Shootout Fallujah

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it is the deadliest house-to-house street brawl since weigh City Vietnam for six battalions of us soldiers and Marines it is the fight of their lives armed Iraqi insurgents hide in the corners of houses waiting for the perfect shot here now our first-hand accounts of close quarters combat of the scariest kind many of them never before told shootout d-day Fallujah in the words of one marine in Fallujah isn't hell it's in the same zip code Iraq capital city Baghdad 35 miles west Fallujah November 17 2004 3 p.m. private Shawn Stokes of third Battalion first Marine Regiment is eager to call it a day he's been acting as point man for his fire team since early this morning Stokes 50 man platoon like every other Marine unit in Fallujah is on a Search and Destroy mission searching houses to find and kill Iraqi and other Arab extremists who are armed and deadly today as point man it's Ben Stokes job to enter each house first and it's like playing Russian roulette most houses are empty but when insurgents occupy one there's usually a machine gun barrel inside trained at the front door every house they walk up down saying a prayer like give me get me out of this one more please you know come out light up a cigarette thank you go to the next one so we're going most of the insurgents especially in the southern section of the city are foreign fighters and they're here to die so they have no plans to run when the Marines come knocking they've come to Fallujah to martyr themselves and to take as many Americans with them as possible these are guys who were experts at their profession they were true warriors from Chechnya from Yemen Sudanese and Iraqi former Republican Guard guys they knew what they were doing they knew how to use weapons they understood the principles of an ambush really good fighters they're also quite dangerous as a strategy to defeat the US troops excellent body armor the insurgents take aim directly at their faces they stayed in the house as there were like spiders and they just waited for the perfect face shot after a stress filled day Stokes and his fellow Marines reach the last small neighborhood block in their sector everything seemed totally quiet you know just like every other time I got ambushed I went into the house step into the main hallway one door to my direct left was a metal black door with no light and I looked at and got the chills and was like we're doing that one last Stokes and his other team members clear all but the last two rooms with no sign of trouble as they approach the second-to-last room immediately adjacent to the metal door the lucky streak ends the number two man behind me started firing the door next to me he later told me that there was an ache a barrel about knee level they slowly came out of the door and was a me up in my back just after the gunfire erupts Stoke season insurgent roll a grenade into the hallway and slam the door shut again it blew up in between all of us no one really got bad we all took a few pieces shot and all is no big deal just days earlier Stokes had taken a small piece of shrapnel in the elbow when a grenade exploded near him in an alley it feels like a bee sting but with all the adrenaline going - you really feel it you just feel the weight of it hitting and the kind of sends no snares the hair in the back your neck stand up cuz you're like how about of my head now the Marines decide there's no need to hang around we all start screaming you know get out of the house we're gonna have the tank take down the house so we don't lose any Marines we have no idea what's in that room this is all the first one and I was lost him out and I turned to run out and right as I turn they roll another grenade out and I was right at my feet I turned to run I turned my head like this and my stick my hand out and it blows up and throws me down the hall the blast hurls Stokes six or seven feet the spike is weight of some 240 pounds with full combat gear miraculously he's still alive I was ridiculously dizzy but Stoke still manages to bring his assault rifle into action as insurgents spill out of the room and open fire I was another hallway and I opened the door and I started knocking him down they came out Stokes is now alone in the house with the insurgents and he's trapped there is an exit door in a room behind him but it's held fast by two large padlocks the only way out of the house is past the insurgents and the stunned Marine can't even stand up straight I got up tried to run out and fell down cuz I think it was like run around in circles it gets worse his ammo magazine is almost dry there's no time to change it so he starts prepping a hand grenade fire my last three rounds click the save off was about to thaw they came suddenly with a thunderous crash Stokes fire team leader Lance Corporal Keith Kramer sails through the locked door at the end of the hall he like took like a 15-foot running start and like bulldoze the door down and go to frame the door and like picking up at the same instant a Marine machine gunner appears in the doorway and opens fire to suppress the insurgents while Stokes reaches safety Stokes fireteam leader helps him outside and checks his condition amazingly there are no deep wounds and the front of his body is virtually free of shrapnel when I turned my back was covered with it might the rocket I had in my back had a bunch of bigger pieces stuck in it but there's something in front of me invisible all people praying from Becca huh within minutes an m1 Abrams tank arrives and eviscerates the house later found out there was eight Jennings in there and thought had gone that room first I wouldn't be here enough ultimately Shawn Stokes most severe injury from