Imagine Dying

I finally tried to wash the Marine’s bloodstains from my pants.

It had been nine days since the battle, and daily layers of dirt and dust masked what I knew lay beneath. From the relative comfort of “Dreamland,� a reasonably secure U.S. base just outside Fallouja, I swirled my pants in a square metal pan containing four inches of precious water. With each spin, the water turned a deeper brown. Soon I could see the blood of Sgt. Josue Magana, the stains unmoved by the swirling water, my memories of that morning just as deeply set.

april 26. 5 a.m. the marines of echo company had been ordered to take two homes in the Jolan neighborhood at the northwestern edge of Fallouja, the heart of the notorious Sunni Triangle and the root of U.S. occupation resistance. Not even a month had passed since the gruesome deaths of four American contractors there.

In their initial push into Fallouja, the Marines had fought to gain a toehold, and for Echo Company this consisted of three abandoned homes and a school, all within 300 meters of each other. They had fortified their positions using sandbags, 24-hour-a-day watch posts, concertina wire and sniper positions. By the time I arrived on April 22, the neighborhood was a ghost town. Most residents had fled, save for one blind Iraqi man who was dutifully being fed by a Kurdish translator working for the Marines.

In the houses and school, Marines had parked their gear in every room. M-16 rifles were delicately perched against the glass doors of a cupboard holding the family’s finest dishware. The luckiest Marines claimed the couches; the rest sprawled out on the floors each night.

Walls that once separated neighbors were demolished to allow easy house-to-house access. Doors were taken off their hinges and used to bridge the gaps between the roofs of the houses. On the roof were M-240 machine guns, a larger .50-caliber machine gun, a Mark 19 grenade launcher and shoulder-fired rockets. Small “mouse holes� were pounded in the walls to allow snipers to pick off distant targets.

From the sniper holes could be seen a bullet-riddled car abandoned in the middle of the street. Deep craters where parts of the road used to be. Downed power lines sagging across the roadway. There was also the stench of rotting cows and dogs that died in the crossfire.

Also in view from the sniper’s nests were objectives A and B. The two homes, just across the cemetery, had been in view for weeks, and it was there that Marine commanders perceived a threat.

on the morning of april 26 a platoon of marines crept through the darkened streets. A wail could be heard in the distance--the Muslim call to prayer. My camera useless in the darkness, I fumbled to record the ominous sound with a digital recorder. It was too dark to see the buttons, so I gave up.

Ahead, two squads of men were breaching the homes, breaking down doors to clear the buildings. Marines poured inside objectives A and B, taking up defensive positions, a set of eyes on guard from nearly every window. Dawn had come and the sky began to brighten.

It was all starting to seem too easy when a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG, smacked the front of the house with a thunderous crash. The walls trembled. The Marines returned fire with their M-16s and then there was silence.

Defensive postures took on a new urgency. Mattresses were upturned to cover windows, bags of rice stacked in front of open doors to slow speeding bullets. Holes were hammered through the walls to make sniper positions. Then, nothing. Sitting. Waiting. Resting. Drinking. Eating. Nothing. No shots. No enemy sightings. Nothing.

Five hours had passed since the start of the mission and Marines were spread out on the floor, sleeping when they could. I visited the roof briefly to eye the sniper positions, then went back to the bottom floor to look in on sleeping Marines. Returning to the second floor, I tried to capture on camera the reflection of a Marine in a bullet-riddled mirror. I, too, was bored.

The sleeping Marines stirred a bit as shots rang in the distance. There were reports of seven insurgents, scratch that, six insurgents (one was reported over the radio to have been shot by a U.S. sniper) in the area of the mosque. An incoming mortar round hit an adjacent house, igniting a fire.

The Marine commanders decided that one squad, about 12 men, should search the mosque area. There was no movement or firing as they made their approach through the cemetery to the mosque itself. Outside, it was bright, hot and quiet; inside, it was empty. As the Marines searched for insurgents, I looked around but found no shell casings. There was only a partially damaged building, curtains moving in the breeze. I began to wonder if anyone had ever been there.

The men trod back through the cemetery and I felt much less exposed than when I had trailed them earlier, veering around and over graves at a rapid pace. Running through a cemetery seems a violation of those lying beneath. I was glad when we got back to the houses.

