At about twelve-thirty, we witness a monster artillery barrage. Marine batteries lob numerous HE rounds into the city on the far side of the bridge, trying to break apart the machine-gun bunkers. Helicopters fire their chain guns, rockets, then a TOW missile into the obstacle blocking the entrance to the bridge. All the missile blast does is lift the obstacle up, then drop it in the same place.

RCT-1 sends up two M1A1 tanks and eight LAVs. When we hear them rumble past, everyoneas spirits lift, then soar when the LAVs maneuver up to the bridge and rip into the city with their Bushmasters. The cannons thunder, spouting red fireb.a.l.l.s. The sky sounds like itas cracking. With their heavy weapons flas.h.i.+ng in the darkness, the armored vehicles resemble fire-breathing dragons. aLook at them, dog,a Espera says, poking his head into Colbertas vehicle. aPouring down hate and discontent like a motherf.u.c.ker.a The tanks roll forward and push the obstacle out of the way, but their commanders decide the bridge is too unstable to cross. The armor pulls back.

Bravo Company is sent back to the bridge. This time, due to the two wounded in Second Platoon, Third Platoon is ordered into the lead. I experience a sinking feeling as we approach the bridge behind them. I keep myself wrapped tightly in a poncho. Iave been freezing all night. Earlier, when we pulled back from the ambush, I was s.h.i.+vering so badly that my feet were bouncing off the floor. Doc Bryan later tells me this was likely a physical reaction to excessive adrenaline, which cuts the flow of blood to the extremities, resulting in a sensation of extreme cold. It starts again when we pa.s.s the last tank on our way to the bridge. I canat keep my feet flat on the floor. My heels keep bouncing up like theyare spring-loaded.

Next to me, I hear Trombley snoring again, slumped over his SAW, asleep. I nudge him and whisper, aWeare at the bridge.a The bridge appears directly in front of us in a blinding flash. Cobras fire zuni rockets, skimming them low over the roadway a few meters in front of our hood. This close, the rockets make a shrill, ear-stabbing sound. They smash into bunkers across the water. In the light of their explosions, I see the outlines of the Humvees in Third Platoon ahead of us.

aThereas a hole in the bridge,a Colbert says. aBravo Three is stuck. Weare turning around.a KOCHERaS TEAM makes it across the bridge with Carazales flooring the vehicle, b.i.t.c.hing the entire way. aThis is f.u.c.king bulls.h.i.+t, man. Weave got no armor.a Somehow, he manages to swerve around the meter-wide hole blown through the middle of the bridge by a Marine artillery round.

Just after clearing the hole, Redman, standing at the vehicleas .50-cal, is thrown down by a low-hanging wire from a blown-up utility pole. He slams his head on an ammo box at the rear of the Humvee and is knocked out. Redman comes to moments later and sees smashed buildings on either side of him. A Cobra, flying so low it looks like he could reach up and touch it, is dumping machine-gun fire into one of the structures. Redman smells a powerful odor of burning flesh. They have arrived in Al Muwaffaqiyah.

Two other teams make it across the bridge before a Humvee towing a trailer becomes hung up in the hole, blocking it off. The fourteen Marines who made it across are now cut off, alone in the town. Kocheras team pushes forward about seventy-five meters, then is forced to halt. Buildings on both sides of the road are collapsed into it. Rubble in some places is piled higher than the hood of their vehicle. aThereas nowhere to go, dude,a Redman observes.

