American Valor Quarterly Issue 2 - Spring 2008 | Page 38

in the bullets. I got to the top and turned around,
and nobody else had come up with me! The stairs
went up a bit, then turned to go to the second story.
In the corner you were shielded from the fire, so
from there I looked down and told my guys to get
up there, and they yelled at me to come back down.
I lost the war—I had to come back down.
Coming down was as bad as going up. When I got
down, we reorganized, and on the second try we
made it back up the stairs. We were firing back and
forth, when this yellow grenade came flying at us.
I’ve never seen anything like it—when it went off, it
was like the whole room was on fire. Everybody
was alright, though, and they kept fighting. We
started to run low on ammo though, and had to
leave the house to reload.
When we went back in, it was the same deal—
fighting back and forth with the insurgents. I couldn’t
tell if they had come out and dragged the downed
Marines into the room with them, but the fighting
was intense. One of the Marines with me was a guy
named Phillip Levine from the Bronx. There was a
lot of automatic gun fire flying back and forth, and
all of a sudden, I heard Levine in that thick New York accent
screaming. I looked back and saw that his arm was literally
dangling—and I froze. He really didn’t have any use of his arm,
but he was still trying to raise his rifle up with one arm to continue
firing. It was that moment right there that is part of the reason I
am still a Marine. Seeing what those other Marines were doing
motivated me so much to keep going because, at that point, it
was getting pretty ugly in that house.

A satellite image of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, center of insurgent activity in 2004.
Beginning on November 7, United States soldiers and Marines entered the city from the
north, pressing due south block by block, and house by house. Sgt. Jeremiah Workman’s
3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment entered the city from the far north-western edge,
pressing south along the Euphrates River. Immediately to their right was 3rd Battalion,
1st Marines under the command of Col. Willy Buhl. Army SSgt. David Bellavia, with
Task Force 2-2, entered Fallujah from the extreme north-east side of the city.

On December 22, the other section of my platoon went out and
got into a bit of a scuffle out in the city. We rotated days to go
out, and the next day, December 23, was our day. I had a gut
feeling that something was going to happen that day.

Digitalglobe.com

Just like any other day, we pulled up and dismounted. I took my
guys on the right side of the street and my buddy Sgt. Jarrett
Kraft took his squad on the left side. I was on the second story
of a house when I heard M249 SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon)
fire. It didn’t really surprise me because a lot of times we would
go into a house and shoot into the closets and beds and couches
because these people were hiding. When it started going back
and forth, I could tell that