It was at just that moment--when I felt the most secure--that all hell broke loose.

It began suddenly. Insurgents had crawled into positions covering all sides except the one where we had just entered. They let loose a continuous barrage on the house. Marines scrambled to their feet to fight back the ambush. “Roger, we are taking heavy fire. You need to orient to east, over the mosque complex,� the commander coolly relayed into the radio.

The rumble of machine guns and the returning crack of AK-47 rounds flying toward the building pounded in my eardrums. In the next room a Marine fired his machine gun from the second-story window. I was photographing the seriousness on his face as he fought the onslaught. At that moment a flash of fiery orange enveloped the room. An RPG had scored a direct hit at head level of the firing Marine, the wall of the home saving him from certain death. It was so sudden and violent that I only have a blurry frame to serve as a reminder. The Marine was screaming as he was knocked to the ground, stunned by the concussion and deafening roar of the grenade.

He took only a moment to regain his composure. He was clearly pissed. He went back to the window and began firing with even more resolve. It wasn’t long until another RPG crashed into the same wall. Insurgent forces were determined to score a kill. Inside the room the barrels of two M-249 machine guns became so hot from the rapid succession of fire that they melted and seized.

On the roof, another battle was raging. The Marines were in such close contact with the insurgents that the two were lobbing hand grenades back and forth. Shrapnel was shooting all over the roof, tearing into the Marines. A Marine who was on a second-floor balcony yelled, “I’m hit!� One of several thousand rounds fired in the opening 30 minutes of the battle had found its target. He gave an agonizing scream and yelled again that he was hit.

Moments later Sgt. Josue Magana was dragged by the grab handle on the back of his flak jacket into the room where I was hunkered down. He had been shot through the back and was in severe pain. While corpsmen were concentrating on his injury, I could see that he was beginning to fade. His eyes were empty and began to close. He was mumbling about a letter from his daughter, and I feared he was conceding that his life would end right there.

I grabbed his hand and assured him that he would see his daughter again. I looked him straight in his eye, telling him to look back at me, then to squeeze my hand so I knew he was still with me.

I felt caught between being an objective journalist and responding as a human being. I apologized to a news crew that was trying to film the scene, realizing that I was out of place, a photographer not being a photographer. “I have to be a human first,� I heard myself saying awkwardly. It was a lesson I had learned early on from a photography professor who had a profound effect on my life.

I shot only a few frames to depict the scene, some as Magana was being dragged into the room and then after he was stabilized. I felt satisfied that I had done my job and also done what was right. Rounds were cracking off all sides of the building and now a second wounded Marine made his way to the doorway. Everything seemed to be unraveling. Here was a group of men, 37 in all, whom I viewed as courageous warriors, well-trained and well-equipped, and they seemed to be falling one by one right in front of me. I began to wonder: Is this it? What if, by sheer numbers and the great desire of those opposed to them, these Marines and I were about to be gunned down, right here. I wondered if the Marines on the bottom floor were fighting to their last bullets.

For an instant, I imagined the following scenario: As I peer from the doorway, insurgents rush up the stairs, firing at those working on the wounded Magana. Three easy kills for the insurgents. What would I do? Would I cower and scream “sahafi, sahafi� (“journalist, journalist�) and hope to separate myself from the Marines? Would I find myself, the barrel of a gun pushing into my skin, begging for my life? Would I be killed instantly, no distinction made, in a hail of gunfire? Or would I pick up a weapon myself and fight for my own life and for those around me?

These decisions are guttural, instinctive. Every move seems to be analyzed in some split-second process. When the fight was raging, I was making decisions based on saving my life and doing my job--in that order.

But at that moment I knew that photographing a firefight can be like photographing a triple play in baseball. While it’s certainly a dramatic moment, a photograph can’t always capture the essence of what you are witnessing. The pictures of the men shooting out of the window in the next room conveyed little of the life-and-death intensity of the moment, the sound of gunfire, the smell, the gulping sense of mortality. They could have just as well have been shooting at tin cans in the alleyway.

So was I going to make a target of myself when at least two men were already shot and RPGs were bouncing off the walls as fast as the men shooting them could reload? The short answer was no, I would not risk it all for one frame. At this moment I thought of my mom, and how shattered she would be getting that phone call that no mother wants. It would be early morning, in a tiny northern Michigan town, the phone ringing as she prepared for work that day. No one frame was worth it.

