Hell in a Small, Nondescript House

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HELL
in a Small,
Fallujah Insurgents Lie in Wait
For U.S. Marines
By Dick Camp
B
y early November 2004, thousands
of Iraqi Sunni insurgents and foreign fighters had seized control of
Fallujah, once a city of more than 300,000
people, now almost abandoned by all its
citizens. Located in the heart of the Sunni
heartland, known as the “Triangle of
Death,” insurgents fortified the city and
used it as a base of operations to consolidate their anti-coalition power throughout
Al Anbar province.
Coalition convoys and installations were
increasing, subject to improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and ambushes
launched from a city described as “meaner
than a junkyard dog.” The insurgents openly were challenging the authority of the coalition and undermining efforts to gain
support of the Iraqi population.
The First Marine Division was tasked to
put down the insurrection and regain control of the city. Six battalions—four Marine (3/5, 3/1, 1/8 and 1/3) and two U.S.
Army (2-7 Cavalry Regiment and 2-2 Infantry Regt)—under the command of the
First and Seventh Marine Regts were ordered into the attack. The fight through the
city’s 20 square miles—50,000 densely
packed buildings—filled with many insurgents who were ready to die was a brutal,
no-holds-barred infantry fight—up close
and personal. Company K, 3d Battalion,
1st Marines’ fight in a “small, nondescript house” was one example of many
encounters that Marine and Army infantrymen experienced.
Up Close and Personal
Sergeant Christopher Pruitt pushed
through the door of the house firing his
9 mm pistol, hitting the crouching figure
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three times in the chest. Keyed up by an
adrenaline rush, he kept moving at the head
of his three-man stack through another
door to come face to face with another insurgent, “a big guy with a full beard and
an AK47.”
Another insurgent suddenly appeared
from the left, and everyone opened fire.
Pruitt was hit in the wrist and leg and put
out of the fight.
Corporal Ryan Weemer fired his pistol. “I unloaded a whole pistol magazine
into the guy. I shot him so many times his
gear was on fire.” He and Lance Corporal Cory Carlisle hastily backed out of the
room, reloaded (Pruitt had exited the house)
and went back in. The wounded insurgent
charged them. “We’re almost positive he
was drugged up on adrenaline” and was
taken under fire by Weemer again. “I shot
him in the legs, and when he fell, I shot him
in the face.”
House Clearing
Six days into the fight for Fallujah,
“Kilo” Co, 3/1 had the drill for checking
out houses down pat. “You just look at all
the avenues of approach to the house,”
Cpl Francis W. Wolf explained, “to make
sure you have every angle covered, 360degree security, because the threat is everywhere.” He liked the top-down approach.
“If we can go to a rooftop first, we will.
However, a lot of times your only way in,
due to the walls all around the house, is
through the front door.”
The standard tactic for Kilo Marines was
a three-to-four-man stack, an assault team
which, on signal, burst through the door
“hard and fast” to get a visual picture of the
room as quickly as possible. “Where are
the doorways, hallways, immediate danger
areas, where the enemy can blindside you?”
Cpl Matthew Spencer pointed out.
If the threat was high, the assault team
threw fragmentation grenades into every
room. “Sometimes two to three depending on the room ’cause frags haven’t really
been effective out here,” according to
Wolf. Unless the team found something,
the search lasted only 10 to 15 minutes.
Kilo Co’s Marines searched hundreds
of houses. “There were so many,” Spencer recalled, “and they’re all pretty much
built the same. They look like twins inside.” Most of them were empty. However,
the boring routine quickly could turn into
an adrenaline rush.
“One of my teams went in and cleared
a house,” Wolf remembered. “They missed
a little side room, and an insurgent, longsleeve blue shirt and long black pants,
typical mujahideen, came running out toward my Marines, who engaged and killed
him.”
On another occasion, LCpl Justin A.