his brush with the insurgents is a level two concussion caused by the grenade blast yet despite his pain he's back with his unit clearing houses three days later the Stokes episode is a humbling tale of physical courage and fortitude both on the part of Stokes himself and his fire team leader Lance Corporal Cramer but what may be even more remarkable is that such incidents are nothing less than commonplace and the hellish two-week slugfest dubbed the fight for Fallujah unfortunately many of the Marines and soldiers in the innumerable bloody shootouts will not survive to recount their extraordinary deeds the trouble in Fallujah isn't new Fallujah in itself was a city of 300,000 that the 20th century had passed by situated on the Euphrates River 35 miles west of Baghdad Fallujah was once an important trading port then Saddam Hussein built a highway system across Iraq reducing the need for river trade Fallujah became a backwater often called the city of mosques because of its many Muslim houses of worship Fallujah has long been home to Iraqi extremists so in the months following Operation Iraqi Freedom the city becomes a natural gathering point for anti-american militants both famous of which is terrorist leader Abu Musab al-zarqawi kidnappings and publicized beheadings quickly become commonplace in Fallujah and the city slowly becomes the center of gravity for Iraq's insurgency fallujah became a rallying cry more and more foreign fighters went down with it was called the ratline all the way from Syria 100 kilometers away into the city in April 2004 after four American contractors are shot mutilated and hung from a trestle bridge over the Euphrates River the US High Command sends in the Marines but they're soon called off due to international pressure in the months that follow Fallujah becomes a festering sore wasn't just a local bastion of insurgency it was a an area where terrorists were being trained and resourced and equipped finally in November after many more well-publicized atrocities at the hands of Zarqawi in company the Marines are ordered into Fallujah once again this time with the assurance that they'll be allowed to completely take the city the plan for taking Fallujah calls for both marine and army units here's the set up tanks and armored vehicles will cordon off the city to prevent insurgents from escaping and to cut off enemy resupply and reinforcements then six battalions of Marines and soldiers will launch an attack on the north side of the city and push south hopefully driving insurgents believed a number in the thousands into a kill zone at Fallujah southern limit 3rd battalion 1st Marines will drive the main effort on the west side of town prying the enemy out of the infamous jolin neighborhood the jalan is in the city's north western sector and is the suspected nerve center for insurgent command and control at the center of town 1st battalion 8th Marines will drive the main thrust taking the mayor's complex at the heart of the city it's a concise plan and a formidable assault force but the insurgents have a few surprises up their sleeves and some advantages of their own they had the benefit of knowing the terrain they had caches they had areas where they were moving falling back to they had sniper positions the enemy has also booby-trapped much of the city with improvised explosive devices IEDs and cut the walls full of Mouse holes so they can move from one building complex to another without being seen when they went in the second time they had given away six months to the insurgents to build up and it was one heck of a street battle in in November November 8 2004 601 p.m. one mile north of Fallujah Iraq get song the planning is over six US assault battalions crossed their line of departure company commanders are stressed but ready privates mouths are dry but their weapons are well-oiled locked and loaded the violent urban assault and the insurgent bastion of Fallujah is launching its way into history November 9 2004 10:00 a.m. Battle of Fallujah day one six battalions of US soldiers and Marines have chiseled a foothold into the north side of the city and are pushing southward in a hurry overall intent was just to push on the insurgents further further south just picking them off as it come out for weeks US forces have been warning the citizens of Fallujah that an attack was coming the insurgents left in Fallujah are there because they want to kill US troops virtually everybody I saw was we've tried to shoot or what should be nice so I've made it very clear the enemy in Fallujah is a jumble of foreign fighters and former Republican Guardsmen so there's no standard uniform among them they're wearing regular civilian clothes a lot of them were wearing special tennis shoes which scream foreign fighter or insurgent in Fallujah oddly most insurgents do not carry a specific personal weapon instead their strategy is to plant weapons caches all over the city from which they can take their pick based on need now weapons cache consists of RPG rockets maybe a dragon off sniper rifle ak-47s grenades and they would be stashed in quarters of rooms they were able to move around very lightly by dropping their weapons and then falling back to another weapons cache a-and firing on us again but possibly the greatest threat to US forces is not the insurgents weaponry it's their willingness to die most insurgents are eager to die for what they believe will be a reward in the afterlife and as a means to muster the courage to sacrifice themselves many are high on narcotics like liquid adrenaline which gives them an almost superhuman capacity to withstand pain the amount of drug use was very very high and I could go into story after story where the Marines would shoot somebody and he would continue