Michael J. Totten has filed another excellent dispatch from Iraq:
“Were they good fighters?” I said.
“They’re not good fighters,” he said, “but they got a bunch of us. They knew we were clearing every building. And they’d learn from us. Whenever we went to a position we always filled sandbags and stuff like that.”
“And they would do the same thing,” he continued. “They knew that if we couldn’t come through the front door, we’d go through the back door. So they would barricade one door and leave one open. And they’d put a bunker and a machine gun down that main hallway. They would sit in the back corner of a room and soon as you kicked open the door they would just keep firing. So maybe they weren’t very good fighters, but they were quick to adapt and were actually pretty smart.”
“I’ve read that some of these guys injected themselves with drugs,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, “we found syringes, different types of drugs. The corpsman tried to explain to me what they were at the time, but I didn’t really pay attention to him. They found a lot of medical stuff like that, but for the most part they were just smart. They basically knew what we were going to do every time. We would clear the house, so all they had to do was wait.”
“Do you talk about this stuff with your friends and family?” I said. I was curious if he, like Corporal Koch, kept the war all bottled up inside to himself.
“If they ask, I’ll tell them,” he said. “It doesn’t really bother me. The more people understand what’s really going on over here, the more support they’ll give us.”
There’s much more, including photos, on Michael’s blog.
5 Responses
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December 10th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Some —make that most — men run or cower from danger. A few others run straight towards it — we call them Marines and Soldiers, which is why they are my very favorite people on the planet, bar none.
December 10th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Fallujah: Then and Now…
Most men run or cower from danger. A few others run straight towards it — we call them Marines and Soldiers (that group also consists of firefighters and police officers), which is why they are my very favorite people on the planet, bar none.
……
December 16th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
the drugs wincluded atropine, this is an anti chemical warfare drug.
December 23rd, 2007 at 7:00 am
Umm..I’m just a little curious about what he considers makes a good fighter. Nope, no good…he says. But they got a lot of us…seemed to know what we were going to do every time, he says.
Sure hope you don’t run into any ‘good fighters’ then, I say…cuz apparently things aren’t going to go very well AT ALL!
December 14th, 2009 at 10:19 am
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