Boswood described how “one of my men
saw a couple of insurgents run across the
road into a house. So we ran over there,
cleared it and climbed up to the roof. One
of our guys [Sergeant Morgan Strader]
kept his head above the bricks a little too
long, caught one in the head….”
A Small, Nondescript House
Nothing on Nov. 13, 2004, indicated that
it would be anything but the same old stuff,
search and clear. “The plan of the day,”
according to Boswood, “was to start backclearing the Jolan District.” The 3d Platoon, under First Lieutenant Jesse Grapes,
assigned each squad one block to clear.
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Nondescript House
“Hell,” Boswood exclaimed, “they didn’t
make it a block before they came to a
house just loaded with foreign fighters
inside.”
First Lt John Jacobs described the building as a “pretty small, nondescript, lightyellow cement house, with a dome-shaped
roof and a small second story. In the center of the house there was a large rotunda
with a catwalk that ran around the inside,
an outstanding kill zone. All the windows
were bolted shut, and there was only one
way in or out. The enemy had chosen well.”
Sgt Pruitt, LCpl Carlisle, LCpl James
Prentice and Sgt James Eldridge approached the house through an unlocked
gate in the courtyard. An outhouse stood
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about 10 to 15 feet from the main entrance.
Pruitt noticed the smell of fresh human
excrement, indicating that someone was
nearby.
“I told Weemer there were insurgents
in the house,” Pruitt said. The men formed
a combat stack, Weemer, Carlisle and
Pruitt, in that order, and prepared to enter
the building. Eldridge and Cpl Spencer
waited outside to provide rear security.
Weemer grasped his 9 mm pistol. He
preferred it in close quarters and started
the ball rolling. “The house had full-length
saloon-style doors,” said Weemer. “I pushed
in the one on the left and went through.”
He spotted an insurgent down on one knee
in the far left corner of the room. “I started
D-day,Nov.7,2004: Into Fallujah for the second time,
and this time not to be denied, coalition forces
pushed forward, street by street and house by
house, adding Fallujah to the list of touchstone Marine Corps battles. (Photo courtesy of Dick Camp)
shooting,” he said, “and gave him three
rounds in the chest.”
The three men pushed into the next
room. “I saw an insurgent directly to my
front,” Pruitt remembered, “[then] an insurgent popped out from the left side of
the room and started shooting.” Pruitt, hit
in the wrist, dropped his rifle and pulled
out to bring in the men outside. Weemer
unloaded his 9 mm into one of the insurAPRIL 2010 LEATHERNECK
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SSGT JONATHAN C. KNAUTH
“I noticed Pruitt walking toward me,”
Kasal remembered. “He appeared to be
in a state of shock, and I noticed he had
wounds to his hand and lower leg.” In spite
of the serious wounds, Pruitt reported clearly, indicating as many as three wounded
Marines in the house. “The first thing that
came across my mind,” Kasal recalled,
“was getting to those three wounded Marines as quickly as possible because I
knew the enemy would give no quarter to
a wounded Marine.”
Above: A 1/8 squad automatic weapon gunner burns through the 5.56 mm links while covering Marines
in the Fallujah assault on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2004.
CPL THERESA M. MEDINA
Below: Corpsmen and Marines stabilize the wounded at the 8th Marines Regimental Aid Station in the city
of Fallujah, Al Anbar province, Iraq, on Nov. 19, 2004.
gents, but the man would not go down.
“The pistol wasn’t doing the job,” he exclaimed. The two Marines hastily backed
out of the room.
Weemer switched to his rifle while Carlisle reloaded. They reentered the room.
“Another insurgent came toward us,”
Weemer said. “I shot him in the legs and
when he went down in the doorway, I shot
him in the face.”
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Outside, Eldridge was shot in the shoulder by an insurgent on the roof. Despite
the wound, he tried to enter the house, but
was hit again and put out of the fight.