Just being in this country as a journalist is an elevated risk, I thought to myself. And here I was feeling more exposed to danger than at any point in my career. A momentary series of thoughts, contemplating the immediate future for myself and those around me, and then I was snapped back to the reality.

the house was still taking a serious pounding, there were wounded in both the buildings and the insurgents were still waging a vicious attack. Then I heard a familiar and welcome sound--two tanks rumbling up the alley. I peered out the window to photograph them. They were our ride out. But something was wrong. The main gun on one of the tanks was pointed right toward our window. For a split second I thought, “Oh, no, they think we are the insurgents and they are going to fire on us!�

Friendly fire is a sad fact of warfare, and I never believed it possible until I saw it with my own eyes during the march up from Kuwait just 13 months earlier. I wondered if the tanks knew that those were “friendlies� staring at them from the window above. I stepped back into the room, a useless move as a main gun tank round would surely obliterate us all no matter where we were standing.

“OK, we are punching out of here now, and we are punching out hard!� yelled one of the commanders. The tanks were giving us the time and firepower needed to run back down the same alley we had crept through in the predawn hours earlier that day.

The call was made to bring everyone and everything down to the first floor. At the same time, the wounded from the building to the north were filtering into our courtyard. Four Marines carried the limp body of Lance Cpl. Aaron Austin. He would be listed as “killed in action� from the fight that day. His heroics would earn him official recognition for his actions--albeit posthumously. Austin was shot multiple times in the chest as he attempted to throw a hand grenade from one rooftop to another. Magana was lying on a broken door in the second-floor room. The Marines used it as a litter to carry him downstairs. It was creaking to the point of breaking but made the trip to the bottom floor.

The foyer where the men gathered was a bloody mess. Magana was lying on the door, fear in his eyes. Lance Cpl. Lucas Sielstad, 18, a wiry but tough Marine by all accounts, had bandages on his right arm soaked through with blood. His pants had been ripped by medical shears from the waist down to treat a shrapnel wound on his leg, and he was bleeding from his lip. He looked tired and stunned.

Another Marine came down from the roof with a haphazardly tied rag wrapped around his bleeding head. He had wounds in several other places. Still, he was calm and alert, and a bit saddened by not being able to finish the fight.

It came time to evacuate and we hustled through the door into the courtyard. For a moment I felt like a skydiver taking his first leap out the door of the plane. I felt so vulnerable, wishing for the cover of darkness that had offered some protection earlier that morning.

The courtyard was hemmed in by 7-foot walls that shielded us from view of anyone on the streets. But the Marines were an easy target for gunmen on the second story or rooftops of any of the surrounding houses. Crouching low and near the wall, my instinct was to run for it, to break away from all of the Marines exiting in some sort of timed formation. It felt like time was of the essence.

What seemed like hours passed before my turn, but it was probably less than two minutes. I did not know exactly from what direction the firing was coming from--or how much was incoming or outgoing. I just knew it was heavy and I wanted to get back to a place of relative comfort.

My gear seemed heavy and awkward as I approached the gate leading to the street. I had been asked to carry several 203-grenade rounds in a blood-soaked pouch that was taken off a wounded Marine. When the two Marines in front of me finally moved, I bolted out behind them.

Along the wall we ran beside, about halfway down the block, there was a 4-foot gap that offered a clear shot at us. A scene from the movie “Enemy at the Gates� popped into my head, depicting celebrated World War II Russian sniper Vassili Zaitsev knocking off targets at will. Why this movie scene I don’t know. What I do know is that when it was my turn to expose myself for that half second, I hesitated, but any sniper waiting for the perfect shot was a figment of my imagination. We were almost home free. I could see the school in my view, less than 200 meters away. As I crossed the street, three Marines were struggling to carry a wounded comrade. One of them motioned me over as I approached their position, slowing my run. He asked me to help. For a split second I thought, “Are you crazy, my job right now is to run like hell so I can live to do the job another day.� The split second happened about the time I was grabbing the injured Marine by his right shoulder and arm. We ran to the schoolhouse, a fairly fortified structure. I tried to ease the wounded man through the door, but he was being pulled too quickly from the other end. He escaped my grasp and that of the Marine carrying his other arm. His head hit the concrete step with a thud.