to move on to circumstances that were incredible unless there was something else going on in his body as US troops battle into the city this morning tanks and armored vehicles blast their way through the streets dislodging less resolute fighters while Marines on foot follow in the Tracie's systematically clearing buildings and killing diehards Felucia architecture is unusual by Western standards and makes locating and trapping insurgents difficult usually one the three-story houses most of the houses looked alike most houses had a six to eight foot concrete wall to surmount of their house and may be joined a couple houses with it with a gate and then a little courtyard with rooftops that had walls so that you could be on the roof and maybe not be observed very thick very tough buildings as day one of fallujah wears on urban combat begins to prove far more stressful than many young Marines had imagined it's chaotic it's deafening crebbil Wow there's the 3d aspect of it sometimes a sub training aspect covered below ground you gotta look up sideways you've got all the windows all the rooftops can't keep out on all of them even though even if everyone is doing that job as I was possibility that someone's gonna miss one area fly split second and I saw their take slow so I wanna get hit and since the enemy is most often hidden in buildings and out of the direct line of rifle fire the hand grenade soon emerges as the favored weapon I'll either hopefully kill them or or it'll stun them long enough for you to make entry and assess the situation from there US troops pressed forward clearing buildings in the northern half of the city until sundown at which point most insurgent fire seems to quiet for the evening so both marine and army units take the opportunity to settle into secure areas to eat refit and rest in shifts if today's fight was an indicator tomorrow the Americans will need all the energy they can muster Battle of Felucia day tune in the pre-dawn hours of November 10th the second full day of the fight captain Aaron Cunningham's Alpha Company 1st battalion 8th Marines seizes the mayor's complex the governmental compound in the heart of Fallujah at sunup holding the complex translates to 30 hours of intense fighting at one point in the battle then corporal timothy connor squad makes its way up a rickety ladder to a rooftop they immediately find themselves under fire from distant upper storey windows the squad members hid their backs to take cover behind a short wall bordering the roof notice a serious type of fire they're shooting at us shooting at us and finally we decided to send isn't the best place to be because we're very exposed the squad is about to make a break for it when a sniper zeroes in on them rounded right next to us right between us and one of the guys on the roof with us said I saw where it came from and always laying on our backs and as far backs this guy goes where to come from because I we all pointed like right over there right over there about 300 meters the Marine who asked about the snipers location readies his m203 grenade launcher at just over 300 yards it won't be an easy shot but the lives of his fellow Marines depend on it so this guy from this back didn't even look at the building shot it i sat up and watched it and that thing went right in the window that's the most amazing play of scene but even after this incredible 300 yard shot the coast still isn't clear a second sniper is landing rounds dangerously close to the squad and to further complicate matters corporal Connors is holding an 84 shoulder-fired rocket he's already armed and made ready to fire it's like holding a grenade with the pin already pulled he can't run with it but if the squad stays port it's just a matter of time before a well-aimed sniper round playing soft flesh November 10 2004 3 p.m. Battle of Felucia day three in the mayor's complex at the center of town a sniper has Marines pinned down on a low rooftop the squad needs to make a run for it but corporal timothy Connors has already armed an 84 shoulder-fired rocket it's like holding a grenade with the pin pulled it's just too hazardous to run with an 18-4 isn't the most accurate weapon at long distances but Connors finally tries to hit the snipers window so I'll land down and we start discussing how we're going to do this I told they're gonna give me cover fire I'm gonna pop up I'm gonna shoot it then after as soon as we shoot it we're all gonna do this we have three smoke grenades when I throw the smoke grenades then we're all going to get off the building so it's kind of like a movie scene kind of y'all sitting down we talked we go one two and everyone set up and just started firing I shot the 84 one right in the window they'll pop smoke through the smoke at the same time let it billow up a little and we all took off the roof by the afternoon of the 11th the Marines have secured the mayor's complex and are prepared to cross highway 10 the main east-west route that bisects Fallujah alpha company's first Platoon commanded by second lieutenant Elliot Ackerman is closest to the highway so Ackerman gets the order to make the crossing first the lieutenant picks out a building 300 yards south of the mayor's complex then orders up supporting orders aerial bombers and artillery to Previn hopefully killing anyone inside the platoon will make the actual crossing sometime after midnight the insurgents will engage us at night they didn't want to show their positions for some whatever reasons things were always quiet at night so we moved out under cover of darkness and everything was quiet but when Ackerman's platoon reaches the building there's a problem our supporting arms is such an effective job that it in effect caved in parts of the buildings and