More enemy fighters tried to cross the railroad bridge with RPGs and AKs to reinforce their embattled friends, but Cobra helicopters swept in and attacked them on the bridge. Major Kevin Badger, who commanded the 1–5 CAV’s ground component in the area, moved a patrol down to the bridge area in support of the Small Craft Company. The soldiers and Marines fought for about ninety minutes, attacking from the front, rear, and above. Finally, running low on ammunition, Lieutenant Andrew Thomas ordered his Marines back to the boats, leaving the cleanup up to Major Badger’s soldiers.

A Future Sergeant Major Dies as a Lance Corporal

On November 14, the Darkhorse Marines worked their way south behind 3/1. India Company moved south of MICHIGAN along HENRY while Kilo Company stayed north of Route 10. Captain McNulty’s Marines ended up searching houses in an upper-class neighborhood filled with three-story structures and landscaped courtyards. Both companies conducted detailed clearing operations, opening every drawer and looking under every bed in every room they encountered.

By midmorning, McNulty’s Third Platoon was clearing the block just north of the Martyrs’ Cemetery. The graveyard was across the street from the mosque that Lieutenant Colonel Lewis had obliterated four nights earlier in Task Force 2–7’s fight to take Objective VIRGINIA. Lance Corporal George Payton led his squad up the stairs inside one of the expensive houses. Payton wanted nothing more than to lead Marines, and dreamed of one day becoming a sergeant major. His team set security on the second floor landing.

Payton moved to clear the first upstairs room. When he opened the door he was greeted by a burst of machine gun fire. The bullets ripped through his left leg like a buzz saw, nearly severing it. He fell to the floor, but continued to fire on the enemy until a grenade explosion completely severed his leg near his pelvis.

Lance Corporal Kip Yeager—the grandson of the famous Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager (the first human to fly faster than the speed of sound)—emptied his M16 magazine into the doorway before dropping to pull Payton out of the line of fire. Lance Corporal Mason Fisher lobbed a grenade in through the door to buy some time while the Marines worked frantically to stop Payton’s bleeding.

An insurgent inside the room picked up Fisher’s grenade and tossed it back out the door. Fisher caught it on the second bounce and lobbed it back into the room. Yeager waited for the explosion, then emptied another M16 magazine into the room. “If there was anyone in the world you would want in a firefight, it would be Yeager,”⁴ remembered the corporal’s squad leader. The dust from the explosion had not yet fully settled when Yeager and Lance Corporal Phillip Miska charged into the room. Sergeant Distelhorst’s replacement as Squad Leader, Sergeant Martin Gonzalez, followed the fire team into the room. Two insurgents were dead on the floor, but another jumped out of a cupboard. Gonzalez shot him before he could raise his rifle. When a fourth insurgent was found fumbling with an RPG behind the bedroom door, Yeager dispatched him with his bayonet.

Payton was still alive, but only because the corpsmen managed to get a tourniquet onto what was left of his leg. They carried him downstairs into a waiting casevac vehicle and rushed him to Bravo Surgical. This was Kilo Company’s second major casualty, the first since Hodges had been killed. They had been clearing buildings for a week, and had already cleared 1,000 rooms. Sergeant Jason Arellano worried that his squad members might be losing their edge. He pulled them all together and warned, “You can’t get complacent. Payton lost his leg today.”⁵ Lance Corporal George Payton lost more than his limb. He fought for his life, but died four days later from his wounds.

Darkhorse Reaches a Limit

Chontosh’s India Company Marines crossed south of MICHIGAN and swept through the houses on the west side of HENRY toward GRACE. The blocks were long, running 400 meters without a cross street. A/2–7 had swept down these streets on the 11th, but they had not cleared the buildings. As a result, Chontosh’s Marines cleared all day, and by mid-afternoon were only a few houses away from GRACE.⁶

When First Platoon’s Marines (on India Company’s far eastern flank) entered the last houses on their block, a waiting insurgent shot and killed Lance Corporal Antoine Smith. The only child of a single mother, the easygoing and friendly Smith was well liked by the Marines in his platoon. Incensed by his death, his friends went in with grenades and killed every insurgent in the house. Chontosh ordered First Platoon to back up, moved over to HENRY, and flagged down some of Jim Rainey’s tanks. The tankers pounded the house and the buildings next door until they were out of ammunition.

