Phantom Fury in Fallujah

Observations on Fallujah, Quite Literally...

Somehow, Bravo Company 1st Battalion, 23rd Marines became the darling of our Battalion commanding officer, whom Lieutenant McKinley had nicknamed "Angry Hanks," because he looked like Tom Hanks' evil twin. So it was Bravo Company, and not us in Charlie Company, who went down to Fallujah to help out during Operation al-Fajr, or "Phantom Fury." This operation was a swift kick in the ass for the Iraqi insurgency in al-Anbar Province, Marine Corps style.
In counterinsurgency operations, the quest is for "hearts and minds" of the local populace. Che Guevara said it himself: one doesn't have a revolutionary movement if not supported by the indigenous people. A popular saying among Marine infantry regarding counterinsurgency was, I think, relevant: "If you get 'em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow."
Gen. Richard Natonski oversaw the operation, which turned out to be a brilliant one.
Roughly it went thusly, just about 40 miles down the road from us that early-November 2004: Marines cordoned off the city, allowed women, children, and elderly to leave. They denied most military-aged males exit, but told them if they wanted to survive, just to sit out the military incursion.
Within 16 hours, Marines moved in with main battle tanks, amtracs, and light-armored vehicles, with infantry sweeping on foot, house-to-house. It didn't take long for the stuff to hit the fan.
Lieutenant McKinley and I watched Fallujah unfold on the "Blue Force Tracker," a real-time GPS interface over a computer topographic map on the
Toughbookin his Humvee. The Blue Force Tracker showed our positions and those of all friendly units in the entire al-Anbar Province. It was the coolest thing. Little by little, we could see the various-colored dots representing various Marine units creep into the city, moving from one end to the other, and back again over four days.
In the sky, Cobras flew back and forth continuously over our position, and so did F-18 fighter jets.
At night in the clear sky I could make out illumination flares being fired over the city. I vaguely wished I was going house-to-house in this historic, heroic fight. The next best thing was to serve with the Marines who had done the operation a couple of months later, and hear their stories and see their photos and footage. I have some of that footage, which I will show the reader here (READER CAUTION: FOUL LANGUAGE. turn off the sound of your computer after the bomb blast to avoid the coarse Marine infantry celebratory rhetoric):



Result of Phantom Fury? 35 U.S. servicemen lost their lives and more than 1,200 insurgents stood up to fight and be killed. Fallujah was pacified.
And the surviving insurgency, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had escaped Fallujah dressed as a woman, moved into our neighborhood in the Hit-Haditha corridor...