the building was now unoccupied he can occupy it I was in the dilemma was either a little bit farther south than we wanted to go or go back which just wasn't an option so we found a good building that was about 200-300 metres south of the mayor's complex it's somewhat isolated the building is a sort of Iraqi 7-eleven type kwikmart and the platoon quickly dubs it the candy store it was a strong position that we could occupy and hold that multitude moved in there we were ready to go by around 4:30 that morning Felucia day 5 when the Sun peeks over the horizon roving groups of insurgents have no idea that Marines have moved into their territory overnight they were crossing our road not realizing at this point that our platoon had moved significantly south of the company's last position so we were able to observe them on command the Marines open fire we were able to engage several three to five man surgeon teams crossing the street to great effect and until the number of them but as the morning wears on the insurgents begin to rounded they pinpointed our position and they managed to basically move in between us and the company and all around us to the south west and east so we were surrounded at that point despite the surging intensity of the fight the platoon is organized itself to hold out for some time I'd have one squad up in the fighting position two squads down the basement resting refitting and they would run shifts up to the fighting positions the reason we only run one squad up there's the more bodies you have up in the higher occupy positions the more chance there is for a lucky RPG shot or something in that nature to take out a huge number of the Marines late in the morning an enemy sniper gets an angle on a cluster of Ackerman's Marines through a window of the candy store sniper took one shot and barely grazed a helmet on my dad my platoon started to saw what was going on knocked my guide out of the way immediately after that I would - sorry was shot in the head through his helmet survived but was pretty much knocked knocked down tried to get up and after that couldn't feel his arms or his legs was taken out a fight third shot rang out hit one of my machine gunners I machine gunner ever got a bead on the insurgent figured out exactly where he was and refused medical care and telphy fired about 20 to 30 rounds from his machine gun to the insurgent position the sniping instantly ceases but soon an order comes over the radio for the Marines to move out Ackerman's platoon is to link up with the rest of the company fighting its way south for the embattled Marines this will be no easy task there was only one doorway into the candy store and that was on the western side of the candy store I remember sticking my head out that door when that was gonna be the only way we could get out of there and on our PKA she got head we call grazing fire just a beam straight down that road and just a huge rate of fire and bullets were kicked up dirt whew all the young lieutenant knows as Marines have to move but if they charged into the hail of bullets they'll be cut to bits November 12 2004 11 a.m. Battle of Fallujah day 5 just south of the mayor's complex at the center of town lieutenant Elliot Ackerman's 1st platoon of Alpha Company 1st battalion 8th Marines is surrounded last night they crept south into enemy territory and took up fighting positions in a storefront Ackerman's Marines took the insurgents by surprise this morning and have been defending their position ever since in many ways we believed that they were finally standing up and fighting and we were in some ways right where we wanted to be but now lieutenant Ackerman has gotten an order to pull his platoon out of their defensive position and to link up with the rest of the company fighting its way south the problem is the stores only exit is under heavy machine-gun fire unwilling to hurl his Marines into the storm of bullets Ackerman comes up with another plan he decides to make his own exit he orders an engineer to pack c4 plastic explosives at the base of an exterior wall y'all move to the west side of the building the charge was set on the east side the building throughout the eastern wall the billing we were in and all came basically assaulting out the eastern side of the building lieutenant Ackerman's platoon escapes the building only to charge down an alleyway and into another nasty shootout it's a sign of what's in store for all US assault forces crossing into the southern half of Fallujah over the next few days the fighting on the south side of highway 10 the east-west road that divides the city into will be the most vicious of the entire battle there is simply nowhere else for the insurgents still estimated at several hundred to hide from that point on that's when you have your real extremists they found who really who's just talking it and who really believed in what they were doing it's a brutal I mean I say close fight I mean probably reach out and touch touch the bad guy kind of fight we came across countless houses full of insurgents have been waiting to die so we had to meet them in the alleys in the bedrooms in the kitchens and that's where we would fight them across town five days later 3rd battalion 1st Marines 31 is clearing houses in the southwestern sector of the city 3 1 crossed South out of the jalan neighborhood where the battalion had lost several Marines and firefights three losses out of the unit's Lima company first Platoon alone everyone in the platoon mourns the losses but sergeant ben connor and especially lance corporal mike hanks are taking the deaths particularly hard the three guys that we'd already lost all came from his fire team he had one guy left not including himself and we were both like this is Boost if