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00:00We were moving extremely fast and violent through that city.
00:14When the house-to-house happened, that's where the intensity just went through the room.
00:18They would have to fight from house to house until they had cleared out 24,000 houses.
00:30You can see the guys, you know, getting hit and still advancing forward.
00:35If the guy's behind the door waiting for you to enter, I don't care how good you are,
00:39you're not going to beat him to the punch of shooting you first.
00:43You're just in the mindset of now keeping your buddies alive.
00:53It was incredible to watch those guys work, their professionalism,
00:56the bravery, it was something else.
01:02We all fought together and this was our objective and we took it in the biggest
01:06stronghold they have, the most dangerous city in Iraq, and we just came in
01:10and we took something from you and we're not stopping it, we're going to keep doing it.
01:16No quick victory here.
01:20There wasn't any easy way of winning this fight.
01:40In April of 2004, over 2,000 Marines launched Operation Vigilant Resolve,
02:01but in less than a month, the brutal assault stopped short of clearing the city.
02:06When the Marines, at the order of the White House, were halfway across the city,
02:11Major General Mattis said, we're going to finish this.
02:16And then they were pulled out, they were ordered to leave,
02:20and we left the Islamists in charge for six months.
02:27Without an American presence, the insurgency declares Fallujah their new caliphate
02:33and grow the insurgent force, continuing to undermine the region.
02:46By November, with violence escalating and the insurgent threat growing in strength,
02:51Marine and Army forces are sent back in.
02:55With last-minute preparations taking place by American forces for their assault on the city
02:59of Fallujah, the Iraqi government has declared a state of emergency.
03:03American jets continue to attack key insurgent sites within Fallujah.
03:07With no guarantees for their safety, the few remaining civilians in the city
03:11have been warned to leave before the coming conflict.
03:16On November 7th, the Iraqi government declares Fallujah its new caliphate.
03:21On November 7th, 2004, some 10,000 plus Marine and Army troops
03:29prepare to assault Fallujah for the second time.
03:33In the six months since the last battle,
03:35the insurgents have turned the city into an invader's nightmare.
03:41The Marines knew exactly who was in there.
03:43There were about 2,000 enemy fighters.
03:46They knew the layout of the city, but there were 18 to 24,000 houses.
03:53There were 5,000 city blocks.
03:57They're all made out of concrete, and the terrorists inside the town,
04:022,000 of them, knew every back road, every single alleyway.
04:07They would have to fight literally from house to house
04:12until they had cleared out 24,000 houses.
04:17So before the Marines went in, they knew this was going to be one hell of a fight.
04:25The insurgents have created a massive complex of bunkers,
04:29gun positions, and booby traps in the southern part of Fallujah,
04:33while also spreading those deadly defenses throughout the rest of the city.
04:38The four Marine battalions and two Army units
04:41will attack side-by-side from the north,
04:43and over the course of 10 days,
04:45systematically sweep through the city
04:47in an effort to destroy as many insurgent strongholds as is possible.
04:54The 1 8th Marines will be at the heart and center of the attack,
04:58the Bravo Company at the tip of the spear.
05:02I was a team leader in 3rd Squad and 1st Platoon.
05:06You take the newer guys under your wing,
05:08so not only your guys, but the platoon in general.
05:11It's a family.
05:13You take these guys under as if they're little brothers.
05:17You know the statistics of what urban combat is,
05:20especially with the numbers they told us to expect in Fallujah.
05:23It's a family thing.
05:25It's a family thing.
05:26It's a family thing.
05:27It's a family thing.
05:28Especially with the numbers they told us to expect in Fallujah.
05:32The knowing that there's going to be a large percentage of you
05:34that are going to be wounded or killed.
05:37The question is, I guess, always, are you ready?
05:39Did you do your job?
05:42Did I take it serious enough?
05:44And I think you know the answer is yes,
05:47but you fear the answer is no.
05:49My role was to provide overwatch for Bravo Company,
05:532nd Platoon, during the fight.
05:56I put myself with 2nd Platoon because that was my family.
05:59I wanted to do everything I could to protect every member of that platoon.
06:05We had a ton of camaraderie.
06:06I mean, we loved each other so much.
06:07It was crazy.
06:08I mean, we were mean to each other, strict to each other.
06:10We made sure that we knew our jobs,
06:12but when it came down to it,
06:13I think we had a lot of camaraderie.
06:15I think we had a lot of camaraderie.