When the tankers were finished, Chontosh ordered his men back at it. As 2nd Squad moved south again down the street just west of the original fight, they got into a gun battle with jihadists barricaded in houses on their block. Lance Corporal Shane Kielion was killed in the fight. Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class James (Doc) Pell and two other Marines were wounded trying to save his life.

With casualties mounting and darkness setting in, Chontosh pulled his entire company back north and called in an air strike to level the entire neighborhood. It was later determined that about 150 insurgents were hiding in the buildings; the air strike killed most of them.

This would be the Darkhorse Marines’ farthest penetration south. That night, India Company pulled back north of MICHIGAN to help clear the northwest.

Regiments Meet Up

In RCT-7’s area east of HENRY, Lieutenant Lee’s Blue Platoon M1 tanks led Avenger by successive bounds to HEATHER. The two Marine regiments had finally met along HENRY, with Buhl’s Marines on the west side of the road and Brandl’s Marines on the east. They cleared houses as they moved, but Willie Buhl was not going to send his Marines into another Hell House. If there was any indication that enemy fighters might be in a house, he simply leveled the building. He was decimating everything in front of him, using artillery and other explosives, firing everything he had to finish the job.

At 1600 on November 14, Colonel Shupp arrived at the infamous Brooklyn Bridge. It had already been swept by EOD and dog teams. “Come on, Marines, let’s go across,” he urged. “Let’s go meet the Wolfpack.”⁷ Shupp patrolled across the green bridge as if he were a lance corporal, with an M4 slung across his chest and a 9mm and bayonet dangling at his waist. When Shupp, Malay, and Desgrosseilliers reached the center of the bridge, Lieutenant Colonel Dinauer was waiting to welcome them. The commanders greeted each other with handshakes and pats on the back. This bridge had become an icon of the insurgency, signifying defiance of the American occupation. For the Marines, it conjured up images of Mogadishu. It was a huge matter of pride for the Marines when they were able to stand on this bridge unopposed.

The mob that had picked the fight in April had written on the bridge in white paint: “Fallujah—Downfall of the United States and death to the Marines.” One of the Marines had already painted a reply in black, block letters:

THIS IS FOR THE AMERICANS OF BLACKWATER MURDERED HERE IN 2004 SEMPER FIDELIS 3/5 DARKHORSE P.S. Fuck You

When Lieutenant Colonel Malay read the Marine graffiti, he smiled. “Paint over the bottom line,” he ordered. “Leave the rest.”⁸

By the end of the day, Natonski had backed the diehard foreign fighters into a corner in Queens. The neighborhood that had once been their stronghold was now becoming their coffin. Newell’s armor was pushing south along the eastern edge of the city and two Marine infantry battalions were pushing relentlessly forward, building after building. Most of the enemy’s defenses had been placed at the edge of the city to stop an attack from the south, so now their own barricades and Colonel Formica’s cordon had them trapped. They had nowhere to run, and fewer places to hide by the hour. A group of Syrian insurgents tried to flee the fight by floating on inflated beach balls across the Euphrates River under cover of darkness. None made it to the far side. The Marines dubbed the dead insurgents the “Syrian Beach Ball Team.”

Natonski’s iron vice was tightening.

Monday, November 15, 2004 – D+8: Tanks and Infantry Gang Up

By the end of November 14, Lee and Cunningham were sitting on the northern end of the garbage field. Lee moved his two tanks out onto HENRY and supported Cunningham’s push across the open area to the houses on the other side. Once across the field Cunningham set up his CP in the house across the street from the same mosque where the cameraman had filmed the Marine shooting an insurgent the day before. Cunningham’s sector was only 200 meters wide, with a platoon just south of his CP and another just to his east. Bravo Company held another narrow corridor on Cunningham’s left.

Cunningham decided to infiltrate a platoon during the night of the 14th, just as he had done at the Government Center.⁹ Under cover of darkness, he pushed Ackerman’s platoon about 100 meters south. When the sun came up on the 15th, Ackerman had a much better view of the enemy than did Cunningham from his CP, and what he observed was another enemy staging area: a bunch of insurgents gathering, forming into five-man teams and preparing rockets and ammunition. They were moving across HENRY into 3/1’s area. The enemy fighters thought that they were far enough south to be out of the Marines’ view, and had no clue that Ackerman’s platoon had moved forward during the night.

