so that the Iraqi security forces could then go and clear it of the Mahdi Militia.

And so, only Iraqis would go into the shrine to clear it.

1ST LT.

CUOMO: The rules of engagement, if you call it a giant box around the mosque, as it went day 1, day 2, day 3, it kept getting smaller.

Smaller and smaller and smaller until it was, "Just don't hit the mosque."

LT.

COL.

MAYER: On the night of the 25th, we moved them in towards the mosque in the Old City.

We got to about 500 meters away from the actual gates of the mosque, and there was this line of hotels.

Each hotel was four stories high.

There was four on each side of the road.

That road was the main avenue of approach to bring the Iraqi army up to the- up to the shrine.

That was how we were going to get 'em there.

(gunshot) MAST.

SGT.

ERICKSON: And it turns out the Seals had been playing tag with a enemy sniper team that- obviously very well skilled and- they knew which building the sniper was in, but the sniper also knew which building the Coalition was in and he would shoot holes through the walls to try to hit Coalition soldiers inside this building.

So the- the Seal snipers and the- the Cavalry snipers were actually having to knock holes through multiple walls and get two or three rooms back inside of the building to keep this guy from shooting at 'em.

LT.

COL.

MAYER: The fighting's intense in there.

And the Marines cleared each floor, but down in the basement, the fighters were all pushed down in the basement.

And down there, it became a hand-to-hand fight and it was so close.

1ST LT.

MOULTON: We were clearing out these rooms and- and Lieutenant Schickling's platoon just next to mine, they ran into a bunch of insurgents in the basement.

And PFC Cullenward was at the head of a stack, and- and just at that moment in complete darkness an insurgent just burst out of the room and essentially ran into him and he couldn't get his weapon off so he grabbed his- his bayonet and- and stabbed this guy in the face.

You know, but that's what it came down to.

So you can have all this fancy technology in the world.

I mean you can have 50 yards away a Spectre Gunship shooting 40-milli- millimeter cannon shells to take out in- insurgents that we couldn't see and yet right there and then it came down to, you know, being able to fight a guy to the ground with a knife.

(distant gunfire) LT.

COL.

KELLEY: The enemy was in very large buildings, very compartmented terrain.

And ultimately over time we were able to build a convincing enough picture of what was going on there that you can get permission to drop precision-guided munitions on sites like building three and four across the street from the Imam Ali Shrine.

(explosion) Big risk, but our guys had been in there and they knew that the enemy was in those buildings, was in the subterranean levels under those buildings.

KOTECKI: RPG we recovered during a hotel raid... Charlie Company... fighting hole... possible tunnel...

(soldiers talking) notice the ladder going up to the ground level... (soldiers talking) (traffic sounds, honking) (sirens blaring) 1ST LT.

CUOMO: Somehow the Ayatollah Sistani comes from down south, some convoy with thousands of Shia Muslims and we get, "Hey, the fighting's over."

You know, the Marines said, "What do you mean the fighting's over?

We've been fighting for the last-" "Fighting's done.

"Sadr handed the keys over to Sistani.

We've killed many of his guys, and he's done."

(indistinct sounds) CAPT.

MORAN: Sistani is the Grand Ayatollah of- of Shia Islam so the closest that they have to a pope or- or a unified, unitary-type figure in their religion.

(people chanting) And he arrives with this- this huge procession of people to end the fight.

And he- and he inserts himself between the Coalition and the Mahdi Militia, negotiates with Muqtada al-Sadr, and secures the keys to the Imam Ali Shrine.

So now it is in control of the Grand Ayatollah.

1ST LT.

MOULTON: The next day we woke up and it was a really eerie silence.

I mean this was the center of the- the battle that we had essentially been fighting for the past month and it was just totally silent.

And it was a strange feeling because I think, you know, we had built up to this moment so much that we really wanted to finish the job and we wanted to- to- root- to just take out this militia and be done with it.

And so we weren't happy when the settlement came through.

You know, Najaf got worse quickly thereafter and the militia started coming back into town.

They knew the Marines had left.

And they knew that as much success as we had had in those sh- few short months in building up the Iraqi Security Forces, they weren't ready, they weren't ready yet.

And, and I think we left too soon.

MAJ.

GEN.

SCALES: We didn't have the forces in place to fight against two enemies simultaneously.

We saw our cen- the enemy's center of gravity as being the Sunni insurgency, not the Shias.