06:16I think we had a lot of camaraderie.
06:17When it came down to it, we're just a huge company of brothers, is what it was.
06:23Despite the cockiness and the confidence we had in each other and in ourselves,
06:27there was always the underlying, I don't want to say doubt,
06:31but almost fear of the unknown.
06:33What's going to happen when we start getting shot at?
06:37That's always there for anyone who hasn't been there before.
06:39All the trouble comes when your friends start getting hurt.
06:43That's where the pain comes from and the fear comes from.
06:52You knew the scale of it.
06:54You saw how many troops were involved.
06:56You see how many, like I said, resources of tanks and aircraft are involved.
07:02And you've been hearing intelligence reports about this place
07:05for the last six or nine months, and this is it.
07:08You're finally looking at this place.
07:10It was almost surreal.
07:12We knew that it was pretty much just a hotbed.
07:21There was no U.S. forces there.
07:24The insurgents had free reign of the city to do with what they pleased.
07:27They were coming there because they knew Americans were eventually going to be coming in.
07:31So if they wanted to kill an American, that's the place to go.
07:34I know me personally, I kind of felt like I was going through the five stages of death,
07:39just kind of coming to terms with what we're fixing to do.
07:42And really didn't feel that I was going to be coming out of the city.
07:47With Marine and Army units attacking into the northern section of the city,
07:50the second invasion of Fallujah is underway.
07:53The sky of Fallujah tonight is alive with artillery, tanks.
07:58It was by far one of the most incredible things I've ever witnessed,
08:01with tanks and Humvees behind us firing everything they've got into the city.
08:05And the city seemed like it was firing everything it had right back at us.
08:08We finally got the go-ahead to go, and we crossed that berm and sprinted towards the city.
08:19Crossed the open field, started making way into the city.
08:22And once everybody was there, then we started to push, clearing house by house,
08:26trying to make our way to that first objective.
08:38I knew the target was the Cultural Center and the Al-Haydra Mosque.
08:44I knew the goal was to reach that by morning.
08:51As soon as we got into the city, we saw a house on the corner and said,
08:55all right, let's take that house.
08:57When you go into a dark house and go through a dark doorway in the most dangerous city
09:02on the planet, it's still a pretty scary event, whether there's someone in there or not.
09:15Once we made entry into the city, and pretty much the first thing we did was
09:19make our way to the objective, it was surprising because there was no contact with the enemy.
09:31It seemed every house we went into was empty.
09:35There was nothing. It was eerily quiet.
09:50We started pushing up, you know, skipping a few houses to make time,
09:54because we were taking our time, being careful, but we had an objective to hit.
10:00And I remember very distinctly, once we hit the Cultural Center, we came up to that intersection.
10:06I remember kind of thinking to myself, you know,
10:07I wonder if we're going to start seeing this action that we've been anticipating.
10:16By the time I was thinking that, crossing that street,
10:18that was when it seemed like all hell just broke loose.
10:26With Bravo Company engaged in their first firefight,
10:30it marks the beginning of a 46-day slugfest.
10:33They will endure some of the worst fighting of the Iraq War
10:37against an enemy determined to fight to the death.
10:48On the morning of November 8, 2004, Marine and Army soldiers are meeting heavy resistance
11:12from an insurgency fighting to hold Fallujah as their new caliphate.
11:18At the deadly center of the escalating battle
11:30are the young Marines of Bravo Company, 1 8th Marines.
11:39As we were moving southern through the city, we took a building or two.
11:42And I think the moment it became real was when we took the building to give
11:47supporting fire for the mosque and for taking the Cultural Center.
11:53They believed that this Cultural Center that Bravo Company had to take
11:57was a large weapons cache in an insurgent headquarters.
12:03There's a large road in front of you, many lanes wide.
12:07You have to cross it.
12:13Nobody at this point was wounded, but the threat in front of you now is real.
12:21The potential for the loss of life or being wounded is at an extreme.
12:28We knew that crossing that major highway was going to be extremely risky because
12:33of the densely populated area that was there.
12:36It was very, very urban, large buildings all up and down the highway on both sides.
12:41Impossible to cover every single window that could potentially
12:45be shot out of us across this huge highway.
12:50We brought the company online.
12:53You just know that this whole company crossing this road, someone's going to get hit.
12:58That was probably the most scared I've ever felt in my life.