Another Cobra strafing run sends Carazales diving down to the floor. The rounds impact so close that he thinks itas enemy fire. When he gets back up, he sees Kocher on the ground, walking alone into the demolished city. Carazales says, aKocheras happy now because heas got his own little suicide mission.a Kocher is determined to find a route through the town. Much as he dislikes his immediate superior, Captain America, Kocher loves his job. He grew up outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and spent his youth arunning around in the backwoods.a He hunted deer, wrestled and listened to tales of war adventure from relatives who had served in World War II and in the Korean conflict. He knew from the time he was very little he would be a Navy SEAL or a Recon Marine. He likes being out on his own in a dark, alien town. After the Cobras fire a final h.e.l.lfire into a building in front of him, the place grows silent. All he can think of, Kocher later tells me, is a basic rule of combat reconnaissance: aThe lead elementas expendable. Guess Iam it.a He picks his way through the rubble and tries to clear a path for the Humvees by pulling twisted rebars from fallen buildings out of the street. Then he sees movement in an alley and fires several shots at it. He and the other men on his team take cover, but no fire is returned. The town is about a kilometer long. Kocher soon figures that the Marine artillery leveled only about a quarter of the town. One strip of buildings close to the bridge was left standing, and near them thereas a clear alley that the Humvees could pa.s.s through. He returns to the Humvee with the news.

When Carazales hears it, he tells the radio operator, aDonat pa.s.s that word up to the battalion. Theyall probably want to send us through this b.i.t.c.h.a But the radio operator sends the news. Theyare ordered to remain in position.

SEVERAL VEHICLES FROM BRAVO COMPANY remain stuck on the bridge behind a Humvee trailer with one wheel hanging through the hole in the roadway. Encino Man originally took charge of the effort to free the trailer, but repeated attempts to rock it out have only succeeded in making the hole larger.

When Maj. Shoup comes up to the bridge to help out, he sees that nothing is happening. Several Marines stand around doing nothing, while Encino Man and Captain America shout excitedly into their radios. To Shoup it looks like theyave lost focus of the situation and are astuck on their radios, not commanding.a As an air officer, Shoup has no authority within Bravo Company. But in his mind, having three teams of Marines stuck in the town, with daylight rapidly approaching, is an urgent matter, and Encino Manas paralysis is threatening everyone. He takes a somewhat radical measure. He steps up to Encino Man and tells him, aGive me all your radios.a Encino Man is baffled, but he hands his radio handsets over. Shoup later says, aI think taking the handsets from him was the most useful thing I did that night.a Encino Man admits, aIt turned out good. I went out to help manually pick up the trailer.a With Shoup effectively in command, Encino Manas brawn as a former college football star is put to good use. He and other Marines heave the stuck trailer wheel onto metal slats and pull it out of the hole, clearing the bridge at sunrise.

BY THE TIME BRAVO pulls its teams out of Al Muwaffaqiyah and regroups on the other side of the bridge, a small mob of officers and senior enlisted men are gathered by the eucalyptus trees where we were ambushed. There are five bodies of enemy fighters scattered under them, along with piles of munitions, RPGs, AKs and hand grenades. One corpse still holds a weapon in its hand, a Russian stick grenade, with the end shot off.

Several officers mill about, talking excitedly and snapping souvenir pictures of the dead. No one has bothered to search the area or examine the corpses in any methodical manner. Captain America is yelling at the top of his lungs, picking up AKs and hurling them into the ca.n.a.l.

Fick walks up, sees the pandemonium and says to Encino Man, aWhat the f.u.c.k are these people doing taking pictures when thereare guns on these guys, and none of them have been searched?a No one pays him any heed. Theyare distracted when Maj. Eckloff, the battalion XO, makes a curious discovery. He leans down and picks up the hand of one of the dead fighters. Between his thumb and index finger there are words tattooed in English: I LOVE YOU. Eckloff reads it aloud for the benefit of the other Marines nearby. The tattoo is in keeping with the anomalous attire of the fallen fighters. Theyare dressed in pleated slacks, loafers and leather jackets, and wear cheap but stylish watches. Eckloff says, aThese guys look like foreign university students in New York.a Kocher arrives by the trees and notices one of the adeada men peeling his head off the ground, looking around at the Americans.

aThis guyas still alive,a Kocher says. Like Fick, he canat believe that the area still hasnat been searched. The wounded fighter is lying within armas reach of seven RPG rounds. Kocher trains his rifle on him.