anybody else gets hit it's gonna be me that's what I'm thinking Hank's is thinking the same thing these are the guys that we promised we'd bring back home and so far we're not doing it in the mid afternoon of November 17th first Platoon is making its way down an alley when second lieutenant Jeffrey Summers is shocked to see an insurgent - into the area the Marines have just cleared I'll take a few shots out 410 meters away and it keeps on going I had a scope weapon it was impossible to miss but he just keeps on going he's jumped into a courtyard that that's adjacent to the a lead on a man lieutenant summers calls for sergeant ben connor and tells him that everyone needs to pull back to reek lear the zone that we brought everybody up online and just started lobbing grenades into this courtyard to ensure the widest possible kill pattern some marines lob their grenades deep into the courtyard others toss short the rest aim for the center connor is frustrated and angered by this surprise threat he tells his friend Lance Corporal Hanks that he's going in to make sure the insurgent is finally dead Lance Corporal Mike Hanks is one of the most popular Marines in the company he's a jokester and a funny guy but he's also a tough brave and reliable fighter Conor charges into the courtyard through a crumbled opening in the wall as hanks pulls together a support team to follow I come tiptoeing around this house I look over and sure enough there's somebody in there creeping around with an 8k but he's got his head turned away from me it's a second insurgent and this one isn't wounded he spots Conor and opens fire well he looks back at me and just holds down the trigger as he's spinning around I'm my host then all sudden I just kind of felt something hit me in the arm Connor hits the ground then scrambles to his feet on the other side of the window he's been hit I didn't really feel a lot of pain a little bit of confusion like how the hell did I get hit I thought I was better than that I actually asked myself am i dead I mustn't because I'm talking to myself in the next moment sergeant Connor has another realization the insurgent actually has a stockpile of weapons and has just swapped his ak-47 for a machine gun November 17 2004 3 p.m. Battle of Felucia day 10 in the southwestern sector of the city sergeant van Connors unit 1st platoon of Lima Company 3rd battalion 1st Marines is on a Search and Destroy mission it's clearing insurgents from the neighborhood of homes Connor has followed an enemy fighter into the courtyard of a home and has taken a bullet while creeping by a window the insurgent inside the window has a cache of weapons he's dropped his AKA and has just picked up an RP k machine gun sounds a-ok we got a bad guy here so I was like tanks I think I'm hit I'm coming back I got to go back by this window Lance Corporal Mike hanks a fellow squad member in a popular Marine within the company is standing at an opening in the courtyard wall looking in at Connor Hank speaks his head around the corner to see where siren Connor is and he signals he's over there so I just kind of dug down and rolled under the window hanks I was like let's get the hell out of here you know we get the tanks or the engineers up here and then Hanks goes to take a double look and the guy the insurgents bring he does a you know three round four round bursts with his a automatic weapon and one of the rounds hit Hanks in the head embedded writer Patrick O'Donnell is right behind him when it happens has grabbed the back of his flak vest and I started dragging as fast as I could I didn't even think I dragged as hard as fast as I could is there's all kinds of machine-gun fire going on saying I know I turned around and Pat and one of the other Marines was dragging the body back I was like nah Terry no way cuz I was just talking to this guy like two seconds ago I looked over at my buddy Koko's oida who was also women hanks were best friends they just had this look on his face as a dude who is that was exact Mike he just kind of looked at me and shook his head sergeant Connors wounds are too critical for him to stay in the field so against his wishes he soon ordered to the medevac vehicle the grieving Marine will travel with his fallen brother in arms the Marines gently put Michael Hanks his body in the body bag and they loaded him up into the Humvee and Connor is in there and he starts to cry minutes later a tank is ordered up to destroy the building nice had a huge impact on me you know the company the poutine definitely um everybody knew I'm here I looked up to him serve as role taking him back when that happened the hero to me probably to any more than just me okay real good guy all around do anything for anybody the building harboring the insurgent who shot Hanks is later completely leveled by a d9 bulldozer a tactic that has become commonplace in these later stages of the Battle of Fallujah Marines would much rather eliminate enemy fighters the needlessly risk their own lives or the lives of civilians in a gun battle but when wounded Marines are trapped in a building with the insurgents a rescue mission is the only option and in the second week of the battle two members of kilo Company 3rd battalion 1st Marines ignite just such an incident on a Search and Destroy mission in the southwestern sector of the city corporal Ryan wheeler and Lance Corporal Corey Carlisle enter a house and kick open a bedroom door as soon as they kicked down the door there's an insurgent less than five feet from them with an ak-47 pointed right at miraculously the two Marines are not hit killed him though do they know that there were still three other bad guys in the house the gunfire alerts to insurgents on the roof they start firing into the house to a skylight