13:04All of a sudden, everything seemed like everything around you, every house,
13:07every little window, it just seemed like fire was coming from everywhere.
13:11The two other platoons behind mine start firing as much as they can.
13:18So you're literally in the middle of a gunfight.
13:27As third platoon was crossing the street, they started losing individuals.
13:41Whoa!
13:57That incredible guy, Sergeant Lonnie Wells, he got shot crossing that highway.
14:06Ultimately, he became a KIA there.
14:11In an attempt to pull him out of the highway, Gunnery Sergeant Shane,
14:16who was one of the platoon sergeants at the time, he got shot as well trying to pull Wells out.
14:25I truly think that was the moment that I guess the fog or the haze began.
14:33You're just in the mindset of now keeping your bodies alive.
14:37You truly realize if I make a mistake or luck just has it, it could be my friend.
14:44It could be your brother, the guy who you went and saw his family the month before you deployed.
14:52You knew his girlfriend. That potential was there.
14:57One of the Marines was Gunnery Sergeant Shane.
15:00He certainly had the spirit of Bravo Company.
15:02He was very well liked and very well respected.
15:07When a guy like that goes down and another very experienced Marine like Sergeant Wells,
15:13he gets killed, these guys that you look up to and respect and go to for advice are now out of the fight.
15:19And this is the first day and we've got another month of this.
15:26But then you also look around and you're with approximately 200 other guys that you admire and respect
15:33and you've now been in your first gunfight together.
15:37No one cowered. We all fought together.
15:39And believe it or not, this was our objective and we took it.
15:43And we now have a foothold in the biggest stronghold they have.
15:46The most dangerous city in Iraq and we just came in and we took something from you.
15:51And we're not stopping and we're going to keep doing it.
15:53We kind of got all the insurgents' attention, like, hey, we're here, we're in the middle of the city now.
15:59We've taken down some pretty key objectives here.
16:02The fighting really, really picked up at that point.
16:05Allahu Akbar!
16:09The casualties picked up at that point as well.
16:12From that point forward, you're more of a machine.
16:16Emotions, you start to lose it.
16:19Your mind is very task-orientated.
16:21You're adapting.
16:23You're finding out what small things didn't work, so next building.
16:27And you're like, oh, this is what I'm going to do.
16:29I'm just going to go through it and I'm going to get the most out of it.
16:31And then you're just going to keep going.
16:33You're going to keep going.
16:35And then you're going to get the most out of it.
16:37And then you're going to keep going.
16:39And then you're going to keep going.
16:41And then you're going to get to the next building.
16:43You can correct that.
16:45You kind of lose concept of time.
16:47You might have slept for 10 minutes.
16:49You might have slept for an hour.
16:51But the nights and days really just kind of blend together.
17:03We were moving just extremely fast and violent through that city.
17:07A lot of times they were moving so quick.
17:09I mean, by the time you're getting set up on a house and really starting to get a lay of where the avenues of approach are,
17:15they were already three houses down.
17:17They were moving quick.
17:19They knew what they were doing.
17:21It was incredible to watch those guys work.
17:23The professionalism, the bravery, it was something else.
17:37Pull up.
17:39Pull up.
17:41Let's go.
17:43Take it in.
17:45I don't know where the fuck they are.
17:51So it felt like we were making progress.
17:53But at the same time, from my end, it felt like we were missing a lot of stuff.
17:55We were leaving a lot of stuff behind.
17:57A lot of buildings aren't cleared.
17:59We knew we had an objective.
18:01We wanted to hit the edge of the city.
18:03Push as many people out as we could.
18:05That's uneasy, knowing that there could be people behind you at the same time.
18:15My team stayed back as the rest of the platoon was supposed to probe forward from the police headquarters.
18:21They were just going to push a couple blocks forward and then come back to get a feel of what's in front of us.
18:31The platoon came to a halt.
18:33They saw a National Guard in front of us.
18:36They weren't supposed to be there, but they had the right markings.
18:39And then fire erupted.
18:46The platoon were fooled by the enemy having on the same markers as what the local National Guard was supposed to have on.
18:59Anderson was lost during that.
19:01Anderson was the other team leader that was in my squad.
19:05When our platoons joined, we mixed pretty well.
19:09So he was definitely a good friend.
19:15I remember meeting up with the platoon and them trying to break the news to me.
19:24And I remember feeling a sense of disappointment.
19:30Like I let him down for not being there.
