Haditha Dam, Iraq – Cpl. David Kreuter had a new baby boy he’d seen only in photos. Lance Cpl. Michael Cifuentes was counting the days to his wedding. Lance Cpl. Nicholas Bloem had just celebrated his 20th birthday.
Travis Williams remembers them all – all 11 men in his Marine squad – all now dead.
Two months ago, they shared a cramped room stacked with bunk beds at this base in northwest Iraq, where the Euphrates River rushes by. Now the room has been stripped of several beds, brutal testament that Lance Cpl. Williams’ closest friends are gone.
For the 12 young Marines who landed in Iraq early this year, the war was a series of hectic, constant raids into more than a dozen lawless towns in Iraq’s most hostile province, Anbar. The pace and the danger bound them together into what they called a second family, even as some began to question whether their raids were making any progress.
Now, all of the Marines assigned to the 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, based in Columbus, Ohio, are gone – all except Williams. They died in a roadside-bomb set by insurgents on Aug. 3 that killed a total of 14 Marines. Most of the squad were in their early 20s; the youngest was 19.
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All that is left now are photos and snippets of video, saved on dusty laptops. As they pack up to return home by early October, the Marines from Lima Company – including the squad’s replacements – sometimes huddle around Williams’ laptop, straining to watch the few remaining moments of their young friends’ lives. Some photos and videos carry the squad’s adopted motto: “Family is Forever.”
The August operation began like most of the squad’s missions – with a rush into another lawless Iraqi city to hunt insurgents and do house-to-house searches.
On Aug. 1, six Marine snipers had been ambushed and killed in Haditha, one of a string of river cities that line the Euphrates. Two days later, Marines in armored vehicles, including the 1st Squad, rumbled into the area to look for the culprits.
Since their arrival in February, the Marines had spent nearly all their time on such sweeps or preparing for them.
The intense pace of the operations, and the enormous area their regimental combat team had to cover – an expanse the size of West Virginia – caught some off guard.
The combat was certainly not what the 21-year-old Williams had expected.
“I didn’t ever think we’d get engaged,” said the soft-spoken, stocky Marine from Helena, Mont. “I just had the basic view of the American public – it can’t be that bad out there.”
In some sweeps, residents warmly greeted the Marines. But in others, such as operations in Haditha and Obeidi near the Syrian border, the squad members met gunfire and explosions.
The road had been checked by engineers and other units, Marine commanders say. But insurgents had been clever. They hid the massive bomb under the road’s asphalt.
Several Humvees drove over the bomb, but the triggerman in the distance apparently waited for a vehicle loaded with more troops.
Then, as the clanking sound of their armored vehicles neared, a massive blast erupted, caused by explosives weighing hundreds of pounds. It threw a 26-ton Amphibious Assault Vehicle into the air, leaving it burning upside-down. Williams had been positioned two vehicles away.
A total of 14 Marines and one Iraqi interpreter were killed.
There was no time for grieving – not at first. There was only sudden devastation, then intense anger as the Marines pulled the remains of their friends from the vehicle.
Then there was frustration, as they fanned out to find the triggerman. Instead, they found only Iraqis either too sympathetic toward the insurgency, or too afraid, to talk.
Although the bomb had been planted in clear view of their homes, residents claimed they had seen nothing of the men who had spent hours digging a large hole several feet deep and concealing the bomb.
It was a familiar – and frustrating – problem.
“They are totally complacent with what’s going on here,” said Maj. Steve Lawson of Columbus, Ohio, who commands Lima Company. “The average citizen in Haditha either wants a handout, or wants us to die or go away.”
In a war where intelligence is the most valued asset, the Marines say few local people will divulge “actionable” information that could be used to locate insurgents.
Some Iraqis apparently fear reprisal attacks from militants. Others hate Americans enough to protect the insurgents: Marines say lookouts in cities would often launch flares as their vehicles approached.
The first night after the attack, Williams couldn’t sleep. He stayed near his radio, listening to the heavy sobbing of fellow Marines that punctured the night around him.
A world without his second family had begun.
Marine commanders say the large-scale raids in western Anbar province have kept the insurgency off balance.
But, among some Marines and officers, there are doubts whether progress has been made.
“We’ve been here almost seven months and we don’t control” the cities, said Gunnery Sgt. Ralph Perrine, an operations chief in the battalion from Brunswick, Ohio. “It’s no secret.”
Even commanders acknowledge that with the limited number of U.S. and Iraqi troops in the region, the mission is focused on “disrupting and interdicting” the insurgency – that is, keeping the militants on the run – and not controlling the cities.
For Williams, the calculation is much more visceral and personal.
“Personally, I don’t think the sweeps help too much,” he said quietly on a recent day, sitting in a room crowded with Marines resting from a late mission the night before.
“You find some stuff and most of the bad guys get away. … For as much energy as we put in them, I don’t think the output is worth it,” he said.
Williams, a Marine for three years, has decided not to re-enlist.
Instead, in these last days in Iraq, he thinks of home and fishing in the clear streams of Montana. He hopes to open a fishing and hunting gear shop once he returns and to complete his bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology. He looks forward to seeing his mother, his only surviving parent, and traveling to her native Thailand this fall.
His only good memories, he said, are of his friends: Of Lance Cpl. Christopher Dyer, 19, an avid rap music fan who would bop his head to Tupac Shakur. He played the viola in his high school orchestra and had planned to enroll in a finance honors program at Ohio State University.
Of Lance Cpl. Aaron Reed, his best friend, who had been class president in high school and left behind a brother serving in Afghanistan.
Of Cifuentes, 25, from Oxford, Ohio. He was enrolled in graduate school in mathematics education and had been working as a substitute teacher when he was deployed.
“I think the most frustrating thing is, there’s no sense of accomplishment,” Williams said. “You’re biding your time and waiting. But then you lose your friends, and it’s not even for their own country’s freedom.”