Lee pulled up on HENRY just as the sun was coming up, climbed off his tank, and walked inside Cunningham’s CP to get his orders. And, just like every other morning in the last week, the enemy attacked Alpha Company. It started with gunfire and rockets from the south. Cunningham’s CP was rocketed hard. More insurgents opened fire from the mosque across HENRY. Soon fire was coming from every building across the street.

Cunningham turned to Lee. “See what you can do to silence the attack.”¹⁰

Lee returned to his tank and ordered all four of his platoon’s tanks out into the open. They pounded the daylights out of the insurgents, shooting main gun rounds, and 7.62 and .50-caliber machine guns. Meanwhile, Ackerman directed the battalion’s 81mm mortars down on the insurgents from his forward position. When the mortar rounds started falling, the enemy soldiers scattered. Ackerman’s men opened up and didn’t let up for three hours. It was almost like a professional boxer pounding his stunned opponent while he hung on the ropes in the corner; the enemy fighters had nowhere to go, and were unable to defend against the Marines’ combined-arms jabs and roundhouses.

Bodisch and Smithley came south on HENRY to lead 3/1’s attack down the west side of the road and, for the first time, he linked up with Lee and his wingman on the regimental seam. The tankers couldn’t communicate because they were on different radio frequencies, so Bodisch pulled up next to Lee’s tank to shout over to him.

The captain had never seen Marine tanks in such bad shape. Bodisch thought his tanks looked bad—he had holes in his own tank—but Lee’s and Ducasse’s tanks were really shot up, covered with scorch marks, broken optics, and other general damage. Ducasse’s tank, with bent skirts and dinged hull, looked like he had been using it to knock over buildings.

Bodisch yelled over to Lee. “Hey, I’m about to go at Zero-Seven. Are you guys going to attack alongside me?”¹¹

“Yeah,” Lee replied. “I think we are.”

“All right,” Bodisch yelled above his tank engine. “I’m going south. I need you to protect my left flank.”

But when Bodisch and Captain Clark’s India Company, 3/1 started moving south at 0700, Lee stood fast. 1/8 was trying to coordinate with 3/1, but with all the fighting, 1/8 got held up. When Lee started to move online with Bodisch, Ackerman yelled at him to wait because his platoon was still engaged and not yet ready to move. As a result, Bodisch pushed forward without Lee.

Bodisch watched his left flank while his gunner scanned right. Bodisch moved very slowly, with Clark’s entire infantry company led by gun trucks and AMTRACs. While standing still back on HENRY, Lee could see insurgents running back and forth across the road, so he started launching main gun rounds in their direction, knocking down Texas barriers at the edge of town. Lee did his best to protect Bodisch’s left flank.

As Bodisch moved south, the southernmost berm at the edge of the city came into view. When he looked to his left across HENRY, he spotted a group of thirty hardcore insurgents in a field dressed in running suits and heavily armed with bandoliers of ammo strapped across their chests. They were mingling and chatting because they hadn’t heard Bodisch’s tank approaching. The captain rolled forward to within 100 feet of the group before the first enemy combatant saw the giant tank approaching. What followed can only be described as a mass scramble to safety. Bodisch grabbed the turret control handle, rotated his turret to the left, and ripped a burst of 7.62. Three insurgents fell under the fire. One of them, nearly cut in half, went down screaming “Allahu Akbar!” Bodisch’s XO moved up on his right and together they switched to their main guns, killing many more Mujahedeen in the scattering group.

The mob moved into a building south and east of the Marines. Bodisch tossed his map to his loader, the artillery Forward Observer (FO) from Mike Battery, and told him to place an immediate fire mission on that building. Rainey’s 120mm mortars responded in less than a minute. The first adjust round screamed in and hit right on target.

“Fire for effect,” the FO called into the radio.

Round after round rained down on the house, completely destroying the building and killing the remaining twelve insurgents in the group.