19:33Although in hindsight, there's nothing I could have done.
19:43No time to cry, really.
19:46No time for emotion.
19:54After more than a week of intense combat, the American military is claiming a major success in their initial sweep through the city of Fallujah.
20:02In their campaign to break the back of the insurgency.
20:05Have left thousands of houses and buildings unsearched.
20:09Now begins the grueling process of going back...
20:13After ten days of exhausting fighting, the Marine and Army units have successfully swept through the southern end of Fallujah.
20:21Destroying much of the enemy's infrastructure.
20:23But left behind are hard core, well supplied, entrenched insurgents willing to fight to the death.
20:33For the young men of Bravo Company, already bloodied in the most vicious fight of their lives.
20:38The brutal task of digging out their enemy, house by house.
20:42Will unleash a nightmare of battle not seen since the urban warfare of Vietnam.
20:52Get down, get down, get down, get down!
20:57Get down, get down, get down!
21:16After ten days of brutal fighting against an insurgency bent on spreading terror throughout the region.
21:23The Marine and Army units have successfully swept through the city.
21:27And cleared many of the key enemy strongholds.
21:30But with some twenty plus thousand buildings and houses unsearched.
21:35They must now begin the painstaking, deadly process of digging out, house by house.
21:40The remaining die hard insurgents willing to fight to the death.
21:54We hit the southern part of the city.
21:56Especially right there at the edge, it really died off.
21:59Because there was nobody kind of left.
22:01But they were all behind us.
22:06We all knew what we had missed so much.
22:08We had skipped so much.
22:10To hit objectives, to hit these things by deadlines.
22:12That we were going to have to go back.
22:15You know, one party is thinking, hopefully it's not too many.
22:18But you know when you get them to those last few houses, it's just going to be one hell of an engagement.
22:23They're not the surrendering type of people.
22:26They're there to kill Americans or die trying.
22:42Let's understand the basic tactic that the Marines used.
22:46That not too many other people have the courage to do.
22:50What they had to do was tell every squad, 12 Marines.
22:53Alright, you're going down this block.
22:56And you're going to clear the first five houses.
22:59Then the next squad's clearing the next five.
23:01And then the next squad.
23:07And each 12 man team had to go to every house.
23:11But they never knew where the other side was.
23:14Because once you're inside a house, how do you know where the people are?
23:21No matter how many times you rehearse going into a house.
23:26If the guy's behind the door waiting for you to enter.
23:29I don't care how good you are.
23:31You're not going to beat him to the punch of shooting you first.
23:36So at the end of the day, you have to walk through a dark doorway.
23:40And really just hope there's nobody on the other side.
23:42And if there is, and he shoots one of your friends,
23:44you want to make sure you shoot him before he shoots you.
23:57When the house-to-house happened, that's where the intensity just went through the roof.
24:02And that's when I realized that I was going to die.
24:05I was going to die.
24:07I was going to die.
24:09I was going to die.
24:11I was going to die.
24:16We were hitting so much contact in these houses,
24:18we were losing people left and right.
24:31The biggest fear for us, especially during that first part,
24:34was enemy snipers.
24:36Constantly coming up with new ways, trying to lure them out.
24:39Putting helmets on stuff, peeking them over windows.
24:42And I'd sit back and watch, and we'd hope he'd just try to draw fire on me.
24:47Try to bait them into giving away their position.
24:50A lot of that stuff with the snipers was cat and mouse.
24:58The first times I'd seen Ski, since the battle,
25:01he was in our sister team with Bravo Company.
25:05We had about 10 minutes or so just to kind of catch up.
25:08He was one of my best friends.
25:10I mean, he was everybody's best friend. He was a hell of a guy.
25:13We're sitting up there, it's cold.
25:15We had our beanies on, had our helmets off,
25:17and we're just kind of shooting the s*** behind the wall.
25:19I was smoking a cigarette, and he was a typical Ski,
25:22telling us some funny story about what happened a day or two before that.
25:26After leaving Ski, we had moved over a couple houses.
25:29I was just getting set up,
25:31and I remember hearing just one shot ring out as the sun was coming up.
25:37I heard someone come across on our segment on the radio,
25:40saying, hey, make sure everybody's got their Kevlars on.
25:43You know, we just had one get hit, didn't have his Kevlar on.
25:47I was like, what the f*** is going on?
25:49And he said, I don't know.
25:52We just had one get hit, didn't have his Kevlar on.