And the main thing we needed to do at the time was to quell the Shia insurgency and put them back in the box so that we could turn the majority of our firepower and our attention on the Sunnis.

Because clearly the Sunnis were the greater threat and they needed to be dealt with first.

(engine rumbles) 1ST LT.

GRAPES: Basically, I think that we all thought and felt that it was the worst place in the world.

You know, pretty much the center of all insurgency, corruption, evil plotting and scheming, in all of Iraq.

Every nay- every day all we got was bad news coming out of Fallujah.

We knew that we couldn't go anywhere near it.

All the, you know, enemy's logistics and planning and coordination for their attacks across the country was being conducted in that city.

We wanted to go, I mean, for- for four or five months we were just waiting on the edge of a knife, "When are we gonna get to go and take care of business there?"

(metal clanking) CPL.

BENDER: After the first Fallujah, they knew we were coming back.

They knew the Marine Corps would not take a slap in the face like that.

They were coming back, and that's- they used that time.

They dug trenches.

They fortified houses.

They were ready.

I mean, they were building... a labyrinth of death, basically, for- for the Marines to flow through.

(fighter jet sounds) (singing) (singing) (explosion) (singing) (speaking a foreign language) (speaking a foreign language) BRIG.

GEN.

TOOLAN: He really came out in pre- in living color around June.

And it was almost like, the first fight in Fallujah was like a siren song for the- all insurgents to sort of muster in- in Fallujah.

LT.

GEN.

METZ: The insurgents, Sunni- mainly Sunni, controlled Fallujah.

They- they- they owned terrain.

I mean they- it was their's.

And Zarqawi and- and the Al Qaeda piece began to- to move in and take advantage of that safe haven.

(speaking a foreign language) (screaming) (speaking a foreign language) LT.

COL.

MCCOY: When I went back to the original CP, I was able to see the Nicholas Berg beheading on the video.

It- it just confirms that we're in a f- locked in a fight with a- a murderous enemy that is without honor.

If anything, that just stiffens our resolve to- to keep going after these guys.

I mean, they- they want us dead and- and they mean every word that they say.

LT.

GEN.

METZ: General Casey's challenge was to ensure that the Allawi government was- was in support of an attack in Fallujah because it was clearly going to trigger a- a Sunni reaction.

And I think as the beheadings and the atrocities came out of Fallujah, more and more people realized that Al Qaeda was there, that it was a cancer, that it had to be cut out.

LT.

COL.

BUHL: The plan was to clear from the north, from the high population concentrated areas, push them to the south, which was mo- generally more open terrain; the area known as Queens at the very south end of the city had detached housing.

It was a newer- of newer architecture and construction.

Also the industrial area to the southeast corner of the city.

Again open- characterized by more open terrain, larger, big structures, etc.

This would be an area we could more ya know, apply our combined arms with more effect.

(loudspeaker blares in a foreign language) LT.

GEN.

METZ: I think one of the most successful parts of the operation was a psychological operation which alerted the citizens of Fallujah that they needed for their own safety to be out of the city.

And we estimate of a city of about 300,000 that about 270,00 of 'em left.

Now most people would say that would create a humanitarian problem somewhere, but you gotta understand th- this - the society that exists in Iraq could assimilate over 200,000 people into homes and- and other places and we didn't create the humanitarian problem.

Although that potential was there, we- we planned for it and stored food and comfort items.

(helicopter sounds) (digging sounds) SOLDIER: (laughs) Yeah!

Hells bells!

CPL.

SLAWATYCKI: There's a lot of downtime in war, and, so, you know everything about everybody that you're with, especially the guys you're in charge of, like my team, I knew- I mean, I knew, you know, families, and they knew everything about me, and, yeah, they were, you know, Lance Corporals, and I was a Corporal, but that, a lot of times, that doesn't matter when- when you're there.

SOLDIER: Living the dream, dog, living the dream.

(digging sounds) CPL.

BENDER: These guys were tight-knit, you know, they were- they were together, they were one, and I was this- who's the new guy?

A new guy right before you're- you need to be as be- the best you can be.

And so, when I heard these talks about 70 percent casualties or whatever else, I- you know, I had kind of written myself off.

I said if anybody gets lost in here, it's gonna be an outsider; it's gonna be a new guy.

SOLDIER: I give you Mortimus Maximus!

(laughing, cheering and booing) LT.

COL.

BUHL: Just for a moment today, just enjoy yourselves for a couple of minutes, 'cause after this, it's as deadly serious as it's been for the last five months for this battalion... and all the work that it took to get here.

