Against.the.Odds.S02E04.46.Days.of.Hell.in.Fallujah
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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.
16:15Emotions. You start to lose it.
16:19Your mind is very task-orientated.
16:22You're adapting, you're finding out what small things didn't work.
16:25So, next building, if you're going to be out there and you're going to be in a base,
16:29you're going to be out there with your friend.
16:32You're going to be out there with your family.
16:34You're going to be out there with your friends.
16:36Orientated you're adapting you're you're finding out what small things didn't work. So next building you can correct that
16:45You kind of lose concept of time you might have slept for 10 minutes you might have slept for an hour
16:51But the nights and days really just kind of blend together
16:55We were moving just extremely fast and violent through that city
17:10A lot of times they were moving so quick
17:12I mean about time you're getting set up on on a house and really starting to get a lay of
17:16Where the avenues of approach are?
17:19They're already three houses down. They were they were moving quick. They they knew what they were doing
17:26Incredible to watch those guys work the professionalism the bravery. It was something else
17:31So
17:51It felt like we were making progress for the same time for my end
17:54I feel like we're missing a lot of stuff for leaving a lot of stuff behind there, you know
17:57A lot of buildings aren't cleared
18:00You know, we had an objective we wanted to hit the edge of the city push 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 a respite was supposed to probe forward from the police headquarters
18:20They were just gonna push a couple blocks forward and then come back to get a feel of what's in front of us
18:30The platoon came to a halt they saw
18:34National Guard in front of us. They weren't supposed to be there, but they had the right markings and then
18:41fire erupted
18:45The platoon were fooled by the enemy having on the same markers is what the local National Guard was supposed to have on
18:54Anderson
18:59Anderson was lost during that
19:01Anderson was the other team leader that was in my squad
19:05when our platoons joined we
19:08Mixed pretty well. So he was definitely a good friend. I
19:16Remember meeting up with the platoon and
19:19Them trying to break the news to me
19:25And I remember feeling a
19:29Sense of disappointment like I let him down for not being there
19:35Although in hindsight, there's nothing I could have done
19:44No time to cry really no time for emotion
19:54Week of intense combat the American military is claiming a major success in their initial sweep through the city of Fallujah in their
20:02Campaign to break the back of the insertible have left thousands of houses and buildings
20:07Unsearched now 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
20:20Destroying much of the enemy's infrastructure, but left behind our hard core well-supplied
20:28Entrenched insurgents willing to fight to the death
20:32For 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
20:50You
20:52You
20:54You
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 and cleared many of the key enemy strongholds
21:30But with some 20 plus thousand buildings and houses unsearched they must now begin the painstaking
21:37Deadly process of digging out house by house the remaining diehard insurgents willing to fight to the death
21:54If we hit this the southern part of the city, especially right there at the edge
21:57It really died off because there was nobody kind of left, but they were all behind us
22:06We all knew that what we had missed so much
22:08We had skipped so much to hit objectives to hit these things by deadlines that we're gonna have to go back
22:15You know one parties think okay. Hopefully it's not too many, but you know when you get them to those last few houses
22:20It's just gonna be one one hell of an engagement
22:23They're not the surrendering type of people. They're they'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 a courage to do
22:50What they had to do was tell every squad 12 Marines
22:53All right
22:54You're going down this block and you're gonna clear the first five houses
22:59Then the next squads clearing the next five and then the next squad
23:07Each 12 man team had to go to every house
23:12But they never knew where the other side was because once you're inside a house
23:17How do you know where the people are?