25:55I was kind of thinking something like, crap, you know, Ski has his Kevlar off.
26:00Bosman was kind of pushing me.
26:02He wanted to know. He really wanted to know.
26:04So I switched over to 3rd Platoon and asked him, you know, who was it?
26:08He said, Ski. I said, Ski with weapons or Ski with snipers?
26:12He said, snipers.
26:16I mean, you know, I kind of looked up and said, yeah, it was our Ski.
26:22I'd heard after the fact that Ski was kind of in this,
26:25almost like a sniper battle with this enemy sniper,
26:28kind of trading shots back and forth,
26:30and he had many a close call before Ski was finally hit.
26:36That scared me.
26:39You know, if God's going to take someone like that off this,
26:42out of everybody of us that's here, it's, nobody's safe, you know?
26:51Snipers
26:57I don't see any vehicles moving yet. Those are friendlies.
27:07We had five Marines go into a courtyard.
27:11All of them were shot or hit with shrapnel,
27:14and the enemy started throwing grenades.
27:15They were all hiding inside this house.
27:18We had five Marines that were down inside this courtyard,
27:20surrounded by a six-foot cement wall.
27:24We're trying to climb over the wall,
27:26and then there's machine gun rounds
27:28chipping the top of the wall, shooting at us.
27:32They're just these incredibly long and grueling gunfights,
27:36and you have a really limited number of options
27:38because you have an enemy with a ton of ammunition
27:42inside a very well-fortified position
27:44that they've been planning to die in for who knows how long now,
27:48and they're shooting up your friends.
27:51We've got a man-of-war coming on!
28:03On my level, it felt like this was going to continue indefinitely.
28:07I had a chance to make a phone call on a satellite phone,
28:11and I called my wife.
28:14While we were on the phone,
28:16there actually was a firefight that broke out.
28:20And so she heard the rounds going off
28:23and the machine guns firing and all this loud noise,
28:26and I'm trying to scream to where she can hear me.
28:30Of course, she just freaked out and started crying.
28:33And I'm just telling her, I'm fine, I'm fine,
28:35you know, everything's going to be OK.
28:37And immediately after getting off the phone with her,
28:39I just felt like that was just a huge mistake.
28:41I shouldn't have called her,
28:43even though I hadn't talked to her in so long,
28:45and I really wanted to talk to her.
28:49I just felt like that was really stupid of me to do
28:51because now she's scared.
28:54Watch each other's back.
28:57You got a weapon?
28:59Watch each other's back.
29:02You got a weapon?
29:04You got another gun?
29:19As the casualties mount,
29:21the courage and tenacity of Bravo Company
29:24is put to the test.
29:26The bonds of brotherhood and their ability to adapt
29:29will be crucial as the insurgency withdraws
29:32into ever more deadly strongholds,
29:35forcing the Marines to fight a violent, up-close battle
29:39against insurgents determined to die fighting.
29:57The weeks of brutal fighting
29:59in the Iraqi insurgent stronghold of Fallujah
30:02has been costly for the Marine and Army units.
30:05But after 35 days of fighting,
30:07they have pushed the insurgency into pockets of resistance.
30:11The slow, costly, block-by-block victories
30:15have come by the grit and courage
30:17of individual Marines and Marines,
30:20who have fought to the death
30:22The slow, costly, block-by-block victories
30:24have come by the grit and courage
30:26of individual Marine and Army squads and platoons
30:29slugging it out day after day
30:31in some of the worst fighting of the Iraq War.
30:39Tanks came in, kind of blew some holes in the houses across from us.
30:45And as they were going in to clear the next house,
30:48it just opened up.
30:50It seemed like all the ones for that whole block
30:52were holed up in these, you know, six or seven houses.
30:58And I remember seeing guys, just the bravery of, you know,
31:01going through that gate, making their way to that door.
31:04As soon as that gate blows and they're running in,
31:06you can see the guys, you know, getting hit
31:08and still advancing forward.
31:14I remember as we were clearing our building
31:16just hearing gunfire erupt.
31:18And you knew that that was First Squad in a firefight,
31:22and we immediately abandoned what we were doing
31:25and got there as fast as possible.
31:32The machine gun team had seen somebody
31:34picking their head out of the rubble, called me up.
31:37So I ran up there with my gun, kind of heard a shot,
31:40heard something, and...
31:43Mindy's seen Bausman fall down.