So God bless all the Charioteers and all of YOU.

Fighting for freedom, freeing this country from the terrorist oppression that we all know too well.

("Eye of the Tiger" song playing on loudspeaker) (distant gunfire) 1ST LT.

GRAPES: The day prior to the assault we spent in the desert about a kilometer north of Fallujah, in some fighting positions we dug in over the night.

And then that morning, I think around 0400, 0500, we got in our column of Humvees and tanks and tracks and they blew a breach lane in the railroad track to the north of the city.

We crossed that breach probably around 0800 and we were in the city and fighting within half an hour.

(engines rumble) CPL.

BENDER: We all loaded up and we're sitting in these tracks, just crammed in there like we always are.

You know tracks are basically like a bulldozer, they can spin on a dime and do a 180, and I remember just spinning the track, the ramp starts dropping, and guys' eyes were wide open.

(gunfire) (shouting) You know, you're wired.

We come up, and we're right beside this house and we're looking down the street, and I think we were just kinda getting our wits about us, and this fireball just explodes right beside us.

This was like a sledgehammer to the chest, and boom, hit this wall.

And I remember kind of shaking my head, and of course you can't hear anything.

You got these guys yelling and it goes from "Hey, Marine, get over here!"

to "Woowooowooo."

Like, you can't- guys are yelling and you just can't hear it because your head's rung.

We didn't understand what had happened.

We thought, you know, a car exploded or whatever it was, and as we pulled guys back into this courtyard, we cleared the first house we were in, you know, our staff sergeant tell us that was a tank.

And we'd never- personally I'd never been that close to a tank when it fired, and we were probably less than six feet from the front of an Abrams main gun.

And it thumped, you know, it rung all of our bells.

(gunfire) LT.

GEN.

NATONSKI: On the peninsula, which was just across the river from the city of Fallujah, we had a- a joint force of- a joint combined force of Marines, soldiers, and the Iraqi 36th Commando battalion move up the peninsula and secure the hospital, which was right across the river.

(vehicle brakes squealing) LT.

COL.

KELLEY: During the first part of Fallujah there had been a lot of very inflammatory news coverage from that hospital and so the plan that we came up with was that Green Berets will lead the Commando Battalion as the first assault, ground assault of the- the larger Fallujah assault.

The first opening action will be the Iraqis liberating the hospital.

And so that- that's what those guys executed.

That's what Mike Manley, that's what the Iraqi commandos executed.

(shouting) (gunfire) MASTER SGT.

MANLEY: The door we came to was locked.

(explosion) We breached that door, got inside and started flowing through the eastern side buildings.

We encountered very few- few people.

We- we did find in the emergency room quite a few, actual doctors and what not.

We picked them up.

We found some seriously wounded individuals.

But on the western side of the building, as we moved around to the- to the western side of the hospital, my guys encountered the bulk of- of the fighters and we found people from, you know, Morocco, Syrians, Lebanese, there was, you know, people from several different countries that we- we found inside the hospital that would obviously supported the fact that foreign fighters were coming in there for the- for the big fight.

(indistinct conversations) LT.

COL.

KELLEY: They had a- a news crew embedded with them and this- this was obviously a very important story.

The fascinating thing to us was, and if you look at the helmet cam video, you can see the television monitors on the hospital.

These guys just assaulted the hospital and they're still clearing it, and on the television monitors you can see Al Jazeera showing them clearing the hospital because the CBS news reporter is beaming his footage back and before he even gets on the air with a report of the assault on Fallujah has finally begun, Al Jazeera grabs his footage off the satellite pipe that it rides on, they slap their take on the story, on what's happening, even though they have no one there reporting, they grab the footage and they're- they are reporting it before CBS even breaks the story.

(soldiers shouting) (gunfire) (indistinct chatter) (gunfire) CPL.

SLAWATYCKI: I believe it was seven battalions pushed in, into the city, into the northern edge of the city, every one of them directly online at the same exact time, from east to west.

And as everybody pushed down, when one got ahead of another, they stopped, waited, held security, and waited for the next one to get online, because as you're jumping from house to house, you have to stay together, or else insurgents will get through and get behind you.

And once that happens, everything is known to go to hell.

SOLDIERS: Breach!

(gunfire) CPL.

SLAWATYCKI: For us, it was clear the building, and then worry about the next one.

Clear the building, and the next one, and the next one, and then hundreds and thousands of 'em after, and the millions of rooms that you end up walking into.

