First Direct Contact: An Ambush and a Skirmish

First taste of guerilla-style battle was south Hit, Nov. 14 2004. A light armored reconnaissance vehicle patrol of about eight LAVs got stuck in the mud as they were turning around. Insurgents had come out and fired off salvos of RPG and mortar fire, and machine-gun fire, and had only pissed the Marines off.

Our truck gurus were on their way to pull the LAVs out of the mud, but we in third squad were on QRF (quick reaction force), so we threw down our shovels on the command and jumped into the Hummers.
I was in the back of the last Hummer with two sniper teams: Doc Petraglia and SGT Morales, and SGTs Scheele and Little. I remember chewing gum excitedly as they teased me about being afraid as we rushed for what we thought was a full-on firefight (it sure had been when the call came in).
When we got there, we dismounted on the north flank of the LAV patrol, where the Marines fearlessly dug at the mud surrounding their vehicles' tires, and I noticed several undetonated RPG rounds stuck in the mud around the vehicles. We had scarcely dismounted when an insurgent opened up on us with a machine gun. No bullets that I knew of struck near me, but I remember noting very distinctly that the machine gun fire sure was loud when it was pointed in one's direction.
SGT Morales dove nose-first into a pile of concrete, some of the Marines jumped for the sewage runoff tributary, and I took a knee behind the cement pile Morales had busted his nose on.
We advanced to the first row of houses after our three SAW gunners, including my SAW gunner Lopez, had suppressed fire. I knelt behind a low wall and raised my middle fingers in the air, yelling taunts for any would-be insurgents in an attempt to get something to shoot at.
Nothing. In the streets, plenty was going on. A woman walked with a baby on her shoulder in the alleyway in front of me, while men came and went from the houses and word came over the radio to watch for a flatbed truck that had insurgent snipers in it. The men who were coming and going from houses to cars were wearing dishdashas, the "man-dresses" we loved to call them, so I couldn't tell if there were weapons hidden beneath them or not. The woman in front of me paced back and forth, screening the activities of the men.
I told all this to Lieutenant McKinley over the radio, and the whole squad watched the houses intently. It was tense and boring, and I wanted to shoot but had nothing but thinly veiled insurgent activity in front of me. We were supposed to be showing great restraint at this point in the mission, as Fallujah was preparing to kick off 60 km southeast of us.
"Come on you cowardly bastards, shoot!" I taunted. Some of the men looked at me. No takers. Meanwhile, the snipers were getting impatient. They wanted to be up on a rooftop, so I radioed LT McKinley to ask. He said sure.
We tried the two-man assist to assail the wall of the two-story house immediately to my right, but it was too tall. We'd have to go around the corner, exposed to the streets and alleys, and go in through the front door.
We "stacked" SWAT-team style like we'd been taught, and I gave my guys the order. Corporal Rodriguez, my point man, dashed around the corner, and I followed...