31:46I immediately put my gun down, ran down there to him.
31:49I was calling for a medic on the radio.
31:55That was an intense moment.
31:57You have an enemy in that building
31:59that already shot Brown, shot Gabrielle,
32:01and shot the interpreter just minutes prior.
32:05You don't know if you're going to go into a fortified enemy.
32:08You don't necessarily know if it's just one or ten.
32:11They're running back up those stairs,
32:13yelling over the rooftop, like, where's this corpsman at,
32:15where's this corpsman at?
32:17He's coming, he's coming, he's coming.
32:19Started running back to the stairs to go back down to him,
32:21and Mendenhall stopped me.
32:23I guess, you know, there was bullets right behind me
32:25going up those stairs.
32:27He didn't want me coming back down there.
32:29He was like, we got to stay down, we got to stay down.
32:31They've got us covered right now.
32:33We can't put our head up.
32:35Go down these stairs, I'm going to get shot.
32:37Pick my head up, I'm going to get shot.
32:39My gun's down there.
32:41We can hear movement in the building below us.
32:44You felt like you were just walking into a trap.
32:48Anything you do is going to get you killed.
32:53I remember just looking down
32:55and seeing the tiniest, tiny grenade
32:58land right in our stack.
33:00We yelled, grenade.
33:05Shrapnel hit my friend, though,
33:07Shrapnel hit my friend, Nolan.
33:09Our radio operator, Santa Bria, who saw him.
33:13Just one individual in this house
33:16was responsible for a lot of our wounded and one dead.
33:25I ran back to the wall, yelling for that corpsman again.
33:28He's on his way, he's on his way.
33:30So I ran back to the stairs where I could kind of see down to him
33:34and Mendenhall just kind of looked up
33:36and kind of gave the sign like he's gone.
33:38He's gone, nothing else we can do.
33:43I remember feeling sick to my stomach.
33:45I remember punching the wall,
33:46feeling like there's nothing I can do.
33:49We got Bosman together and kind of put him in a poncho
33:53and it took about two or three of us
33:55carrying him up those stairs.
33:57Probably on that rooftop, a good two hours
33:59before we were able to get out of there.
34:07And then we just pulled back a couple blocks
34:09and they called in an airstrike on it.
34:29At this point, when you're losing people,
34:32you feel an obligation to almost always be first
34:37because I'd feel as if I'm failing my buddy.
34:40And you have this sense of you were failing your friends.
34:43If they were getting wounded, they were sacrificing more for you.
34:49Somehow you can never be the one.
34:52Not as if it was a gift to die,
34:54but it was something you could give them
34:58because it was you instead of them.
35:02When everyone around you starts getting wounded or killed,
35:09that's a gift.
35:10That's them sacrificing for you,
35:13which makes you feel inadequate.
35:25House by house, block by block,
35:28the insurgent strongholds are falling
35:30to the Army and Marine units.
35:32But after weeks of nonstop fighting,
35:35there are still hundreds of houses yet to clear.
35:40The once confident insurgents are finding no safe refuge
35:43from the daily hammering of Bravo.
35:46With the loss of their brothers weighing heavy on their hearts,
35:50they are more determined than ever to finish the job.
35:54Get down! Get down! Get down!
35:55Get down!
35:56Right now!
36:00Right now!
36:16When I think about the Fallujah experience, it's those houses.
36:20It's being on the rooftop of those houses
36:24and hearing the mosques play the prayers in the distance.
36:32Sitting on a rooftop,
36:33one of your buddies brings you a cigarette they found
36:36because everyone ran out of cigarettes very quickly
36:38and it became like gold.
36:40And you get a chance to just sit there
36:42and smoke a cigarette with a buddy.
36:44In those moments,
36:45one of the most beautiful things I've ever experienced
36:48is just sitting with a friend, smoking a cigarette,
36:51knowing that it might be our last
36:53and just enjoying the fact that we get to have one together
36:56before we move on to the next building.
37:05In 40 days of non-stop house-by-house fighting,
37:09the young men of Bravo Company have lost 13 of their own,
37:13with no clear end to the battle in sight.
37:17With the last of the die-hard enemy
37:19now entrenched in well-supplied fortresses,
37:22prepared for a fight to the death,
37:24the final days of the battle for Fallujah
37:26will see some of the worst face-to-face fighting
37:30of the entire war.
37:35It was bad, but it just seemed to keep getting worse and worse
37:40as the days went on
37:41because we're pushing their hiding places back,
37:44smaller and smaller.