SOLDIERS: Hey someone get behind me!

(gunfire) SOLDIER: Just found a huge cache... It's like 50 120-rounds, various rockets, other mortars, and mortar systems.

(distant gunfire) CPL.

BENDER: The original thoughts of Fallujah was that it was a safe hold for insurgents, and a real hornet's nest in that sense.

But also, it was a- it was a munitions dump.

They had an insane amount of weapons and- explosives there.

They were using it as a storage point, because they knew Americans couldn't touch it before- before the invasion of Fallujah, so they were basically reporting there, filling their trunks up with mines and IEDs, going to outer-lying cities, planting them, and coming back into the city and having a good night's rest, you know?

And so we were running- running across these, and as we cleared houses, even- even though we didn't run to- run into insurgents in every house, we almost- I'd say every fifth house had weapons in it.

(distant gunfire) (door thunks) SOLDIER: Clear.

LANCE CPL.

PANCAMO: We were clearing so many houses a day, I mean, we were clearing I would say up in the double digits at least, houses a day.

It's kind of the same process and sometimes there are people inside and sometimes there's not and it just kind of wears on your mind and body.

(banging and shouting) (explosions) (banging and shouting) CPL.

SLAWATYCKI: We pushed the contact, as a squad, and I- I believe as a platoon, and that was our- our objective was push the contact, keep on moving, keep 'em on their toes.

(footsteps) SOLDIER: Pancamo!

Next time you go into a house by yourself I'm gonna ******* knock you out... Always make sure somebody's behind you, all right?

(door crashes) LANCE CPL.

PANCAMO: My squad we were kind of branded with the whole, like, being a "cowboy," you know whatever, or the name or whatever, because we were- we were kind of reckless.

I wouldn't- I wouldn't say reckless, we were kind of, yeah, we would- I guess I would say reckless.

We were kind of bold.

You know, we were kind of bold with the everything that we did.

(footsteps) CPL.

BENDER: Pancamo and I are looking over some paperwork in one of these rooms, and I'm kind of- he's right in front of me, and we're- we're close, you know, we're kind of face to face looking over this stuff and trying to read, and out of the corner of my eye, I basically see an Iraqi man, you know, we called it a man dress, but the- the average attire for an Iraqi guy is basically a floor-length dress shirt, you know?

And he's got the- the rag around the top- around the top of head or whatever, and he comes in and just- instinctively, you know, you've been in this environment and this mindset for so long that that means danger; that means death in a lot of circumstances.

And I'm- you know, like I said, it was out of the corner of my eye, and I didn't really want to alert him to the fact that I knew he was there, but I just draw fast, I get my 9 mil right here, this- and I pull, aim it, and I'm half squeezing this trigger, I mean, I am- in my mind, he's already dead.

And it's Boloff, and he had thrown this Iraqi attire on, thinking it was funny.

And it really was not funny, especially when you're inside the- the city of Fallujah, so he got body slammed for that one and, I don't know, he just wasn't a very deep thinker, I guess.

(tank humming) (gunfire) MAST.

SGT.

CASTILLO: On the other side of the courtyard they had no eyes, no vis; I did 'cause I was sitting so high, so what I would do is I'd just lean over my machine gun, look over the wall, and if I saw something I'd shoot at it prior to them entering the building or going into that courtyard.

And what was happening was the platoon commander or the platoon sergeant was guiding me on the building they wanted to hit using the grunt phone, a- a box, a- a radio mic that we have on the- on the back of the tank that they used to talk to the tank commander on the inside of the tank.

So they would tell me on the radio, on the hook, "Hey, we want to take this building here on the right side."

And I'd go ahead and prep it for 'em.

I'd- I'd launch a couple of main gun rounds in there (explosion) and then they'd storm in.

(soldiers shouting) (gunfire) CPL.

BENDER: First day's kind of a blur.

I mean, we ran- you're just on pure adrenaline, waitin' for that house.

You know, every house is a potential death trap.

And you know, you always take a deep sigh after the door you- you take is cleared, and- and truthfully, I didn't run that much video on the first day.

I was all about being on the trigger, you know.

(tank humming) MAST.

SGT.

CASTILLO: Unfortunately, when you're in- in battle and every tanker knows this the- the tank pretty much becomes the Port a Potty sometimes, and you have to do your business inside the tank.

And it- it's an awful smell when men haven't showered in days or weeks sometimes, and you know, you just- the body odor, the smell of the- the- the FRH and the hydraulic fluids and the diesel and the oils and your clothes.

