Marine Corps News Room

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061129/NEWS05/611290365

November 29, 2006
BY JOE SWICKARD
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

In the battle to keep order in this Sunni-dominated city in Anbar province, Charlie Company -- about 200 men from the Michigan-based 1st Battalion of the 24th Marine Regiment -- is the on-site boss, rolling the streets day and night to chase down or run off insurgents.

While other parts of Iraq are ripped apart by factions, and the sectarian violence in Baghdad worsens daily, the scene in Fallujah is different but no less deadly. The city has endured some of the bloodiest urban combat of the war. Now the Marines are fighting to keep Fallujah from becoming an insurgent stronghold again, as it was two years ago.

Making their home in a battered school administration building, the men of Charlie Company comprise the only unit that lives in the center of the city, where insurgents have killed scores of Marines with roadside bombs, ambushes and sniper fire.

With its sandbagged windows and cheap fluorescent lamps fighting a haze of cement dust, the place has an eerie, eternal twilight quality -- like a casino, only with machine guns and bulletproof vests stacked up in the halls.

The men -- students, sheriff's deputies, firefighters and even a personal banker who loves heavy metal music -- say they'd rather make nice with the residents, but they don't waste time in confronting those who have other ideas.

"We'll be jumping out if somebody's mean-mugging us," Cpl. Anthony Tavormina, 22, of Toledo told members of his mounted patrol before they took to the streets on a recent day.

Mean-mugging -- dirty looks, the evil eye or a hostile gesture -- isn't tolerated by Charlie Company. When they see it on the streets, the men get in the Iraqi's face for aggressive questioning, ID checks and, for anyone who doesn't get it right, a possible trip to what's called the Wayne County Jail, the new detention facility at nearby Camp Baharia.

Cpl. Shawn Wilson, a 27-year-old Oakland County sheriff's deputy and former Detroit police officer, said going after insurgents and troublemakers is all about making sure the people of Fallujah have a chance at a better life.

"It's like working a block back home," he said. If a block has one good family and nine bad ones, you don't let the nine bad stop you from protecting the one.

"You treat that house with respect," he said.

Most of the residents want peace, said commanding officer Capt. Mike Mayne -- a guy who is already legendary in the unit for asking a translator who said Fallujah was too dangerous whether he was a coward. But the broken windows theory of crime control applies here. Not tolerating the little stuff heads off the big problems later.

The Marines pare it down to the notion that, if somebody is dense enough to pick a fight with them, well, they're ready to go. "If they're nice, we're nice," said Sgt. Bryce Sobol, 25, a personal banker from Freeland. "If they get stupid, we get stupid."

No one doubts the dangers of Fallujah from snipers, from roadside bombs. But it doesn't have the death squads found in Baghdad, and the Marines are able to keep the worst violence under control.

When Charlie rolls, all other traffic stops. Drivers who ignore clear warnings can be met with deadly force.

Even toilets can be dangerous

In Fallujah, Charlie is an active verb: Consider a Saturday midday patrol with Cpl. Dennis Rodeman, 22, of Vermontville.

The 3rd Squad of the 3rd Platoon went to deliver a message to a corner gas station, the scene of a couple of grenade attacks on the unit, said Rodeman, a firefighter and international business student at Michigan State University.

Pulling up to the station where gas is sold from barrels and plastic jugs, the Marines jumped out and emptied the fuel into the street. The owner and attendants pleaded they had nothing to do with the grenades.

OK, Rodeman said, but there is still a price to pay, even if the bad guys just use the place as cover. "Any more grenade attacks," he said, "and we're going to burn down the gas station."

Rodeman shrugged off the contradiction of ending the encounter with thanks all around: "It's like going into your house, thrashing your bedroom and then saying, "Hey, let's go to lunch.' "

Under the constant threat of sniping by mujahideen insurgents, Charlie Company has learned that any step outside requires a helmet and full body armor -- even a trip to a portable toilet. And you have to do the sniper dance -- juking and dekeing so no one can get a good aim on you.

Even the Humvees dance. When the men are dismounted, the drivers roll the vehicles back and forth so a sniper can't line up a shot on a door to pick off a returning Marine.

But you can't dance past an IED -- an improvised explosive device -- like the roadside bomb that hit a patrol from the 3rd Squad of the 1st Platoon on Saturday night. The four-vehicle caravan was doing snaps and house calls -- random quick searches of vehicles and homes -- and checking known trouble spots.

Rolling under a crescent moon along Fran, a major east-west thoroughfare with a history of ambushes, the convoy passed a darkened Iraqi government building when the street went blindingly bright. An instant later, a flame ball erupted from the right curb, between the third and fourth vehicles, known as Vic 3 and Vic 4. White flames shot across the road in a sharp explosion.

The men quickly piled out of the Humvees, taking cover and setting up a perimeter. There were no casualties.

"All good. We're all good," they radioed each other.

But the men have to wait. The IED could be a setup, the attack followed with rockets, gunfire or another IED. Taking positions in a ruined concrete block building, Lance Cpl. Justin Dieting, 25, of Romeo and Lance Cpl. Enrique Rakowski, 25, of Manistee recalled attacks in which snipers picked off their buddies or insurgents fired rockets at them.

In the dark, the men's whispers wove together, recounting their experiences:

You're sitting in your Vic and the next thing stumbling empty-handed in the roadway. Your weapon's on the ground, the Humvee's burning, and everything's a little tilted and crazy.

You get a couple of days off, notification of a Purple Heart and wonder if the shrapnel still in your body will set off airport metal detectors.

Your dead partners never really leave Charlie. You feel them every time you pass the sites of their deaths, remember their wisecracks or hear a familiar tune.

After the area was secured and evidence collected by explosives teams, the patrol resumed, and men noted they'd passed that intersection at least once before that night.

The IED was a speed bump -- a device set on a paved road and then detonated by a triggerman when a vehicle passes over it. A second sooner on the trigger, and Vic 3 would have gone up. A second later, Vic 4 would have been gutted and smoking.

That night, everybody, Marines and the bomber alike, made it back home.

Contact JOE SWICKARD at jswickard@freepress.com.