37:45Now they're kind of determined,
37:47okay, this is it, this is the house I'm going to die in.
37:50I'm setting up in here, I'm not leaving.
37:54Fallujah forces detained another insurgent
37:56and destroyed three weapons cache as operational.
37:59The planche continues in Iraq.
38:02After almost two months of fighting,
38:04what remains of the city of Fallujah...
38:06The second battle in less than a year
38:08to take back Fallujah from insurgents
38:10who had declared the city their new caliphate
38:13has left little untouched,
38:15a sign of just how intense the battle was for our people.
38:19Fallujah has been declared free of the insurgent strongholds...
38:24...the battle was for army and marine units
38:26who had the grueling task of digging out thousands of insurgents
38:30who had pledged to fight to the death.
38:33For most, that is exactly what they got.
38:38On December 22nd, 2004,
38:41Bravo Company has taken off the front line
38:44for the first time in 46 days of non-stop fighting.
38:48The following day, on December 23rd,
38:51the second battle for Fallujah is officially concluded.
38:55The cost had been high.
38:58The insurgents had been forced out of the city
39:01The second battle for Fallujah is officially concluded.
39:05The cost had been high,
39:07with 95 killed and another 560 wounded.
39:12In Bravo Company alone, they had lost 13 of their friends.
39:17But their courage and sacrifice had proved itself
39:20in the bloodiest conflict of the Iraq war
39:23and one of the bloodiest battles of urban warfare since Vietnam.
39:27It was a victory won by a young group of marines
39:30and soldiers who stood shoulder to shoulder
39:33in an unstoppable brotherhood
39:35against an enemy willing to fight to the death.
39:39What did I take away from Fallujah?
39:42It was very simple.
39:44One team.
39:46When you consider we had army and marine side by side,
39:50they had a mission, they were going to accomplish it.
39:54Leaders were not the ones saying,
39:56these are your rules of engagement and I'm the referee.
40:01The leaders were, I'm on your team, I'm the coach,
40:04we're in this together.
40:07And what I really wish is that we could take
40:10that one team concept that they had in Fallujah
40:14and put that all the way up to the White House
40:17and say, when you send that 19-year-old marine or soldier out there,
40:22you have to say, I'm with you.
40:25I am your coach.
40:27I am psychologically on that battlefield
40:30pulling the trigger alongside you.
40:32They have to go in with the same one-team attitude
40:36that was true in Fallujah.
40:41I can remember distinctly just kind of looking out at the city,
40:44the neighborhoods as we were going out,
40:46and just, it was a wreck.
40:48I mean, we just destroyed this place.
40:53And just seeing the look on the Marines' faces,
40:55it was just, it was humbling.
41:00Humbling to be in presence of those guys, for sure.
41:05And not a day goes by that I don't think about them.
41:10Whenever I've run into someone that went in through the Battle of Fallujah,
41:13there's an immediate connection there
41:15because we both have struggled through something
41:18that was very difficult on us physically and mentally.
41:21More importantly, I think it shows our enemies that
41:26I don't care how well-defended you are on your turf,
41:30you're not going to stop us.
41:32Not only are Marines and soldiers and sailors and airmen,
41:35not only are we tactically good at what we do,
41:39but we love each other at a very high and strong level
41:43that we'll fight for each other like no one else will.
41:51Being around the Marines you were with for so long,
41:54even after the combat experience that happened,
41:56was sort of comforting for you
41:58because you know these guys, you trust these guys.
42:01They know something about you that no one else will ever know,
42:04and that is what it was like to be in the city of Fallujah at that time.
42:09So I almost felt alone with my family
42:12because my brothers weren't with me,
42:14and that was the actual, that was the first time I ever cried
42:17about Fallujah was that night.
42:21Because it was just, it's almost too much to bear
42:27knowing that you get to be here, and they don't.
42:34We did our job, and we were very successful at it.
42:37It came at a cost.
42:39But without a doubt, we own that city,
42:43and we put our sweat, blood, and tears into that city.
42:48Even if there was less of us,
42:50nothing would have stopped us from taking that city.
42:58You live with these guys.
43:00You know their stories, their families.
43:03You have fun together, you get in trouble together.
43:07That's the guy next to you.
43:09It's not just a friend, it's a brother, as if you're blood.
43:14That's all that matters.
43:16And winning.
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