media coverage of Iraq. Most of these individuals had rational motivations and had to navigate an ultraviolent environment unfathomable to most westerners. From dealing with the deaths of family members killed in the crossfire between Marines and insurgents, to the risky decision to take a public stand against criminals and radicals, many Iraqis faced difficult circumstances. The individuals who stuck their necks out took on an astonishing degree of personal risk. Many of these decisions were heroic.
From the American perspective, this book examines how war fighters—primarily U.S. Marines primed for conventional battles—were tasked with a job that often resembled police work as much as it did traditional combat. This adjustment was not easy for many of them, especially when the job called for aggressive young men to show patience and restraint after their friends had been wounded or killed by snipers and booby traps. Five men assigned to Alpha Company 1/24 Marines were killed in the deployment to Fallujah’s peninsula, and more than thirty men were wounded. Of the former group, two—Sgt. Thomas M. Gilbert and LCpl. Jonathan B. Thornsberry—feature in this book’s narrative. The others are PFC Brett A. Witteveen, PFC Bufford “Kenny” VanSlyke, and Cpl. Jacob H. Neal.
Witteveen was killed by an improvised explosive device on February 19, 2007, while conducting a foot patrol. The PFC’s former high school principal described him to the Associated Press as “a fun-loving kid, with a great smile, [who] knew that he wanted to serve his country.” Witteveen’s squad leader at the time of his death, Sgt. Michael Moose, spoke haltingly with emotion as he described the circumstances and aftermath of the explosion five years later.
VanSlyke was killed by a sniper on February 28, 2007, while manning one of the entry control points that monitored traffic into the city. According to one Marine, he had enough time to say “I’ve been shot” and “I can’t feel my legs” before slipping into unconsciousness. VanSlyke had always been friendly with Fallujans who passed through his checkpoint, so much so that some regular passersby expressed condolences to the Marines when they learned of his death.
Neal was killed by a buried roadside bomb during a night convoy on January 19, 2007. He was a popular Marine, and his platoon took the death hard. The corporal’s home unit hadn’t been slated to deploy to Iraq, but Neal volunteered to go when his good friend LCpl. Matthew Teesdale was ordered to Fallujah. The night Neal was killed, Teesdale “just crumpled, fell to his knees and started crying,” according to Cpl. Elijah Villanueva, another member of the squad. Neal was so well liked that four Marines later named their children after him to honor his memory. After the corporal’s death, it was difficult for some American troops to accept the fact that the people they were trying to help had failed to warn them of the bomb or had possibly even sheltered the men who attacked the convoy. Years later, Villanueva commented on how it affected his deployment.
The guys who put that IED in the road lived in a village that we had been … bringing water, school supplies, asking them if they needed help. We were doing the right things for them, and that’s how they repaid us. We were trying to do the whole “No worse enemy, no better friend” thing. The guys used to tease me sometimes because I would carry extra stuff for kids—teddy bears, candy, whatever. [After Neal’s death] was the first time I actually felt bad about it…. It changed the way I felt about the country and what we were doing … how I wanted to act while I was there. After that night I stopped carrying that extra stuff, I just did the mission, did the job and stopped doing anything else. I didn’t go out of my way to be anybody’s friend. I didn’t become a monster or anything, I just wasn’t interested. It was the worst kind of reminder that you’re not at home, you’re not safe, you can’t trust anybody. I know there are good people [in Fallujah], but I went from being open to completely closed.
Some Marines hardened their hearts to the Iraqis after their comrades were wounded or killed. Others had arrived in Fallujah with an aggressive attitude and a closed mind, and they stayed that way. Still others showed great compassion, and they were able to keep an open mind in the bewildering ethical and emotional environment inherent to fighting an insurgency. In the end, despite many tragic errors and challenges, the Marines maintained enough professionalism to cement a key alliance that improved security.
This fundamental test in Iraq offers an important lesson for future small-unit leaders tasked with fighting an insurgency. Beyond the dictates of strategy, tactics, and logistics, and platitudinous ideals about protecting civilians, key questions loom: How do leaders instill enough restraint in young Marines and soldiers to have success in a frustrating, asymmetric conflict? How do squad leaders, platoon leaders, and company commanders compel troops to exhibit the requisite patience and professionalism in political and media environments that are unprecedented in the history of warfare? In meeting this critical challenge, individual personalities and decisions matter. I hope this book conveys how these factors shaped the history of Fallujah.
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MAP 1
On the walk to the meeting, Maj. Dan Whisnant thought about what he would say to the sheikh. “What will he ask for?” he wondered. “What are we prepared to give?”1 Accompanying Whisnant to the midnight parley were an Iraqi interpreter nicknamed “Caesar,” a military intelligence Marine, and five well-armed infantrymen. The small party was leaving the security of their base for one of the sheikh’s houses a few hundred meters outside the wire.
A crescent moon and a quilt of bright desert stars barely illuminated a wall of twelve-foot concrete barriers and sharp rings of razor wire that guarded the eastern face of the American compound. The men picked their way through a maze of lower barriers crisscrossing a section of road running through the entrance, the serpentine configuration preventing suicide car bombers from penetrating their lines. A young Marine manning an M-240 machine gun atop a wooden observation tower silently watched as a member of Whisnant’s detail held up a coil of the edged wire and replaced it behind them after all had exited the gap. The group turned sharply left along a grass and gravel path hugging the fence line running due south. They moved in silence broken by an occasional softly spoken command, the crunch of boots, and the rustle of weapons and body armor.2
It was a chilly evening on December 26, 2006. From Forward Operating Base Black, Whisnant commanded a company of Marines in charge of the rural peninsula south of the famously restive city of Fallujah. He and his men were tasked with leaving an eighty-square-kilometer area at the heart of Iraq’s violent insurgency in better shape than they had found it. About three months into their tour, Whisnant’s Marines had detained and killed some of the enemy, lost some of their own, and made fitful progress. But the clock was ticking on their six-month deployment.
Whisnant believed that the key to beating the area’s resilient insurgency was information. His men needed to win the cooperation of the people, or at the least alienate them less than the rebels did. To this end, he prioritized getting to know the locals. His men were ordered to be respectful and follow sensible rules of engagement to minimize civilian casualties in their frequent battles with insurgents. Regardless of conscientious doctrine and careful execution, it was exasperating, uncertain work. The population of the area of operations (AO) had proven apathetic, uncooperative at best, and enthusiastically