Several more Marines piled into the schoolhouse. The machine guns on the roof were wailing away. With all the Marines back inside the building, their fields of fire were clear and they were engaging everything in sight. Several more RPGs pounded the school, as did small-arms fire from AK-47s.

The scene on the bottom floor was pandemonium, resembling an ant nest after it has been disturbed. One Marine was barking orders: “We need more M-16 rounds on the second floor!� Another was shocked, helmet off and head in his hands. Several wounded were waiting for a transport Humvee to get through and take them out. I caught my breath and took stock of everything that had happened. Adrenaline had been pumping through my veins for two hours, and my body needed a break.

The wounded, 15 in all, were hauled a kilometer or so away to a field hospital, which was nearly overwhelmed by the volume. Commanders started sorting out the chaos in the school, with their main mission to keep their gun positions humming and any insurgent advance at bay.

When the squad stationed in a house 300 meters away gathered in the doorway of the school to make their run back, I joined them. One last run to safety. As we approached our home base, I noticed something was missing. It had marked my landscape for the week that I had been in Fallouja. The minaret, the same one that had loomed overhead as we ran through the graveyard that morning, was gone. I was told later that it was leveled by a tank round when Marines spotted a sniper in the tower. The group gathering inside the house was not the same upbeat cadre that I had witnessed the day before. They had seen one of their own die, in a brutal death that left his body torn and bloody. They had watched another of their comrades lose an arm from an enemy hand grenade. I knew these men to be tough and ready, but this shook them to their core. They were changed.

Being in a battle zone with troops was not new for me. Since 9/11, I have done about a third of my work in conflict regions such as Afghanistan, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Haiti and Iraq. I have roamed the mountains of Afghanistan with U.S. Special Forces and ridden along with U.S. Marines as they charged up to Baghdad from Kuwait. I was comfortable with U.S. soldiers and prepared for the relative safety of being surrounded by a heavily armed and superior-trained bunch of guys.

There have been close calls. I remember the first time I was shot at, in Afghanistan, and I was too green to even realize it. It took an alert translator to inform me that I was the intended target. I took it personally that someone would shoot at me without even getting to know me.

Since that first shot there have been countless bullets, mortars, rockets and explosions. There were the rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas fired by Israeli soldiers in the city of Nablus, the chaos of panicked Haitians running from random bullets flying into crowds during the days leading up to the ouster of President Aristide, and there was the shriek of rockets overhead as Iraq’s military tried to fire on Marines using a multiple rocket launcher.

All memorable, but nothing like the feeling that the Fallouja gun battle brought to my stomach that day.

as word of the battle spread that afternoon, a Navy chaplain made a visit to the men of Echo Company. The solemn faces of more than 50 men filled the room; at its center was a mound of dirt. As the chaplain finished delivering words of encouragement, each Marine pushed a lit candle into the mound. Soon the dank room was filled with candlelight as the men withdrew to collect their thoughts.

Several days later I called Magana as he lay in a hospital bed in Bethesda, Md. He spoke in a whisper and sounded weak. I was sure he did not remember my holding his hand or talking about his daughter, but he seemed to appreciate that someone would call him from Iraq. He asked that I tell his comrades he was keeping them in his prayers. I told him I would.

I spoke with the mother of Lance Cpl. Austin. It took a while to get up the courage to ring De’on Miller at her home in Lovington, N.M. There was nothing I could do to bring her son home. Would a phone call from someone in the media infuriate her? All I had to offer was a photo of her son reading mail from home that I had taken the day before he died. I thought she might want that as a memory of her son in a place she could only imagine.

She received my call and my unpolished speech about her son. “Hello ma’am,� I said. “I was with your son on the day he died.� She told me that she was proud of him, and I started to break down as she told me how, if she had been there that day, she would have carried his limp body out of the house herself. She wanted any photo I had, to gather any scrap of information, conversations about him, anything she could hold onto. He was her only son.

The Marines who survived that battle were not the only ones changed. I liken my desires as a journalist to be similar to the way I live my life. I want to get close enough to the abyss to look in, but I don’t want to go over. As I knelt by that pan of water, vigorously scrubbing those bloodstains, I remembered just how easy it can be to tumble in.