I finally tried to wash the Marine's bloodstains from my pants.
It had been nine days since the battle, and daily layers of dirt and dust masked what I knew lay beneath. From the relative comfort of "Dreamland," a reasonably secure U.S. base just outside Fallouja, I swirled my pants in a square metal pan containing four inches of precious water. With each spin, the water turned a deeper brown. Soon I could see the blood of Sgt. Josue Magana, the stains unmoved by the swirling water, my memories of that morning just as deeply set.
april 26. 5 a.m. the marines of echo company had been ordered to take two homes in the Jolan neighborhood at the northwestern edge of Fallouja, the heart of the notorious Sunni Triangle and the root of U.S. occupation resistance. Not even a month had passed since the gruesome deaths of four American contractors there.
In their initial push into Fallouja, the Marines had fought to gain a toehold, and for Echo Company this consisted of three abandoned homes and a school, all within 300 meters of each other. They had fortified their positions using sandbags, 24-hour-a-day watch posts, concertina wire and sniper positions. By the time I arrived on April 22, the neighborhood was a ghost town. Most residents had fled, save for one blind Iraqi man who was dutifully being fed by a Kurdish translator working for the Marines.
In the houses and school, Marines had parked their gear in every room. M-16 rifles were delicately perched against the glass doors of a cupboard holding the family's finest dishware. The luckiest Marines claimed the couches; the rest sprawled out on the floors each night.
Walls that once separated neighbors were demolished to allow easy house-to-house access. Doors were taken off their hinges and used to bridge the gaps between the roofs of the houses. On the roof were M-240 machine guns, a larger .50-caliber machine gun, a Mark 19 grenade launcher and shoulder-fired rockets. Small "mouse holes" were pounded in the walls to allow snipers to pick off distant targets.
From the sniper holes could be seen a bullet-riddled car abandoned in the middle of the street. Deep craters where parts of the road used to be. Downed power lines sagging across the roadway. There was also the stench of rotting cows and dogs that died in the crossfire.
Also in view from the sniper's nests were objectives A and B. The two homes, just across the cemetery, had been in view for weeks, and it was there that Marine commanders perceived a threat.
on the morning of april 26 a platoon of marines crept through the darkened streets. A wail could be heard in the distance--the Muslim call to prayer. My camera useless in the darkness, I fumbled to record the ominous sound with a digital recorder. It was too dark to see the buttons, so I gave up.
Ahead, two squads of men were breaching the homes, breaking down doors to clear the buildings. Marines poured inside objectives A and B, taking up defensive positions, a set of eyes on guard from nearly every window. Dawn had come and the sky began to brighten.
It was all starting to seem too easy when a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG, smacked the front of the house with a thunderous crash. The walls trembled. The Marines returned fire with their M-16s and then there was silence.
Defensive postures took on a new urgency. Mattresses were upturned to cover windows, bags of rice stacked in front of open doors to slow speeding bullets. Holes were hammered through the walls to make sniper positions. Then, nothing. Sitting. Waiting. Resting. Drinking. Eating. Nothing. No shots. No enemy sightings. Nothing.
Five hours had passed since the start of the mission and Marines were spread out on the floor, sleeping when they could. I visited the roof briefly to eye the sniper positions, then went back to the bottom floor to look in on sleeping Marines. Returning to the second floor, I tried to capture on camera the reflection of a Marine in a bullet-riddled mirror. I, too, was bored.
The sleeping Marines stirred a bit as shots rang in the distance. There were reports of seven insurgents, scratch that, six insurgents (one was reported over the radio to have been shot by a U.S. sniper) in the area of the mosque. An incoming mortar round hit an adjacent house, igniting a fire.
The Marine commanders decided that one squad, about 12 men, should search the mosque area. There was no movement or firing as they made their approach through the cemetery to the mosque itself. Outside, it was bright, hot and quiet; inside, it was empty. As the Marines searched for insurgents, I looked around but found no shell casings. There was only a partially damaged building, curtains moving in the breeze. I began to wonder if anyone had ever been there.