Pruitt staggered into the street, just as
First Sergeant Bradley A. Kasal (Weapons
Company’s first sergeant), Cpl Robert
Mitchell and his squad of reinforcements
came pounding up. Kasal took Pruitt to
safety, out of the line of fire.
Once More Into the Breach
Weemer didn’t know that Pruitt and Eldridge had been wounded, but he did know
there were live insurgents still in the house,
and he was determined to get them. As
soon as the reinforcements reached him,
he formed another combat stack: Carlisle,
Weemer and Staff Sergeant Jon Chandler,
the platoon sergeant. LCpl Samuel Severtsgard stood off to the side preparing to
toss in a hand grenade. Two others formed
a second stack: LCpl Tyler Farmer and
Cpl Jose Sanchez. On signal, Severtsgard
threw the grenade, which went off with a
deafening roar.
“I couldn’t hear anything after the grenade went off,” Weemer complained. “It
was pitch black; the air was full of dust,
smoke and lead from the grenade. I literally ran into the set of stairs that go to the
second story. I could hardly see it.”
An insurgent on the second floor opened
fire. Weemer and Carlisle both were
wounded. “I felt something hit me in the
leg, and then I felt something hit me in
the forehead,” Weemer said. “I went back
outside and sat down.” Carlisle couldn’t
move; his leg was fractured from hip to
knee, and he was lying in the line of fire.
Chandler, Severtsgard, Farmer and Sanchez tried to reach Carlisle. An insurgent
grenade exploded, spraying them all with
shrapnel. They also were hit with rifle
fire, which severely wounded Chandler
in the leg. Farmer was blown back into the
room they just had left, while the other
three managed to take refuge in the kitchen
at the back of the house.
The grenade explosion hardly had died
away before another four-man stack,
Mitchell, Kasal, Private First Class Alexander Nicoll and LCpl Morgan McCowan,
rushed the house. “In the room on the
right I saw one of the wounded Marines
lying on the floor,” Kasal recalled. “In the
door on the left there was a dead insurgent, and in the far right corner a room
by itself.” He looked in.
“All of a sudden no more than two feet
from me there was an enemy insurgent
with his AK47.” The two men brought their
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rifles up. The insurgent fired first, “a short
burst that sent the rounds skimming in
front of my chest,” Kasal said. “I placed my
weapon over the top of his rifle and stuck
my barrel straight into his chest and pulled
the trigger.” Hit by eight-to-10 5.56 mm
rounds, the insurgent fell to the floor.
Mitchell and McCowan continued
straight ahead and ended up in the kitchen
with the wounded, when suddenly there
was a heavy burst of fire behind them.
“That is when I think I heard Nicoll and
the first sergeant get hit. Shooting was
going on everywhere, and I heard a
scream,” said Mitchell.
Kasal remembered: “I just heard automatic-weapons fire and then what felt
like someone hitting me in the lower leg
with a sledgehammer as my legs crumpled from beneath me. I heard Nicoll yell
in pain behind me and immediately knew
he was also hit.”
Kasal pushed the dead insurgent aside
and crawled inside the room, dragging Nicoll with him. In doing so he was hit again
in the buttock, and Nicoll took a round in
the stomach. As they lay there, the insurgents dropped a grenade that landed three
feet from them. Kasal rolled on top of
Nicoll and shielded him from the blast.
Shrapnel tore into his legs, buttocks and
lower back.
Mitchell, hearing the sound of the
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First Sergeant Bradley A. Kasal Navy Cross Citation Excerpt
“When First Sergeant Kasal learned that Marines were pinned down inside the
house by an unknown number of enemy personnel, he joined a squad making entry
to clear the structure and rescue the Marines inside. He made entry into the first
room, immediately encountering and eliminating an enemy insurgent, as he spotted a wounded Marine in the next room. While moving towards the wounded Marine, First Sergeant Kasal and another Marine came under heavy rifle fire from
an elevated enemy firing position and both were severely wounded in the legs, immobilizing them. When insurgents threw grenades in an attempt to eliminate the
wounded Marines, he rolled on top of his fellow Marine and absorbed the shrapnel with his own body.