Captain America runs up shouting, aShoot him!a Kocher ignores him as usual.

Someone else calls for a corpsman. One arrives, along with Lt. Col. Ferrando.

aCan you help this man?a Ferrando asks.

Initially, the corpsman says no. Heas worried about b.o.o.by traps.

Kocher volunteers to search him. As he pats him down for hidden weapons, the man shrieks. Heas shot in the right arm and has a two-inch chunk of his right leg missing, the bone blown out by a .50-cal round. He carries a Syrian pa.s.sport that bears the name Ahmed Shahada. Heas twenty-six years old, and his address in Iraq is listed as the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, which is by local standards one of the better hotels, catering to foreign journalists and European aid workers. Heas carrying 500 Syrian pounds, a packet of prescription painkillers in his s.h.i.+rt pocket and an entry visa to Iraq dated March 23. He arrived barely more than a week ago. Handwritten in the section of his visa that asks the purpose of his visit to Iraq is one word: aJihad.a When the corpsman begins treating the wounded Syrian, Captain America stalks over, enraged. aThe guyas a terrorist!a he shouts. He leans down, rips the wrist.w.a.tch from him and stomps it under his boot. aG.o.dd.a.m.n terrorist,a he shouts. Then he notices the 500 pounds in Syrian notes sticking out of the wounded manas pocket. Earlier, Kocher had found the bills when searching him and had returned them to his pocket. Captain America grabs the moneya"worth about $9.55 U.S.a"offers a few notes to the corpsman, who declines them, then stalks off.

When they finally get around to searching the rest of the fighters, every one of them has a Syrian pa.s.sport. After news spreads of the foreign ident.i.ties of the enemy combatants, the Marines are excited. aWe just fought actual terrorists,a Doc Bryan says. After nearly two weeks of never knowing who was shooting at them, the Marines can finally put a face to the enemy.

Later, intelligence officers in First Marine Division will estimate that as many as 50 percent of all combatants in central Iraq were foreigners. aSaddam offered these men land, money and wives to come and fight for him,a one officer tells me. He adds that foreign fighters were simply dropped off at intersections by Iraqi Fedayeen, given weapons and told to attack the Americans when they came up the road. At times, the foreign jihadis were simply used to buy time for Iraqi soldiers to change out of their uniforms and flee.

Given the Syriansa poor performance at the bridgea"trying to use skinny eucalyptus trees for cover, being wholly unaware that they could be observed through American night opticsa"Eckloff concludes, aThe concept of being a guerrilla fighter was like something theyad gotten out of the movies.a Encino Man walks up, gazing at the dead Syrians. aI wonder if President Bush will ever find out about this,a he says, his voice full of awe. aThis is what the presidentas been talking about with the war on terrorists. This is why weare here.a FICK AND I DRIVE TOGETHER to the platoonas position down the road from the bridge (actually the same wadi theyad encamped in before attempting to take the bridge the night before). Sunlight streaks through his filthy winds.h.i.+eld. aItas a beautiful morning,a he says, gazing at the surrounding fields, where shepherds are now walking among sheep and cows.

Itas among the most beautiful mornings Iave ever seen. Itas exciting to see daylight after getting shot at.

Nevertheless, Fick is grim. Unlike the others whoad been cheered by capturing a foreign jihadi, Fick thinks itas an ominous development. While Fick had never been avidly pro-war, head always radiated quiet confidence about the Americansa"at least the Marinesa"reaching their basic objective: regime change. The arrival of Syrians has shaken him. aIsnat this the absolute opposite of what we wanted to have happen here?a he asks. aI can see this effortaa"as he refers to the wara"abecoming seriously complicated.a We drive in silence. Fick sinks deeper into his state of morbid reflection, turning over the events of the previous night. aWe should never be in that position again. We rolled into a three-sided ambush. That was bad tactics.a When he stops the Humvee near Bravoas position, Fick drops his head toward his chest and shuts his eyes. A moment later, he looks up, smiling with a profound realization. aI know what we did last night,a he says.