And all these things, it just- it reeks really bad sometimes.

So it's just something you get used to, and you just do what you gotta do and toss it in a black bag out of the hatch.

(laughs) (distant gunfire) SOLDIER: Hey, Fitz!

Let's go.

SOLDIER: Let's go Fitz!

SOLDIER: Let's go, let's go, let's go, c'mon, c'mon.

CPL.

BENDER: I guess towards the end of the day we ended up, in a position a lot of guys, or some guys refer to as the Alamo.

It was a giant schoolhouse, kind of a center point, in- in the Jolan district for our push, anyway.

(footsteps) CPL.

PIANO: I believe 3rd platoon was off to one of our flanks and they were getting some serious contact.

And we had- my platoon was in the schoolhouse, the Alamo, and we were just getting mortared, RPGs, small-arms fire from everywhere.

SOLDIER: Did you get an ID on that shooter from the mosque?

(gunfire) (gunfire) (explosion) SOLDIER: You blew that bitch in half!

CPL.

SLAWATYCKI: They pretty much came out of the woodwork like rats, I mean, we had mortars coming in, being shot at on a consistent basis; what we did is, initially, to set up a consolidation point, and keep pushing, we set ourselves up in a- in a building, and- not so much trapped ourselves, but, we were a target, and for that day and night, there was a lot of fightin' going on.

(gunfire) CPL.

BENDER: To sum it up, it was- we were in one position way too long, and more Marines kept showing up, and we -- it was the only secure building in that area of the city, but at the same time, the insurgents had known we'd been there for hours, and I think higher ups will even tell you that it was- it was a nerve-testing time, you know?

I heard lieutenants screaming at each other and dropping the F-bomb every other word.

I mean, they were- they did not want to be there.

They really wanted to move, but we couldn't because we had a platoon behind us, and we had to stay online.

(gunfire) CPL.

SLAWATYCKI: I can't see, I don't have any windows.

CPL.

SLAWATYCKI: I looked at it more like, you know, you just gotta do what you gotta do to help your friends, you know, to help your fellow Marines.

You know, I wasn't worried about, you know, getting shot or getting wounded, or anything like that, or having something drastic happen to me, I was- I was worried about the guys to my left and right.

(distant gunfire) CPL.

BENDER: That's kind of how things were.

There's intense moments, and then there's hanging out, you know, and so for that point, I'm trying to switch tapes around and get my camera ready to roll for what's coming next, trying to take advantage of the time that we had, and- and I get my camera slapped- slapped back together, I'm ready to roll, and Piano now is- he's ducking and he's- ducking and dodging bullets, and it's- it's kinda weird, because most of the other Marines were drinking water, and kind of on standby.

We're waiting for word from staff sergeant.

(gunshots) (indistinct chatter) (gunshots) CPL.

SLAWATYCKI: One insurgent popped up and we fired, myself and Corporal Piano fired shots at him, and at this point we had only saw him very briefly, we weren't sure, and I actually asked, I believe I asked Lance Corporal Pancamo, I'm like, "Did I get him?"

Yeah, I wasn't exactly sure at this- at that point, so, he dropped down, and the next thing I remember seeing was a glint of a rifle, and shots were fired.

CPL.

BENDER: 'Brrrrrrrat,' like an AK buzz, you know?

And he just- I can remember it, you know, it was like a freeze frame in my mind, and you see- his Kevlar is like this, and you see, 'thonk!'

and I'm behind him, and I just see this dust 'ptoo!'

like puff out of his Kevlar, and you just get this sick feeling in your stomach, you know?

He- his rifle- he takes it like this, and- you know, you're never supposed to drop your rifle, and even when he gets thumped in the head, and Piano like, takes his rifle and sets it down and like- kind of like lays it on the ground as he's falling.

CPL.

SLAWATYCKI: I stood up and started firing two or three grenades, and also shots in the area, second platoon can confirm that they had found the insurgents, and Corporal Piano was on the ground.

CPL.

BENDER: Thump right through there, the round- the round went in and came out the back of the Kevlar.

So he should have been a goner.

You know, the docs were there with us, and everybody's- we thought he was dead, you know?

We figured we'd pull off his Kevlar and there'd be a mess of brains in there, and he'd be done, you know?

And he walked out of there.

And you know, Tycki will tell you he kept repeating things like, "Tycki, you got the squad," you know, he's- he's trying to- he knows he's gone, he knows he's out of the fight, but he wants- he wants us to be successful.

