Phantom Fury: L 3/1, 1st Plt, 3rd Squad in Fallujah. D+4.

November 13th, 2004: On the 10th of November, long after our impromptu birthday celebration, 3/1 was on the move again; I swear one day it took us about 18 hours to move 600 meters as we negotiated the maze of houses and courtyards that made up the city of Fallujah.

Kick in one door, gain a foot hold, move up three flights of stairs, clear the top deck, push out a fire team gain a foot hold in the next house over… but wait, there is a completely separate house connected to the back yard. Push out another fire team to gain a foot hold on that structure while still executing a detailed search of the house you are already in. Where are the adjacent squads? Shoot, move, and communicate; you don’t want to draw down on your brothers on the next street over. This is how the clearing of every single house went.

As we pushed through the city, repeating the above sequence of events, without warning it began to rain; steel rain. All movement forward stopped as mortars began to fall from the sky for what seemed like an eternity. Seek cover? There was no cover. A direct hit on any of these houses was guaranteed to level the house with whoever trapped inside. Really all you could do was stand still and hope one of those rounds was not addressed to you. I found myself stuck in a house along with our company XO Greg Jones, his radio man, Mike Hanks and Bill Sojda, (two of my team leaders), and a couple other guys from the company HQ element. With every impact near by the building shook and dirt came pouring down on our heads as the cheap mud-cement was giving way. Hanks, Sojda, and I peered out doors and glassless windows as shells impacted in the road in front of us. I looked at a house directly across the street from where we were, it couldn’t have been more than 20-30 feet away; one second it was there, the next second is was disintegrated. Then the calls started coming in over the radios: Lima XXX, Lima XXX, Lima XXX, Lima XXX, Lima XXX...

The word Lima signified a casualty from Lima Company; that was followed by an assigned number that was given to each man so that the names of casualties were not broadcast over the air waves.

Our first squad had been assigned to provide security for our AMTRACK attachment. When the barrage of mortars came raining down on Lima Company’s position, in an instant our entire first squad was wiped out due to injuries. (A month or so later in the Naval Hospital, Camp Pendleton, I would be wheeled past my friend Dave Taptto as he was being wheeled into post-op after having his shrapnel wounds tended too). The men of first squad suffered multiple shrapnel wounds, concussions, broken bones, and the section leader of the AMTRACK’s SSgt Russel Slay was KIA. A rescue effort was being put together to get to first squad’s position and get the men out of there and back to the battalion aid station where they could be MEDEVAC’ed. This would be the first, but certainly not the last time we would all witness the heroic efforts of the company QRF/MEDEVAC section lead by SSgt Roy “Woodstock” Whitener, Sgt Johnnie Lassiter, and Sgt Cam Wetherford. These men would spend the next few weeks driving like mad men through the demolished streets of Fallujah, navigating wreckage and debris often with no security but what they provided themselves, running men and supplies back and forth from the front lines to the battalion area and back to the front again. These guys looked like something out of Mad Max the Road Warrior.

All but two members of first squad were removed from battlefield that day and the remaining two men were divvied up between my squad and second squad led by Sgt Jason Kyle.

LCpl Benjamin Bryan, one of the “senior Marines” from the company, who fought with Lima 3/1 during the invasion of Iraq the year before, was placed in my second fire team led by LCpl Mike Hanks. November 13th was one of those slow days. We cleared houses, pushed forward, and then halted to wait for the all the subordinate units in the operation to get online. We cleared some more, move forward, then halted and waited for everyone to get online. It was a slow process but in this environment it was imperative no one unit was too far ahead of the rest of the main body for two reasons: 1) we all needed to be able to support each other – there were multiple times I would find my squad on one side of a road and a squad from another company on the other side of the same road, that’s just how our sectors fell. 2) You didn’t want an element so far up there was a chance they would be hit by friendly fire.

I had my guys spread out between two rows of houses. I was coming out of one house and moving up to house where the point element was. When I walked in I saw my men hugging the corners of the two front rooms. As I stood in the middle of the second room I looked at Cpl Bill Sojda and asked what the hell was going on and why was nobody moving. “Get the fuck out of the way!” He said to me. “Bryan’s been hit. Sniper shot him through the window!” To my right was a room where my weapons platoon attachments and our corpsman were kneeling over the body of Benjamin Bryan. I walked into the room and told the Marines to take up security positions. Doc looked at me and I asked him for an assessment. He just shook his head and said “He’s gone.” “Bull shit!” I barked. “Get to work on him. You find me a fucking pulse!” Doc began to provide CPR. “Sergeant, he’s got a pulse, he’s got a pulse!” I radioed back for support and the AMTRACK’s moved up to our location. I met our platoon sergeant at the door. “Put him in the back of the ‘TRACK!” The men loaded LCpl Bryan into the back of the AMTRACK, latched the door, and the AMTRACK sped off back for the battalion area. LCpl Mario Alavez and I made our way to the back door of the house and began to clear the back yard, and scanned the upper levels of adjacent houses hoping to identify the shooter and ultimately kill him. All was quiet and not a soul was to be seen. The squad halted as we waited for adjacent units to get online. The men took up security positions on the road, strong pointing intersections and finding elevated positions. Gunny Matt Hackett, my platoon sergeant, and I sat on a curb on the side of the road as we listened to other units radioing in that they were rounding up detainee’s.

“What the fuck man. How are all these guys taking detainees and we’re getting lit up every time we turn a corner?” He was more making a statement than asking a question. I just shook my head and we shared a pinch of Copenhagen. LCpl Benjamin Bryan had been shot through his flak jacket in an area about ? to ? of an inch wide piece of material where there was no body armor underneath. In just a short while we learned Bryan had not survived the trip to the battalion aid stationed and succumbed to his wounds in the back of the AMTRACK while en route. He was the third man our squad lost.