"A light switch went off."Īccording to his Silver Star citation, Bellavia, armed with an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon gun, entered the room where the insurgents were holed up and sprayed it with gunfire, forcing the enemy to take cover and allowing the squad to move into the street. I wanted to be that leader that I promised I would be," he said. Bellavia seethed when he heard the anguished screams of his fellow Soldiers as they were wounded. The insurgents were entrenched in a makeshift pillbox under a set of stairs. "They just opened up on us with belt-fed machine guns," Bellavia said. The pair of hard-nosed contingents clashed immediately when the door of that 10th house opened. By the time they arrived on the city's outskirts, the 1st ID had been in Iraq for 10 months and had been involved in every major battle in the war up to that point. But Bellavia's unit was battle-hardened, too. They had interpreters, combat cameramen and were well-trained. The insurgents holding Fallujah were formidable. official told ABC News that catching Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was said to be operating in the city, was "the highest priority." The operation ended in late April with the formation of the Fallujah Brigade, a unit composed of Iraqis, which was charged with keeping insurgents out of the city. Marine forces launched Operation Vigilant Resolve to take the city back from insurgents. The impetus for the battle began in March when four American private military contractors from Blackwater USA were ambushed and killed in Fallujah. Marine Corps and was the bloodiest battle of the Iraq war. 7, 2004, and ended more than six weeks later on Dec. Also known as Operation Phantom Fury, the operation was a joint effort by American, Iraqi and British forces to drive out the Iraqi insurgency in the city. As they scrambled from the room, the ordnance failed to explode and was eventually detonated in place, taking the building’s upper floors with it."I have had better birthdays, for sure," Bellavia told the Military Channel in 2009.īellavia's men were mired in the opening stages of the Second Battle of Fallujah. Calling in Hurricane Isabelįrom the vehicle’s vantage point, the gunner likely saw the three infrared silhouettes of men in beanies and buffalo jackets poking their heads over a window ledge and assumed they were enemy insurgents, and not in fact, Marines.Īs Mardan and the others yelled over the radio for a ceasefire, there was a sudden thump - which he remembers to this day - as a TOW missile burst through the wall and skidded to a halt, sputtering feet away from the radio and right in the center of the Marines. Despite the incredible efforts to save the critically wounded Marine, he died of his injuries. As it turned, the ramp was lowered so the patient could be quickly moved off the vehicle. Locking up one tread, the driver deliberately fishtailed the vehicle so it spun around and lined the ramp up with waiting medical personnel. The Vietnam-era vehicle, which was designed to move through contested and rough ground, raced 60 miles an hour through the rubble-strewn streets of Fallujah before arriving at the train station where the battalion was headquartered. In a race to get the wounded man to the care he needed, an Army National Guard unit loaded the Marine into a M113 armored personnel carrier they were using as an armored ambulance. Nor would the wounded Marine be able to survive long enough for a Humvee to make it back to the battalion aid station. Patrick Gallogly, who was the battalion air officer at the time and was on the radio calling for a casualty evacuation. 14, there wasn’t enough time to wait for a helicopter to arrive at his location, explained Lt. When a Marine was shot between the eyes on Nov. A US Marine of the 1st division walks through the deserted western part of Fallujah, Iraq, Monday, Nov.
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