(gunfire) CPL.

PIANO: What really got to me when I got to the train station, what I was very upset with and like, I still regret it to this day was- I don't know about other wounded Marines but, if you get wounded you feel as if you failed.

You are trained not to get wounded.

It's just a- a failure, you feel like a failure.

I feel I let my Marines down.

CPL.

SLAWATYCKI: Immediately I took over the squad, became squad leader, made Lance Corporal Pancamo my first team leader, and right after that we had left the schoolhouse, and began to push south again, as if nothing happened.

But we- it was- the mindset changed.

He was the first one in our squad to get seriously wounded, and the mindset changed immediately.

And from then on out, I'll have to say, honestly, in my personal opinion, it wasn't just- just another battle that you happen to be in that you train for, it definitely became a personal situation, for myself, because that was bad day for the whole company and the battalion, we lost a lot of guys that day.

(heavy gunfire) (soldiers talking) (heavy gunfire) (soldiers talking) (heavy gunfire) LT.

COL.

BUHL: The further south we advanced, the more determined the resistance got.

And particularly Queens, the very southernmost neighborhood in that city, fanatical resistance.

And one might say well it's natural, you're pushing them against what, in this case really was the wall behind them.

Because we had the entire city cordoned and there was nowhere for them to go.

LT.

GEN.

NATONSKI: We had instances where the enemy would wave a white flag and then shoot American forces nearby.

We saw insurgents playing dead and then picking up rifles and firing on our forces.

They were using drugs.

Many had been high on amphetamines and other types of narcotics.

You could shoot em', and they would continue to attack.

(crickets chirping) CPL.

BENDER: We had a patrol on foot and we're coming through these streets, it's really eerie because, you know, minutes ago we were shooting at guys in these buildings that we're walking right beside now, and it's dark, and like I said, night vision is tough to deal with in that scenario.

And we hear this rustling, and somebody points their taclight over, and you see this insurgent that had been shot crossing the street, and then a cat pounced on top of him, pulling tendons out of his leg.

You know, this is- this guy got shot maybe six hours ago, and these feral cats and dogs, it's a heyday for them.

I mean, they're already setting in.

Once the sun goes down, the smorgasbord starts.

LT.

COL.

BUHL: We found a number of torture chambers replete with all the things you'd expect, bloody knives, saws, hooks, fingernails, scratches into the cement.

We- we found the room that the British citizen who had been beheaded, was- was detained inside, was tortured in.

And- and the picture had his face and his hands on the bars and we had the very same room with the exact bars, with the same markings on it, etc.

(whirring sound) MAST.

SGT.

CASTILLO: The smell was horrendous.

I just- the smell of death in the air, and when you- when you don't- when you've never experienced something like that, it's something that'll never leave your mind because it's just- the destruction is- is just horrible.

The smell is horrible.

It's just- it's an experience that you have to live to really truly understand and get a feeling of.

LT.

COL.

BUHL: One of our young Marines noticed fresh feces at an outhouse outside the- this particular structure that later became known as the "Hell House" and reported it on his platoon radio, alerted people that he was investigating it.

A fire- reinforced fire team, part of a squad, entered the house and immediately encountered enemy inside.

1ST LT.

GRAPES: What they didn't know was, besides the man who was standing in that living room shooting at them directly, and besides the man that was in the first room that they had already killed, there was two fighters who were in an elevated position in that living room, which is kind of- just like in the States, right in the middle of the house, so all the other rooms are kind of adjoining off of this one central location.

LT.

COL.

BUHL: This was pre- precisely one of these situations where, in this case the insurgents remained very quiet, hidden, and didn't advertise their position and- and in fact that's what we saw also as we advanced south was that the insurgents were less willing to- to engage us as we approached, but would wait until we physically entered the homes to fight as close as possible to negate our combined arms advantages.

1ST LT.

GRAPES: So I arrived about twenty minutes- fifteen minutes after this fight had begun, and it was at- I guess I would call it a bit of a stalemate.

And the reason I say a stalemate is because: wounded Marine inside, Staff Sergeant Chandler organizes a rescue party.

They run in the room, try and shoot everything that they- that moves so they can pull this Marine out.

Soon as they run in, what did the enemy do?

They're smart, they throw grenades in the room.

As they walk in the room, they blow up, and now I've got two more Marines wounded.

The other two wounded Marines fall into the kitchen, and they're trapped in this kitchen.