With the southern edge of the city at their backs, the Al Qaeda fanatics fought ferociously, but they were no match for the Marines and their combined-arms attack. Lee continued fighting while he was waiting for Ackerman to move. He could see Bodisch’s tanks and Buhl’s infantry engaged on the west side of the road, and he watched enemy grenadiers pop out with RPGs on his side of HENRY in an effort to fire on 3/1’s vehicles. Lee opened fire with all of his weapons to stifle the barrage against Captain Bodisch’s tanks and 3/1’s gun trucks.

Lee finally got the call to push all the way south. He immediately pulled off HENRY into an alley and escorted Ackerman’s Marines while they ran the rooftops. After Ackerman’s fight, there wasn’t a lot of enemy contact, but they did find a lot of arms caches and cleared numerous houses before reaching the southern edge of Fallujah.

By nightfall, the Marines were beyond exhausted. Brandl’s and Buhl’s infantry had fought their way the entire length of the city in a week of heavy and nearly non-stop fighting. Bodisch’s and Meyer’s tanks had been in the lead every step of the way. Of the forty-six Marines in Ackerman’s First Platoon, more than 50% had been seriously wounded. Remarkably, none had been killed, though all but six of his Marines would go home with Purple Hearts.¹² Buhl’s Thundering Third Marines had also taken heavy casualties, losing twenty-three killed and nearly 350 wounded during the fight.

Everyone was elated to see the open area to the south. They had bludgeoned their way through the most dangerous city in Iraq and left many hundreds of enemy fighters dead in their wake. The insurgency inside Fallujah had been defeated. But it had not been completely driven from the city.

The Hard Part

“The real story—in terms of skill, discipline, and courage—was in the clearing phase,”¹³ Colonel Tucker later explained. Ramos’ Alpha Company sent Marines out on patrol, clearing houses in the northeast on the 15th. Sergeant Rafael Peralta, a Mexican-American born in Mexico City, went with them to add another rifleman to one of the squads. Peralta, the Platoon Guide, didn’t have to go because he was a facilitator within the platoon and an advisor to the platoon commander. But Peralta wanted to do his part, so on this day he was just another grunt in just another stack, kicking in doors and doing his job.

Peralta’s father had been a truck driver in Mexico until he died in an accident. After her husband’s death, Peralta’s mother moved the family to the United States and raised her children in the San Diego area. Rafael joined the Marine Corps on the day he got his green card, knowing that this would be the best way to help his mother support the family. He loved the Marines and he loved America.

Peralta and his platoon methodically cleared houses along their allotted block. The first three were empty, but when the Marines entered the fourth house and Peralta opened a door leading from the central interior room, all hell broke loose. At least three insurgents opened fire, hitting Peralta several times in the chest. As he fell to the floor, the Marines in the room let loose with their SAWs and M16s. In the confusion of the close-quarter gunfight, one of the Marines accidently shot Peralta in the back of the head.¹⁴

As the Marines maneuvered into position to get a clean shot at the enemy fighters, a grenade rolled out into the middle of the room and stopped less than a foot away from Peralta. As the Marines scattered for cover, Peralta—in his last dying act—reached out and scooped the grenade under his body. It exploded with a muffled thud.

Stunned, and with some minor shrapnel wounds themselves, the surviving Marines fell back to their rally point down the street. Staff Sergeant Jacob Murdock did a quick head count and came up one short. “Who’s missing?” he demanded.

“Sergeant Peralta! He’s dead! He’s fucking dead!” screamed Lance Corporal Adam Morrison. “He’s still in there. We have to go back.”¹⁵

The Marines rushed back to the target house, moved inside, killed three insurgents, and retrieved Sergeant Rafael Peralta’s body. Had he not pulled the grenade under himself, more than one Marine would have died in that house.

Lieutenant Colonel Buhl’s Marines got into a big firefight late in the day in the Queens District. Captain Bodisch was moving from HENRY toward the Euphrates River when he ran into a strongpoint where a couple of Marines had been shot. When Bodisch pulled up he found Buhl standing out in the open; the rest of his Marines were under cover behind a wall.