“When First Sergeant Kasal was offered medical attention and extraction, he refused until the other Marines were given medical attention. Although severely
wounded himself, he shouted encouragement to his fellow Marines, as they continued to clear the structure.”
enemy weapons and the scream, ran to
help them. “I had to cross that danger
area, four or five feet, in that main room.
An insurgent on the roof had it covered
through the skylight.” Rounds impacted
all around him, but he succeeded in
reaching the two wounded men, despite
being “peppered with some pretty good
pieces” of shrapnel. At one point, he spotted a wounded insurgent make a move toward a weapon.
Mitchell, whose rifle had been destroyed, drew his combat knife and killed
the man. A trained combat lifesaver, he
then started first aid on his own wounded
men and used a small civilian-style radio
to call for help. “I let Grapes know that
Kasal, Nicoll and me were wounded and
pinned down in the little room off to the
left of the main entrance.”
First Lt Grapes was trying desperately
to organize rescue efforts, but the construction of the house frustrated all his efforts. The walls were concrete, three-inch
iron bars covered the windows, and the
insurgents were protected from smallarms fire by a wall that ran around the
edge of the roof. Sgt Byron Norwood, a
SSGT JONATHAN C. KNAUTH
SSgt Scott Perry, Plt Sgt, 3d Plt, Co B, 1/8, hurls a grenade over a wall
into a Fallujah house made into a fortress by insurgents as another
leatherneck tosses a grenade through a hole in the wall.
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machine-gun squad leader, entered the
house to see if his gun could be of any use.
As he peered around a doorway, “an insurgent popped up, … and killed him,”
according to 1stLt Jacobs. His death had
a chilling effect on the rescuers, but they
became even more determined to reach
the wounded.
Sgt Jose Nazario somehow made it to
the kitchen where the wounded men were
located. “I coordinated with our guys to
get them out.” He told them to bring up a
humvee with a chain and pull the bars off
the window. “We took a shower curtain
rod and stuck it out the window to let them
know where we were.”
By this time, Jacobs and the 2d Plt
quick-reaction force had arrived. “Once
we got the wounded out,” Jacobs explained,
“we got healthy Marines into those rooms,
so now we controlled all sides of the rotunda. We started suppression fire.” Grapes
and Boswood were two in the firing line.
“Lieutenant Grapes jumped down in
the prone position in the biggest puddle of
blood I’ve ever seen,” Boswood recalled.
“I got on top of the lieutenant and angled
my rifle the other way.”
Others inched forward until the entire
rotunda was covered by fire. Two Marines,
LCpl Christopher Marquez and LCpl
Jonathon Schaffer, sprinted across the kill
zone. “The whole house was shaking with
5.56 rounds, SAWs [squad automatic
weapons] going off with a 200-round
burst and the M16s firing just as fast as
you could pull the trigger. It was just awesome,” Boswood exclaimed.
The two rescuers dragged Nicoll out
first. Mitchell hobbled out with them and
then went back for Kasal, the last man to
be evacuated. “The only ones left in the
house were the insurgents,” Jacobs explained, “and there was no way to get them
out without endangering more Marines.”
Boswood was glad. “We decided we
were just gonna blow the damn thing up,”
he said. “Our demo man, Corporal Richard Gonzales, known as the ‘Mad Bomber,’
was good with explosives. He really knew
his stuff.”
Gonzales brought up a 20-pound satchel
charge. “He ran in, placed it in the center
of the house,” Boswood recalled, “and
pulled the fuze. The house blew. It was
the coolest thing in the world. It was awesome, stuff flying everywhere!”
Jacobs surveyed the rubble and later
said, “As we’re walking past the house, a
hand comes up out of the rubble and
throws a grenade at us. Everybody saw it
coming, so we were able to scatter.”