So now I've got four Marines trapped in the house, because no one can go in this living room without getting blown up.

Another rescue party goes in, led by a Corporal, Corporal Wolf goes in with a Sergeant and they try and go in, Corporal Woof- Wolf gets shot in his flak jacket, falls on the floor, Sergeant Byron Norwood gets shot in the head, killed, instantly.

LT.

COL.

BUHL: Then First Sergeant Brad Kasal realizes that there are men in- in extremis hurt.

He can hear the screams.

He enters the house.

He grabs Marines nearby, takes them in with him, begins to develop the situation inside the house and in the process of maneuvering to an empty room engages and kills a man at close quarters and is wounded in the process by a enemy above him.

And in fact he and his partner, his- his buddy Lance Corporal Nicolls, both are stitched down their legs with AK-47 fire.

1ST LT.

GRAPES: These guys are in a very good position, the- the enemy.

There was very- not a very easy way to get to them, and at the same time, all of the- these rooms- this- this structure's very solid.

You know, the- the construction in Iraq is very sturdy- steel rebar, reinforced concrete, and sometimes triple-layer brick.

You couldn't shoot a missile through some of these walls.

And so we couldn't bring any heavy weapons to bear, couldn't bring any grenades to bear, because we had too many of our own men wounded on the inside.

So basically all we could use was our hands and our guns.

So another Marine, PFC Boswood and myself, started taking the sledgehammer to the steel grate of this window.

LT.

COL.

BUHL: So the lieutenant goes in without their protective vests and plates on etc., through the bars of a window that they managed to pull aside.

This all in extremis.

There's firing going on, there are grenades being thrown in the house, there's groups of Marines separated and trapped by this very effective defense scheme.

And Grapes goes in with Boswood, they identify the threat above them, they work out a situ- a scenario to- to suppress the enemy above them.

1ST LT.

GRAPES: We got four or five guns pointed up at these positions, and just like you'd imagine, with a countdown, "Okay, you ready?"

"I'm not sure."

(laughs) You know, "Okay, we're gonna go on three," you know, "Make sure you don't run in front of our guns, because we're gonna be shooting," and- and the old, "Ready, set, go!"

And then we start unloading on these guys upstairs, and these two selfless Marines, run across this kill zone, not once, not twice, but four times to pull Marines out of there.

And we had some Marines in some pretty bad situations; Lance Corporal Nic- or PFC Nicoll was bleeding really bad from his leg; First Sergeant Kasal was carried out by those two Marines who weren't carrying any weapons, but still holding his weapon, ready to fight.

And they were in bad shape.

So we had to get them out of there as quickly as possible, but we still had these two guys in the- in the house.

And they weren't going anywhere, and we weren't going anywhere until the job was done.

LT.

COL.

BUHL: They managed to get everybody out of the house alive and Byron, they managed to get Sergeant Norwood out of the house and then they drop the house.

1ST LT.

GRAPES: So we let the- the smoke clear, and we- we take a walk over to make sure that there's- there's nothing left to be done, and as we approach, we see two of these guys hanging out of the- the rubble, from their waist up, and we assume that they're dead.

I mean, we just think that they logically would be dead.

And I'll never forget this French photographer, he says, "Hey, one of these guys is moving."

And he and I and John got up close and look at the guy, and as we got within three, four feet of him, he has his arm kind of, you know, held to his chest like this, flings a grenade at us with his last breaths of life, right at our feet- we turned, all seven of us, you know, run for- for cover, grenade blows up behind us, we turn around and- and you know, fired on- on both of them.

And then we went up and finished them off and went back to- to our base.

LT.

COL.

BUHL: They're asking after their buddies.

That's all they're asking.

"How is... How is Kasal?"

"How's Nicoll doing?"

That's all they ever asked.

"Do I have to leave?

Do I have to be medivac'd?"

"You're going to be okay, and yes, "doc says you've got to go.

"We'll see you.

We'll see you, you know, as soon as you get better."

You always want to reassure these men that they've done their duty and... oh gosh I thought I- I didn't think I'd have a problem here.

You always want to reassure them and you want to try to do that before they get their medication so they remember it because that memory is seared into their- into their soul.

They- they never forget it.

None of us do.

1ST LT.

GRAPES: In a rifle platoon, to lose almost all of your leadership in one battle, that just doesn't happen.