and drop a grenade meanwhile another insurgent opens fire from a stairway above the living Lance Corporal Carlile falls to the floor in the center of the room but luckily is temporarily hidden by dust from the grenade blast corporal wiemer makes it out to the street to alert a rescue force as a rescue party rushes in two Marines go down but corporal Jose Sanchez makes it across the room and is able to drag Carlyle out of the direct line of fire already it's been our worst day in Fallujah in the span of Manhattan back out on the street company first sergeant Brad castle has arrived drawn by the sound of the gunfire he's a very physical man strong incredibly fit a hard guy served a Desert Storm and now you know serving again in Iraq for the second time he grabs a young marine for backup private first class Alex Nichol and charges into the house to hunt down the insurgents first room they go into is the bathroom there's an insurgent standing right there that guy hesitated for a second first time put some rounds in his chest the insurgents on the stairway and above the skylight opened fire nikkolon Castle both get sprayed with ak-47 fire and it obliterates both of their legs and that's when they start dropping grenades into the living room Kassel here's the plunk and throws his body over Nikol the first sergeant's leg and lower back take the brunt of the blast but the tough first sergeant is still able to lynch both himself and PFC nickel out of the line of fire first on Castle doing what every Marines taught to do cover your buddy's back pulls out his 9 mil cystal points it at the doorway to the bathroom where he and Nick or huddled and bleeding out to protect them from anyone trying to come down the stairs and finish them off in their vulnerable position despite fading in and out from massive blood loss Castle remains vigilant guarding PFC Nikol for the hour plus it takes reinforcements to simultaneously battle the insurgents and evacuate casualties from the house when they finally reach for a sergeant Castle and pull the woozy but conscious marine outside he still has a tight grip on his service pistol at the end of the hour and a half long melee one marine is dead and ten are critically wounded but now with all their wounded evacuated the Marines are free to level the house they prepare a 20 pound satchel charge of c4 plastic explosive toss it inside and clear the area when we came back two minutes later to walk the rubble of the house we saw the two bodies of the guys who are up on the roof on top of the rubble part of the house was laying on them one of the embedded photographers knelt down to take a picture of one of the bodies and the guy sees him breathing the photographer and yells out hey we've got a live one here and no sooner were the words out of his mouth then you saw you know an arm with the last breath of life just fling forward and a pineapple grenade fly out at us from no more than six feet away we all turned around and ran Renea 2000 Cara's last two guys we were fighting till their last breath the initial push through the city of Fallujah ended on November 19th once we got to the southern end of the city one of more buildings left there were no more places for fighters to hide that's pretty much we knew the initial assault to the city was finished u.s. troops never found Abu Musab al-zarqawi they obviously didn't have the Moxie to stay in fight the lower-level guys certainly didn't they died but but you know who's to say what happened to him intelligence analysts believe Zarqawi and other terrorist leaders escaped before the assault began it's estimated that some 2,000 insurgents met their deaths over the course of the fighting the death toll for US troops stands at less than 90 in general I don't think that the Iraqis really had any idea what was coming the number of weapons the number of people the number of tools they were going to give us to go into the city I don't think they could have been prepared for that but I know they weren't prepared they also weren't prepared for the speed with which US forces attacked we received intelligence reports later on that there had been cell phone traffic intercepted and enemy fighters were trying to pass information back and forth constantly complaining that we were everywhere we're moving too fast for them they couldn't reposition they can get a good shot on us even so the horrific environment and the threat of death around every corner had been enough to try the nerves of the bravest us fighting men they overcame their fears and carried out their mission they're proud of their accomplishment and most of all they're proud of each other you'd see normally timid timid eye kids 18 19 old kids all of a sudden out of nowhere they're charging across the street they're running first into a building they're standing up when they're getting shot at is it you just see some amazing like heroic things like a lot of people all the time it was really amazing to watch as fighting men have in all wars when asked about the source of their bravery Fallujah veterans attribute it to simply looking out for their friends it's read in a book somewhere that the opposite of fears encourage the opposite of fear is love but I know my Marines love each other to death and ultimately that's why they kept kept going when things got ugly uncommon valor is still a common virtue they performed as you read about any generation performing there's no difference in this generation they're still great you

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Channel: combatrescue

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Length: 44min 46sec (2686 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 06 2013

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