To explain his epiphany, Fick brings up an incident that occurred several weeks earlier at Camp Mathilda between Pappy and some other Marines. Part of the reason Marines nicknamed Sgt. Patrick aPappya was his style of dressing. In Camp Mathilda, he invariably wore his physical-training shorts with combat boots and socks pulled up to his knees. His fellow Marines thought the look was aold-mannish.a As he was walking past a group of them one day in his customary attire, a Marine stopped him and said, aPappy, give us some old-man wisdom.a Pappy turned, waved his finger and said, aDonat pet a burning dog.a It was the sort of nonsense wisdom for which Pappy is famous. In Afghanistan, he and Kocher were sitting in a Marine camp outside Kandahar when a female Marine walked past. Gazing at her, Pappy said, aIf she sees something without a purpose she could chuck a stone at it.a Generally, no one knows what Pappy means when he comes up with these odd p.r.o.nouncements, but this morning after the ambush on the bridge, Fick believes heas deciphered the meaning of Pappyas warning against petting a burning dog.

Fick turns to me and says, aLast night on the bridge we petted a burning dog.a At around eight in the morning on April 2a"following their all-night action in the ambusha"the Marines in First Recon are told they will be moving into Al Muwaffaqiyah in an hour, via a southern route that avoids the damaged bridge. Given Kocheras experience of moving freely through town early that the morning, itas believed that the attackers have all fled or been killed.

Pappy is loaded onto a supply truck with the wounded Syrian and driven to RCT-1as camp, where they are medevaced to a hospital in Kuwait.

The Marines in the wadi camp are in a near-hypnotic state. No oneas slept in two nights. Reyes sits by his Humvee beside the spot where Pappyas blood has spilled over the edge of the pa.s.senger-seat compartment. aI should be thankful Pappy wasnat hit worse,a he says. aInstead Iam feeling sorry for myself because I already miss him so badly. I donat like being here without him at my side. Itas like Iam missing a piece of my body.a Several Marines gather around Colbertas vehicle, drinking water, tearing into food rations and cleaning and reloading the weapons they will likely be using again later in the day. They recount events of the previous night. Redman, who witnessed the sunrise in Al Muwaffaqiyah, walks over in a daze. aDude, we destroyed that place,a he says, sounding morose about it. aWe had one guy shot in the foot, and we blew up their whole town.a They talk about different reactions they have to combat. Person says he felt no fear whatsoever last night at the bridge. aWhen I am in these situations,a he a.s.serts confidently, aI donat feel like Iam going to die.a Trombley, who repeatedly fell asleep last night during breaks in the fire, seems interested in combat only during its intense momentsa"when the bullets are coming directly at us. This morning he says, aI had a funny combat-stress reaction. When we rolled back from the bridge the first time, I had a chubb. It wouldnat go away. Maybe it was acause I didnat get to shoot my SAW.a Colbert is excessively cheerful this morning. Itas not like heas maniacally energized from having escaped death. His satisfaction seems deeper and quieter, as if heas elated to have been involved in something highly rewarding. Itas as though heas just finished a difficult crossword puzzle or won at chess.