Buhl had an M79 grenade launcher in his hand, a weapon Bodisch recognized immediately because he had carried one years earlier when he was a reserve enlisted Marine. The M79 grenade launcher is a Vietnam-era weapon with a full wooden stock and a stubby, wide-bore barrel. It is slightly more accurate than its modern-day M203 replacement, which attaches directly to the M16 rifle. Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne’s 1/5 Marines had captured the fully functional M79 back in April during Operation Vigilant Resolve.¹⁶ When Buhl’s battalion arrived, Byrne gave the grenade launcher to Buhl before 1/5 left Iraq. As a Pfc, Buhl had been trained to use an M79, but that had been so long ago it seemed like another life. Nonetheless, Buhl had it checked out, cleaned, and kept it strapped behind the seat in his HMMWV with an assortment of smoke, flares, and 203 HE rounds—just in case he ever needed it.

Major Christian Griffin, Buhl’s Operations Officer, was behind the wall yelling for his boss to get to cover, but the short and stocky colonel stood there with a stogie in his mouth using his M79 to bloop grenades into the target building—until Bodisch showed up. Buhl yelled at Bodisch to get inside his tank and, “Soften that building with as many rounds as you can spare.”¹⁷

Bodisch dropped into his turret and called Lieutenant Smithley to also bring his tank online. Together they both opened fire, pounding the strongpoint with six main gun rounds, after which Buhl sent his infantry forward again. When two more Marines were shot in the assault, he pulled them back one more time.

Undaunted, Buhl called for his D9 dozer. The powerful machine lumbered west past Bodisch’s tanks and pushed into the building, backed up slowly, and pushed into the building again. Working for several minutes, the driver completely flattened the structure, leaving nothing behind but a pile of concrete rubble. As the bulldozer backed away from the demolished house, a lone insurgent popped out of the wreckage and began firing at the armored cab. The young Marine bulldozer driver paused for a few seconds, turned his giant vehicle toward the insurgent, and raised the blade. The insurgent’s AK rounds were pinging harmlessly off the heavy steel when the driver dropped the heavy blade on top of him, flattening him like a pancake.

Wednesday, November 17, 2004 – D+10: Split Level

While conducting house-to-house back-clearing sweeps on the 17th, only a block away from the house where Hodges had been killed, Lance Corporals Jacob Fernandez and William Lenard from Second Platoon, Kilo, 3/5 came under fire from fighters on a second-floor balcony.¹⁸ The Marines dashed into a house across the street from the enemy stronghold and began returning fire, while most of the Marines of Second Platoon rushed to the high ground of adjacent buildings. Fernandez and Lenard had managed to get out of the enemy’s line of fire, but they could not return fire effectively from their new position. They returned to the street and threw grenades onto the enemy rooftop. The grenades, coupled with the platoon’s barrage of small-arms fire, killed a couple insurgents before they could scramble off the balcony.

Lenard rushed into the building with his fire team and headed up the stairs. As he turned the corner at the top the enemy opened fire from less than fifteen feet away. One of the rounds struck Lenard’s weapon, knocking it from his hands, while another grazed his left arm before he could jump back out of the line of fire.

Doc G. rushed to Lenard’s side on the stairwell to check his wound, but Lenard shrugged him off. “I’m OK,” he said as he grabbed Hospital Corpsman Joseph Gagucas’ shotgun. Fernandez pressed the attack, throwing two grenades onto the second floor. By now, Jason Arellano had worked his way up the stairs toward the fight. The Marines were closing in on the insurgent when a grenade clanked out onto the second deck’s open-air patio.

“Grenade!” Fernandez shouted, and the Marines dove back into the stairwell and waited for the explosion.

Silence.

When the insurgent had tried to pull the safety pin, the ring had detached but the pin had remained in the grenade. Once Fernandez and Arellano realized it was a dud they redoubled their attack, rushing out onto the open patio and firing into the upstairs rooms. Arellano provided covering fire while Fernandez charged into the smoke-filled room.

Fernandez disappeared as soon as he crossed the threshold, but he reappeared almost as quickly as he had vanished. The enemy insurgent had selected a good spot to make his last stand. The room was two or three feet lower than the second-floor landing, so when Fernandez crossed the threshold he fell into the room. The surprised Marine scrambled out as fast as he could.