23:20You
23:26No matter how many times you rehearse going into a house
23:31If the guys behind the door waiting for you to enter, I don't care how good you are
23:35You're not going to beat him to the punch of shooting you first
23:41So at the end of the day you have to walk through a dark doorway and really just hope there's nobody on the other
23:47side
23:50And if there is and he shoots one of your friends you want to make sure you shoot him before he shoots you
24:08When the house the house happened that's where the intensity just went through the roof
24:11We
24:15Were hitting so much contact in these houses it was we were losing people left and right
24:30The biggest fear for us especially during that first part was enemy snipers
24:36Constantly coming up with new ways trying to lure him out putting helmets on stuff peeking him over windows
24:42And I'd sit back and watch and we'd hope you just try to draw fire on it
24:46Try to bait him into giving away their position a lot of a lot of that stuff with the snipers was cat and mouse
24:57The first times I'd seen ski since the battle he was in he was in our our sister team with Bravo company
25:05We had you know about 10 minutes. So just kind of catch up. You know, he's one of my best friends
25:10I mean, he's everybody's best friend. He was a hell of a guy
25:13We're sitting up there. It's cold
25:15We had her beanies on had her helmets off and and we're just kind of shooting this behind the wall
25:19I was smoking a cigarette and he was typical ski, you know telling us some funny story about what happened a day or two before that
25:25After
25:34Leaving ski we had moved over a couple houses
25:37I was just getting set up and I remember hearing just one shot ring out as the Sun was coming up. I
25:45Heard someone come across on our segments in radio saying hey make sure everybody's got their Kevlar's on, you know
25:52We just had one get hit didn't have his Kevlar on us
25:55And I think we saw my crap, you know ski has Kevlar off
26:00Bosman was kind of pushing me. He wanted to know he really wanted to know so I switched over to third platoon and asked him
26:07You know, who was it?
26:08He said ski us to ski with weapons or ski with snipers. They said snipers and
26:16I'm here, you know, I kind of looked up and say it was it was our ski
26:20I
26:22Had heard
26:23After the fact that ski was kind of in this almost like a sniper battle with this enemy sniper
26:28Kind of trading shots back and forth and he had many a close call before ski was finally hit
26:36That scared me
26:39You know if God's gonna take someone like that off this out of everybody of us that's here's
26:45Nobody's safe, you know
26:47We
27:07Had five Marines go into a courtyard
27:11All of them were shot or hit with shrapnel and the enemy start throwing grenades. They were all hiding inside this house
27:18You
27:20Have five Marines that were down inside this courtyard surrounded by a six-foot cement wall
27:27We're trying to climb over the wall and then there's machine gun rounds chipping the top of the wall shooting at us
27:34They're just these incredibly long and grueling gunfights
27:38And you have a really limited number of options because you have an enemy with a ton of ammunition
27:44Inside a very well fortified position that they've been planning to die in for who knows how long now and
27:51They're shooting up your friends
28:06On my level it felt like this was going to continue indefinitely
28:10Indefinitely I
28:12Had a chance to make a phone call on a satellite phone and I called my wife
28:19While we were on the phone there actually was a firefight that broke out
28:25And so she heard the the rounds going off and
28:29The machine guns firing and all this loud noise and I'm trying to scream to where she can hear me
28:34Of course she she just freaked out starts crying and I'm just telling her I'm fine, I'm fine, you know, everything's gonna be okay and
28:43Immediately after getting off the phone with her. I just felt like that was just a huge mistake
28:45I shouldn't have called her even though I hadn't talked to her in so long and I really wanted to talk to her
28:54That's what I was really stupid of me to do because now she's scared
28:58And each other's back got a weapon
29:19As the casualties mount the courage and tenacity of Bravo company is put to the test
29:25The bonds of brotherhood and their ability to adapt will be crucial as the insurgency withdraws into ever more
29:33deadly strongholds
29:35Forcing the Marines to fight a violent up-close battle against insurgents determined to die fighting
29:55The
30:05Weeks of brutal fighting in the Iraqi insurgent stronghold of Fallujah has been costly for the Marine and Army units
30:12But after 35 days of fighting they have pushed the insurgency into pockets of resistance the slow
