The lead platoon commander radioed that he was moving. A kilometer ahead, the tanks and LAVs fanned off the road, forming a line along the riverbank, pointing their guns toward the town. With a flash of light and a deafening roar, they fired their first salvo. Then another, and another, and another. When a tank fires its main gun in the dark, a tongue of flame shoots ahead, and the flash and bang of the shot is quickly followed by the flash and bang of the impact. The LAVs pumped chain gun rounds in burst after burst. They sounded like paper being torn, or a long guttural belch. From overhead, the Cobras fired Zuni rockets and Hellfire missiles. Each impact sent up a column of liquid fire. We drove forward into this storm, with smoke swirling through the doors and cordite filling our nostrils. As we drew abreast of the tanks, they ceased fire, and we moved forward to the bridge alone.
I planned to put my platoon on the north side to cover Third Platoon as they crossed into Muwaffiqiya. Once across, they would sit in place on the far side of the bridge and cover our crossing. The tanks and LAVs were too heavy to cross with us. I watched through my goggles as Third Platoon’s five vehicles crept around the Dumpster and across the narrow concrete span onto the riverfront street. Company headquarters followed behind them. Suddenly, the command vehicle, towing a trailer filled with supplies, lurched and settled, as if about to plunge into the river.
“We’re stuck on the bridge,” the captain reported. Considering his situation, he sounded calm. Two Cobras hovered over the river, firing rockets into the alleyways on the far side. The Marines in company headquarters were out of their Humvee, trying to rock the trailer from a hole in the deck of the bridge. As much as any firefight we were in, this one typified the strange distance of combat. Third Platoon was trapped in the hostile town, alone, with no way to be reinforced or to fall back. Company headquarters struggled at the center of the bridge, as if spotlighted on a stage. Only fifty meters from them, we could do nothing. I held the platoon in place on the near side of the bridge, as much for moral support as anything else. In the darkness and smoke, we couldn’t safely fire close to the other Marines. We pushed out security to the flanks and rear and watched the drama unfold.
An hour later, with dawn approaching, headquarters managed to free the trailer. They reversed across the bridge and halted in front of our position. In the gray light, I watched Third Platoon’s Humvees rumble out of the demolished town, one by one, and cross to safety. As they drove past, the Marines looked like caricatures, pale with dark, sunken eyes. Throughout the night, the rest of the battalion had remained behind us, out of the fight. Now a few headquarters officers rushed forward and, as my Marines manned security positions in the fields along the road, eagerly clustered around the men we’d killed. I watched in disbelief as camera flashes popped in the dim light and senior officers laughed and strutted around.
I had kept my cool through almost seven hours of nonstop combat, through killing men so close I could hear them breathe, through evacuating my wounded brothers, through thinking I wouldn’t live to see the sunrise. Finally, I lost control. Running up the road, I was in a rage.
“What the hell are you doing?” I shouted. “You stupid motherfuckers. Taking pictures? You make me sick.”
A headquarters captain grabbed my shoulder and told me to calm down. I shook free. Major Benelli looked at me with disdain, as if it were in poor taste for me to ruin the victory celebration.
Headquarters began to trickle away; my explosion had not been entirely without effect. I looked at the dead bodies sprawled in the trees. Six or seven of them, young men like us, clean-shaven and dressed meticulously in pleated trousers, button-down shirts, and brown loafers. Their silver belt buckles gleamed. They looked more like computer programmers than Islamic fighters. AK-47s surrounded the bodies, along with RPG launchers and piles of grenades.
Clutched in the death grip of one of the men were two hand grenades, seconds from being thrown. Another corpse stood almost upright, stapled to a tree trunk by .50-caliber machine gun rounds. A third fighter looked as if he’d died the clichéd death by a thousand cuts. One of the Cobra’s fléchette rockets had hit next to him, sending thousands of tiny metal slivers into every inch of his body. There was no blood, only razor-thin cuts. We started picking through their pockets for information.