Jacobs recalled, “We just unleashed hell
on him. I think the guy was high on some-
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RCT-7 Marines and Iraqi army
soldiers evacuate wounded
inside Fallujah on Nov. 10,
2004, the 229th Marine
Corps Birthday.
Corporal Robert Mitchell Navy Cross Citation Excerpt
“During a ferocious firefight with six insurgents fighting inside a heavily fortified house, Corporal Mitchell courageously attacked the enemy strongpoint to rescue five wounded Marines trapped inside the house. Locating the enemy positions
and completely disregarding his own safety, he gallantly charged through enemy
SK-47 fire and hand grenades, in order to assist a critically wounded Marine in an
isolated room. Ignoring his own wounds, he began the immediate first aid treatment
of the Marine’s severely wounded leg. Assessing that the Marine needed immediate intravenous fluids to survive, he suppressed the enemy, enabling a Corpsman
to cross the impact zone. Once the Corpsman arrived, he moved to the next room to
assist other casualties.
“While running across the impact zone a second time, he was hit in the left leg
with a ricochet off of his weapon and with grenade shrapnel to the legs and face.
While applying first aid, he noticed a wounded insurgent reach for his weapon.
With his rifle inoperable, he drew his combat knife, stabbed the insurgent, and
eliminated him instantly. Demonstrating great presence of mind, he then coordinated the casualties’evacuation. Limping from his own wounds, Corporal Mitchell
assisted in the evacuation of the last casualty through the impact zone under enemy
fire, ultimately saving the lives of multiple Marines.”
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SSGT JONATHAN C. KNAUTH
thing, or he was just the toughest human
being that I’ve ever seen.”
The fight for the “Hell House” cost 3d
Plt a dozen casualties. “As it turned out,”
Grapes said, “my platoon had suffered the
most casualties of any platoon in the
company. After that we never entered a
house until we threw something in it that
exploded.”
Lessons Learned
The company systematically cleared its
sector, entering every single structure and
continued to run into pockets of insurgents who were determined to fight to the
last. Captain T. J. Jent, Kilo Co commander, explained: “Marines quickly learned
that the enemy was intent on fighting from
the inside of buildings in an effort to produce as many friendly casualties as possible. We immediately adopted a more
deliberate, less dynamic method of killing the enemy intent on dying in place.”
The company SOP (standard operating
procedure) directed that preparatory fires,
ranging from air-delivered ordnance to
hand grenades, were to be used on all insurgent-held buildings. Capt Jent explained
that “at the height of our combat power,
platoons reduced the enemy threat with
tank main-gun fire, rockets, MK19 and
.50-caliber machine guns. If the enemy
survived the initial attack, a D-9 bulldozer would be brought in to force the
enemy from his strongpoint and into the
fires of Marines overwatching the building.” He emphasized that patience is a
virtue once enemy contact is made, and
cautioned, tongue in cheek, “Do not be in
a hurry to get killed.”
SSGT JONATHAN C. KNAUTH
Editor’s note: Dick Camp, a retired
Marine colonel, is a frequent contributor
to Leatherneck. Author of several books,
he also is the director of operations at the
National Museum of the Marine Corps.
The incident described in the article is
from the author’s recently published book,
“Operation Phantom Fury: The Assault
and Capture of Fallujah, Iraq,” which
was reviewed in the March Leatherneck.
The Battle of Fallujah also is a major part
of the book “My Men Are My Heroes: The
Brad Kasal Story” by Brad Kasal with
Nathaniel Helms. Both books are available from the MCA online store at www
.marineshop.net or by calling toll-free:
(866) 622-1775.
www.mca-marines.org/leatherneck
From left: SSgt Scott Perry, Cpl Wayne Bowman and
Cpl Jason Pennock, 3d Plt, “Bravo” 1/8, assault a
Fallujah insurgent stronghold on Thanksgiving Day,
Nov. 25, 2004.
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