When Espera comes by to share one of his stinky cigars, he looks as he always does after combat, as though his eyes have sunk deeper into their sockets and the skin on his shaved skull has just tightened an extra notch. He jams the chewed, mashed tip of his cigar in my mouth without asking if I want it, and points to Colbert. aLook at that skinny-a.s.s dude,a he says. aYouad never guess what a bad motherf.u.c.ker he is.a Espera felt sorry for Colbert when they met a few years ago. They were in different units but happened to find themselves on leave together in Australia. While other Marines were out drinking and chasing wh.o.r.es, Colbert went off alone to prowl electronics stores. aI thought he had no friendsa"he was such a loner,a Espera says. aBut now that I know him better I figured out he just canat stand people, even me. Iam only his friend to p.i.s.s him off. I look up to him because the dude is a straight-up warrior. Getting bombed, shot at donat phase him a bit. s.h.i.+t, in the middle of all that madness by the bridge he observes those dudes in the trees waiting to kill us. Thatas the Iceman.a He kneels down and punches Colbert on the shoulder. aYouave got superhuman powers, Iceman, but it comes with that freakish taint I wouldnat want to have.a Colbert ignores the backhanded praise. Heas just opened his one MRE of the day and discovered a horrible mistake. His burrito MRE meal contains a condiment packet of peanut b.u.t.ter instead of jalapeo cheese. aWhat kind of s.a.d.i.s.t would put peanut b.u.t.ter in my burrito MRE?a he fumes.

Doc Bryan walks over to make sure everyoneas doing all right. I ask him how he feels about having killed those two men in the ambush.

aItas a funny paradox,a he says. aI would have done anything to save that shepherd kid. But I couldnat give a f.u.c.k about those guys I just killed. Itas like youare supposed to feel f.u.c.ked-up after killing people. I donat.a Espera says, aWeave been brainwashed and trained for combat. We must say aKill!a three thousand times a day in boot camp. Thatas why itas easy.a But ever mindful of the priestas admonishment not to enjoy killing, Espera hastily adds, aThat dude I saw crawling last night, I shot him in the grape. Saw the top of his head bust off. That didnat feel good. It makes me sick.a BY NINEA.M. the weary Marines are again on the move, making life-and-death decisions. The first guy they almost kill is a young man identified by Captain America as a possible Fedayeen. Captain America spots the young man standing in the field several hundred meters back from the road. He thinks the guy is talking on a radio, working as an enemy observer. The convoy stops. Snipers are called out. They report that the aradioa Captain America saw him holding close to his mouth and speaking into is a cigarette that heas trying to smoke in the wind. They move on without shooting him.

Within a couple of hours, First Recon reaches the alternate route into Muwaffaqiyah. There are farmhouses and bermed fields on either side of the road. The battalion slows to a b.u.mp-and-stop crawl, while armored units from RCT-1 move a few kilometers ahead into the town, to clear out the rubble blocking the main road.

While we wait, mortars begin to fall. But the fire is intermittenta"one or two concussions every ten minutesa"and inaccurate, landing hundreds of meters away in the surrounding fields.

Thereas a lot of civilian traffic pulled over by the side of the road. Many of the cars seem to have been surprised by the arrival of the Marine convoy. Parked at careless angles just off the road, the cars seem to have pulled over hastily, perhaps when they saw the Marines rolling up on them in their rearview mirrors. In the s.p.a.ce of a few kilometers, we pa.s.s more than a dozen such vehicles. Clean-shaven young men in urban apparel, similar to that worn by the Syrian ambushers, stand outside the cars and pickup trucks. They flash nervous smiles or throw their hands up when the Marine vehicles pa.s.s by. Others who have their s.h.i.+rts offa"indicating theyave probably just changed out of military uniformsa"hide inside the cars. Several of the young men we pa.s.s have blue eyes and light or even reddish hair, which are traits not uncommon among Syrians.

The Marines are convinced these guys are foreign jihadi warriors. Theyare dying to do as.n.a.t.c.h missionsaa"pull over and grab some of them and find out who they are. But their requests are denied. The Marinesa objective is to enter Al Muwaffaqiyah and push north as soon as possible. Theyare at the tip of the spear of Maj. Gen. Mattisas fast-moving invasion, and they donat have time to dally. Nevertheless, letting these guys go creates a baffling situation in the minds of the Marines. In their view, these two opposing armiesa"of Marines and of foreign jihadisa"are pa.s.sing by within meters of each other on the same road.