I mean, we were almost depleted in strength by a third in an hour and a half span, and you know, we had all been working together for years, and you know, we're just sitting back there at our base, like I said, decompressing and- and just reflecting, saying, "I can't believe that we were just involved in that.

I can't believe I'm still alive, involved in that."

And I think one of the Marines just said, "Yeah, that was hell."

And they just started calling it the "Hell House."

And it was, so the name just stuck.

CPL.

PIANO: I remember saying something to Captain Clark at one point, when he was a captain then, major now, he said something about them.

Because one of my friends just got killed and I said something to him and he was like, that's the hardest thing about fighting this enemy is they're not afraid to die, which was very, very true.

If they are not afraid to die then, how do you fight 'em?

1ST LT.

GRAPES: What our enemies respect over there is not candy and soccer balls; they respect the hammer, and- and we gave it to 'em in Fallujah.

And- and that's why they haven't replicated that again in the country.

Certainly there's fighting going on throughout Iraq; certainly there are ambushes and IEDs and things like that going on everywhere, but that's the reason why soldiers and Marines are so frustrated, because it's not the combat they trained for, there's no honor in it.

There's no pride in it with your enemy.

You don't respect them.

In Fallujah, I can honestly say, well, certainly we don't agree with their political ideo- ideology or their religious ideology.

We respected the fact that they stood there and faced us and fought us.

(gunfire) (explosions) CPL.

SLAWATYCKI: We ended up consolidating the platoon and got in a- a patrol formation, and we had these personal radios, the PRRs, and I believe it was Corporal Bryan from- from third squad comes over the radio and starts singing Mickey Mouse.

And if you've ever seen the movie "Full Metal Jacket," when they're in Hu City at the very end, they all- moving with- through the buildings at night singing Mickey Mouse.

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E Mickey Mouse!

Mickey Mouse!

Mickey Mouse!

Mickey Mouse!

Forever let us hold our banner high High!

High!

High!

Boys and girls from far and near You're welcome as can be M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E CPL.

SLAWATYCKI: It was just like one of them moments in life that I'll always look back on, like, you know, I- I guess you could- you could say war is hell, and you know, bad things happen and stuff like that.

I mean, we lost a lot of friends, a lot of people got wounded, but at that moment n- nothing else mattered because you were- you were with friends that you have for life, and you're walking through a place that you just did something that, you know, will be everywhere, will- will live on, and it'll always be remembered, and you can laugh and joke at the same time.

WEST: I don't think that we should call it a victory.

And because the whole episode if you look at the six months, if anything gave solace to the enemy in saying, "Well, the Americans don't have it all together.

They don't finish a fight."

And even when we finished the second fight in Fallujah, the American high command was so concerned with the physical damage done that there was no pursuit of the enemy and the enemy was allowed to scatter to other towns.

LT.

COL.

BUHL: We bought some time after Fallujah 2.

If- if- you know, and you're- you're told never to speculate, "Stay in your lane Lieutenant Colonel Buhl."

But if I were to speculate, this was our moment, this would have been a moment for us to surge.

At this moment in time we had the insurgency in the Al Anbar Province flat on- that we had them on their back.

We truly did.

(soldier speaking indistinctly on intercom) LT.

GEN.

METZ: The enemy is always gonna go, like most things do in nature to where there's the least resistance.

As an example, I don't think the enemy's going to go try to challenge us in the deep blue sea or the light blue sky.

I mean our wonderful Naval forces and Air forces will prohibit any enemy from- from re-entering those domains.

He's going to go to jungles and to mountains and to urban environments where it's very, very hard.

The enemy will make it a- a boots on the ground intensive fight and we gotta expect it.

He's not gonna try to fight us where we're dominant.

He's gonna fight us where we're weak.

(tank rumbles) LT.

COL.

MCCOY: Despite all the technology that we had, it came down to men going to the sound of guns, in that cauldron where- where human wills clash, where the metal meets the meat.

And those with the- the best training win.

At the end of the day, all the metal and guns in the world don't- aren't worth, you know, three squads of- of Marines that are willing to do the work with rifle, bayonet and grenade.

MAST.

SGT.

ERICKSON: Foreign policy, I don't make it, I just deliver the last 600 meters of it.

SOLDIER: We got a red platoon directly in front of us, sir.

Can't see anything really.

But we haven't seen anything for a while.

We've got two people on the bridge.

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SOLDIER 2: Okay, as soon as this last big rig goes we're gonna start backing you guys up and getting out of the way (indistinct) over.

SOLDIER: Roger that.