This time Arellano and Fernandez redirected their fire downward. They could hear someone moving inside, but they still could not see into the room. Arellano didn’t know how many rounds he had left, so he fixed his bayonet and together they jumped into the darkened room.

The bold assault finally uncovered their enemy. Fernandez tackled the man as he tried to scurry away, and Arellano stepped over his torso and began bayoneting him. Fernandez pulled out his own bayonet and stabbed him in the side. Arellano continued attacking, just as he had been trained to do. He thrust the blade into his opponent, twisted his rifle, and pulled back to thrust again. The two Marines continued until there was no more movement. The fight was over almost as quickly as it had begun.

Arellano and Fernandez checked the rest of the small room and climbed back out onto the second-floor landing.

Victory? Not Yet…

Once Task Force Blue Diamond cleared the southernmost houses in Fallujah, most everyone in the media believed that the fighting was over. General Metz’ I/O threshold had not been exceeded. With the exception of the Marine mosque shooting, the world news media had little to report other than footage of Marines firing at unseen enemy fighters in the distance. When the Iraqi government declared the city secure, the media reported a coalition victory and embedded news crews packed up their gear to leave for their next assignments.

But the fighting was far from over. The Marines of 3/5 would lose more men in the coming weeks than they had in November. For them, the worst was yet to come.

The remaining enemy fighters had dug themselves in deep. Those who were smart enough to evade the initial onslaught had bunkered themselves into heavily-fortified positions. Some kept tourniquets on their arms and legs, ready to be tightened when they were wounded. Others wrapped their torsos, arms, and legs in blankets—more to stay warm than anything else. Many were shot up with adrenalin, lidocaine, and amphetamines. When the Marines ran into those guys, the killing was very close and very quick.

The Marines were repeatedly reminded why the American military had replaced the .38-caliber sidearm with the more powerful .45-caliber handgun. Their 5.56 M16—its rounds designed for small animals, targets of fifty pounds or less—couldn’t knock some enemy fighters off their feet. They were simply too light for a large grown man jacked up on drugs. While the M16 can be deadly, many times Marines were forced to empty entire magazines into charging insurgents before they would go down.

Once the Marines reached the southernmost houses in the city and the high-impact fighting was complete, there was no longer a need to maintain the massive attack force. Newell’s heavily armored battalion returned to Camp Fallujah on Saturday, November 20, in preparation for its return to Muqdadiyah. Similarly, Rainey was ordered to break contact on the night of the 19th; 2–7 CAV returned to Camp Fallujah on the 20th, and the Battalion was relieved on the 24th, returning to the operational control of the 1st Cavalry Division.¹⁹ Task Force Wolfpack was relieved in place by A Company, 2nd LAR,²⁰ on the Shark’s Fin, and Lieutenant Colonel Dinauer began his movement back west to return to his duties near the Syrian border.

Since Rainey had already left, Newell’s soldiers were about to leave, and Colonel Tucker was planning his move back to western Anbar Province, Natonski started rearranging his forces. When Colonel Shupp was told that both Army battalions and 7th Marines would soon be leaving the city, he begin expanding his area of influence in preparation for the large shifting of forces. Ramos’ 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines would stay behind and be chopped to Shupp’s control. Also, Cajun 1/8 filled the vacuum left by 2–2’s departure and moved east into the industrial area. They established a new firm base at the Soda Factory, and Dr. Jadick moved his mini-BAS along with them.

Buhl’s Thundering Third strengthened its hold on the southwest quadrant of the city. Malay’s Marines prepared to extend their battle space east of HENRY to ETHAN. Lieutenant Colonel Malay knew that once RCT-7 left, his battalion was going to be given responsibility for the entire northern half of the city, so he ordered his Darkhorse Marines to start clearing across HENRY, picking up ever-expanding pieces of the battlefield, and moving east to encompass the city center.

While the big fight was over in the city, there were still deadly days ahead. Natonski, Shupp, and Malay knew that if they didn’t destroy the enemy’s operational base, Al Qaeda would simply move back in. The city needed to be scrubbed clean. It would be RCT-1’s job to remain in Fallujah to police up the enormous amount of stockpiled weapons and explosives. On the 21st of November, Task Force Blue Diamond shifted its focus when it initiated a detailed clearing of the entire city. The Marine commanders realized that they needed to clear every room in every building, and every cache in the city needed to be destroyed. If the caches were not cleared, the past weeks of fighting would have been largely for naught.