30:20Costly block-by-block victories have come by the grit and courage of individual Marine and Army squads and platoons
30:29Slugging it out day after day and 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 it just opened up
30:50Seemed like I you know, all the ones for that whole block were holed up in these, you know, six or seven houses
30:58And I've ever seen guys just the bravery of you know going through that gate making their way to that door
31:04As soon as that gate blows and they're running in you can see the guys, you know getting hit and still advancing forward. I
31:11I
31:15Remember as we were clearing our building just hearing gunfire erupt and you knew that that was
31:21first squad in a firefight and we immediately
31:25Abandoned what we were doing and got there as fast as possible
31:34Machine gun team seen somebody picking their head out of the rubble called me up. So I ran up there with my gun
31:40Kind of heard a shot heard something and
31:45Mindy's seen Bosman fall down
31:50Mainly put my gun down ran down there to him. I was calling for a medic on the radio
31:59That was an intense moment you have an enemy in that building that already shot Brown shot Gabrielle and shot the interpreter
32:06Just minutes prior
32:09You don't know if you're gonna go into a fortified enemy. You don't necessarily know if it's just one or ten
32:16They're running back up those stairs
32:18Yelling over the rooftop like where's this Corman at? Where's this Corman ace? He's coming. He's coming
32:22He's coming started running back to the stairs to go back down to him and men and all stopped me
32:27I guess you know, there was bullets right behind me going up those stairs. He didn't want me coming back down there
32:31You know, it's like we got to stay down. We got to stay down. They've got us covered right now
32:35We can't we can't put our head up
32:38Go down these stairs, I'm gonna get shot pick my head up. I'm gonna get shot. My guns down there
32:43We can hear movement in the building below us
32:47He felt like you're just walk into a trap
32:52Anything you do is gonna get you killed
32:56I remember just looking down and seeing the tiniest tiny grenade
33:01Land right in our stack. We yelled grenade
33:08Shrapnel hit my friend Nolan our radio operator, Santa Bria who song
33:15So it's one individual in this house was responsible for a lot of our wounded and one dead
33:26Ran back to the wall yelling for that Corman again
33:29He's on his way. He's on his way
33:31So I ran back ran back to the stairs
33:33Kind of see down to him and I'm in and all just kind of looked up and kind of gave the sign like he's gone
33:38He's gone
33:40Nothing else we can do
33:43We're feeling sick to my stomach we're punching the wall feel like there's nothing I could do
33:49We got Bosman together and
33:52You kind of put on a poncho. It took, you know, two or three of us carrying him up those stairs
33:57Probably that rooftop good two hours before we were able to get out of there
34:04And then we just pulled back a couple blocks and they called it an airstrike on it
34:29At this point when you're losing people you feel an obligation
34:34To almost always be first
34:37Because I'd feel as if I'm failing my buddy and you had the sense of you were failing your friends if they were getting wounded
34:44They were they were
34:45sacrificing more for you
34:49Somehow you can never be the one
34:51not as if it was a gift to die, but it was a
34:55There's something you could give them
34:58Because it was you instead of them
35:01And everyone around you starts getting wounded or killed
35:09That's a gift that's that's them sacrificing for you which makes you feel
35:17Inadequate
35:20You
35:25House by house
35:27Block by block the insurgent strongholds are falling to the army and marine units
35:32But after weeks of non-stop fighting there are still hundreds of houses yet to clear
35:40The once confident insurgents are finding no safe refuge from the daily hammering of Bravo
35:47With the loss of their brothers weighing heavy on their hearts, they are more determined than ever to finish the job
35:54You
36:15When I think about the Fallujah experience, it's those houses it's
36:21Being on the rooftop of those houses and
36:25Hearing the the mosques play the the prayers in the distance
36:31Sitting on a rooftop you one of your buddies brings you a cigarette
36:35they found because everyone ran out of cigarettes very quickly and they became like gold and
36:39You get a chance to just sit there and and smoke a cigarette with a buddy
36:43in those moments
36:45You know, one of the most beautiful things I've ever experienced it's just sitting with a friend smoking a cigarette
36:51Knowing that it might be our last and just enjoying the fact that we we get to have one together
36:56You know before we move on to the next
36:58the next building
