Wrecking Fallujah: Part 1

So when we deployed to Fallujah in March of 2004, we were expecting SASO (Stability And Support Operations) which falls pretty low on the spectrum of combat operations – It didn’t take us long in country to figure out that we were NOT getting a SASO deployment.

This first video is from the first operation that Gunsmoke ran after we relieved the 82nd Airborne unit that we had replaced. This was right at the end of March of 2004. Echo and Fox Companies, supported by CAAT platoon mobile patrols occupied in force the Iskari neighborhood – an upscale area that encompasses most of the Eastern quarter of Fallujah. As you can see the city was almost fully intact, civilians were all over the city, and children were coming out to see who the new Americans in town were.

Patrol in the Iskari neighborhood

Less than a month later I filmed this video in the Jolan neighborhood in Northwestern Fallujah:

Patrol in the Jolan neighborhood

Mere days after the Iskari patrol the 4 American Blackwater contractors were killed in a fiery ambush and displayed to the world. My CAAT section was out on patrol that day, and I recall driving back towards Camp Baharia and seeing a huge pillar of black smoke rising from the center of the city. I didn’t know at the time what it was. In response 2/1 along with 1/7, 1/2 and 1/5 launched Operation Vigilant Resolve, and after a week of fighting in the Jolan district I took that second video. It doesn’t take long to wreck a city.

Ryan.