As soon as the Darkhorse Marines crossed over into RCT-7’s area of operations, they ran into groups of four and five insurgents. McNulty’s Kilo Company started in the north and cleared between APRIL and CATHY, from HENRY to ETHAN. There was only one gunfight, but Malay’s Marines kept catching the enemy trying to slip around behind them. To Malay’s surprise, his men found several large caches of weapons and ammunition. Between Thanksgiving and December 8, the Darkhorse Marines patrolled relentlessly to keep their area clean, all the while training the Iraqi forces to maintain order on their own.

Clearing in the City—And Life—Continue

Ironically, even as Colonel Shupp began setting up Humanitarian Assistance Sites on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, Gary Brandl’s Marines continued to take casualties as they swept back and forth in the southeast section of Fallujah. A pair of 1/8 Marines, Lance Corporal Jeffery Holmes and Corporal Gentian Marku, were killed on the 25th. Brandl lost two more Marines the next day, Lance Corporal Bradley Faircloth and Lance Corporal David Houck. Yet another, Corporal Kirk Bosselmann, fell on the 27th.

The 1/8 Marines were conducting large clearing operations such as Operation Deer Drive. Brandl, the avid hunter, had Alpha and Bravo companies sweep from west to east through the Industrial District and its adjoining neighborhoods, while his Iraqi forces and Charlie Company waited for them in the east. Brandl kept mixing it up so that the enemy never knew from which direction he would attack next. His Marines and Iraqi troops cleared houses and buildings—and then they did it again. It never ceased to amaze Brandl how the remaining insurgents managed to regularly move back into areas he thought he had completely cleared.

On the afternoon of the 25th, Marine tanks were patrolling ahead of Brandl’s infantry who were clearing just east of HENRY. Suddenly, some Iraqi Security Force soldiers were shot up, and Lee’s and Ducasse’s tanks were in the middle of another gunfight. Meyers, who had been clearing with other platoons of Bravo Company, heard the shooting and rushed to the scene.²¹

When Meyers arrived, he learned that a group of insurgents were holed up in a nearby building. Lieutenant Lee was already shooting them up, but one or two guys were still shooting from inside the stronghold. Omohundro called a D9 bulldozer forward, but the D9 driver went to the wrong building and no one could contact him because he didn’t have a radio in his vehicle. Meyers climbed out of his tank and ran toward the earthmover to personally tell the driver that he was working the wrong structure. When he reached the D9, he saw bullets ricocheting off the vehicle’s armor plate, realized that someone was shooting at him, and turned to sprint back to his tank. The enemy sniper zeroed in on Meyers and fired. The bullet hit his neck protector and exploded into tiny pieces, peppering his arm with a dozen bits of shrapnel. The wound was serious, and Meyers was bleeding profusely.

When Lee saw his company commander hit, he called for a casevac: “Black 6 is down.” Marines raced to his aid and helped Meyers to Omohundro’s medevac AMTRAC. As the corpsmen bandaged his arm, Meyers told Ducasse where he thought the sniper was hiding. Ducasse climbed back in his tank, rolled down the street, and fired a blast of coax into a tree. Palm fronds flew, and the sniper’s corpse fell to the ground.

With the major fighting finished in the city, Dan Wittnam returned to al Asad with his Small Craft Company by the end of November. Wittnam’s men were only going to be in al Asad a short time before moving to their next assignment: protecting the Haditha Dam. Rubio, Parrello, and several other Marines decided to take a trip to the exchange before the unit moved to the more austere surroundings at Haditha Dam. They wanted to do some Christmas shopping while they still had access to a store and post office.

Rubio went overboard. Once he bought the gifts for his sons, he realized the package would be large and he didn’t have enough money for the postage to mail it home. He needed ten dollars more, so he started asking his Marines if they could lend him a couple bucks. Some pitched in a dollar or two here and there, but he was still short. As they were all walking out of the exchange, Parrello piped up, “Hey Doc, are you still looking for money?”

“Yeah, I’m still a couple of bucks shy.”²²