37:05In 40 days of non-stop house-by-house fighting the young men of Bravo company have lost
37:1213 of their own with no clear end to the battle in sight
37:17With the last of the diehard enemy now entrenched in well-supplied fortresses
37:22Prepared for a fight to the death the final days of the battle for Fallujah will see some of the worst
37:29face-to-face fighting of the entire war
37:35It was bad, but it just seemed to keep getting worse and worse
37:40As the days went on because we're we're pushing their their hiding places back smaller and smaller now
37:46They're kind of determined. Okay, this is this is it. This is the house. I'm gonna die in, you know
37:50I'm setting up in here. I'm not leaving
37:55Forces detained another insurgent and destroyed three weapons cash as operation plans continues in Iraq
38:02For almost two months of fighting what remains of the city of Fallujah
38:06Second battle in less than a year to take back Fallujah from insurgents who had declared the city
38:12Their new caliphate has left little untouched a sign of just how intense the battle was
38:20Has been declared free of the insurgent strongholds
38:24The battle was for army and marine units who had the grueling task of digging out thousands of insurgents
38:31Who had pledged to fight to the death for most that is exactly what they got
38:48On December 22nd 2004
38:51Bravo company has taken off the front line for the first time in 46 days of non-stop fighting
38:57The following day on December 23rd, the second battle for Fallujah is officially concluded
39:04The cost had been high with 95 killed and another
39:10560 wounded in Bravo company alone. They had lost 13 of their friends
39:16But their courage and sacrifice had proved itself in the bloodiest conflict of the Iraq War and one of the bloodiest battles of urban
39:24warfare since Vietnam
39:26it was a victory won by a young group of Marines and soldiers who stood shoulder-to-shoulder in an
39:34Unstoppable brotherhood against an enemy willing to fight to the death
39:39What did I take away from Fallujah it was very simple one team
39:46When you consider we had army and Marines side by side, they had a mission they were going to accomplish it
39:54Leaders were not the ones saying these are your rules of engagement and I'm the referee
40:00Uh-huh, the leaders were I'm on your team. I'm the coach. We're in this together and
40:07What I really wish is that we could take that one team
40:11concept that they had in Fallujah and put that all the way up to the White House and
40:17Say when you send that 19 year old Marine or soldier out there
40:22You have to say I'm with you I am your coach I am
40:28Psychologically on that battlefield pulling the trigger alongside you they have to go in with the same
40:35One team attitude that was true in Fallujah. I
40:41Can remember distinctly just kind of looking out at the city as we're you know, the neighborhoods were going out and just
40:47It was a wreck. I mean we just
40:50Destroyed this place
40:53And just seeing the look on the you know, the Marines faces it was just
40:58It's humbling I'm gonna be in presence of those guys for sure
41:05And you know not a day goes by that I don't think about him
41:10Whenever I've run into someone that went in through the battle for those
41:13There's an immediate connection there because we both have struggled through something
41:18That was very difficult on us physically and mentally
41:22More importantly, I think it shows our enemies that I don't care how well defended you are on your turf
41:30You're not gonna stop us
41:32Not only our Marines and soldiers and sailors and airmen. Not only are we you know, tactically good at what we do
41:39But but we love each other at a very high and strong level that will will fight for each other like no one else will
41:51Being around the Marines you were with
41:53For so long even after the combat experience that happened was sort of comforting
41:57For you because you you know these guys you trust these guys
42:01They know something about you that no one else will ever know and that is what it was like to be in
42:05the city of Fallujah at that time
42:09So I almost felt alone with my family
42:12Because my brothers were with me and that was the actual that was the first time I ever cried about Fallujah was that night
42:21Because it was just
42:24It's almost too much to
42:27To bear knowing that you get to be here and they don't
42:31We did our job and we were very successful out of it it came at a cost
42:36But without a doubt
42:38We own that city
42:40And we put our sweat blood and tears into that city
42:44Even if there was less of us nothing would have stopped us from taking that city
42:54You live with these guys you know that you're a part of this
42:58You live with these guys, you 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 and winning
43:28You