During one of our stops, Gunny Wynn walks over to Colbertas vehicle, p.i.s.sed off. aIsnat stopping terrorists what this war is supposed to be about? Here we are surrounded by them, and all weare doing is waving and smiling.a First Reconas convoy begins to take increasingly concentrated mortar fire. Unseen enemy snipers take potshots with AKs. Marines in Bravo are ordered to sweep the surrounding berms on foot. They find no armed men but piles of mortars, mortar tubes and RPG rounds pre-positioned in holes on both sides of the road.

In Charlie Company at the front of the convoy, Graves and Jeschke are ordered on a sniper mission. Despite the trauma of their experience a couple of nights ago of pulling the girl out of the car with her brains shot out, they are eager for their new mission. An enemy mortar landed within 150 meters of their vehicle, and Marines notice a man behaving suspiciously in a nearby field. He keeps popping up and down from behind a berm after the mortars. .h.i.t, watching the Marines. They think heas an observer, and Graves and Jeschke set up a sniper position by the road to kill him.

With Graves on the M-40 rifle and Jeschke spotting, they see him 175 meters off. Theyare not absolutely sure heas an observera"the man has no radio or weapon visiblea"but theyave been cleared hot to hit him. Graves fires a shot. The man drops out of view. Neither is sure if they hit him until a few minutes later when several women file out of a nearby hut and go over to the berm. They are joined by two men dressed like farmers, who drag the man out of the dirt and load him into a pickup truck. In the process, Graves observes an AK rifle tumble out of his victimas robes. He believes he made a good kill.

Up the road, Saucier isnat so sure of the military value of his next kill. Saucier is manning the .50-cal for his team on a hasty roadblock when a white car approaches on the highway. Saucier fires high warning shots. The car accelerates. When it comes within 200 meters of his position he lowers his weapon at it and blips off two rounds. Though the .50-cal is an extremely powerful weapon, itas not the most accurate gun used by Marines. The gun employs old-fas.h.i.+oned iron sights, and the mounts used in Reconas Humvees are notoriously wobbly. Nevertheless, Saucieras marks-mans.h.i.+p is another testament to Marine Corps training. Of the two rounds he fires into the speeding car, one strikes the head of the driver. The car stops. Three young men jump out. One of them, who had apparently been sitting behind the driver, is covered in gore. They throw themselves down by the road. Marines who examine the driver report that Saucieras. .h.i.t was perfecta"hitting the guy in the center of his head and scooping it out in a V shape. No weapons are discovered on the young men or in the car. But by the Marinesa roadblock rules, this kill was legit. The car wouldnat stop.

When I talk to Saucier about this shooting later, he says he never in his life imagined he would be called on to fire on unarmed people. aWords canat describe how I feel about it,a he says. aWhen we came over here, I expected we would do what you would read in history books. We would go through the desert and fight armies. But all weare seeing are random tactics, guys shooting at us with civilians everywhere, which makes sense from their point of view. Their guerrilla tactics donat make me feel better about or justify the civilian deaths weare causing, but these Marines are my brothers. Iall do anything to defend them. All I try to do is put this bad stuff out of my mind.a AT ABOUT THREE in the afternoon, Colbertas team finally creeps into Al Muwaffaqiyah. The rubble has been pushed to the sides of the road by tanks in RCT-1, which entered earlier. A hundred meters back, partially destroyed buildings yawn open. Beds hang off their upper floors. Marines from RCT-1 report seeing an undetermined number of bodies on rooftopsa"people killed by the DPICM artillery rounds, which spray shrapnel down from the sky. The Marines fired 100 such rounds into the town, saturating it with a total of about 7,000 submunitions. Statistically, about 15 percent of these submunitions fall to the earth without exploding, which means there are approximately 1,000 unexploded bombs scattered throughout the town and buried in the rubble. They are highly unstable and will blow up if stepped on or picked up. The town is a lethal place.

Colbertas vehicle is ordered to stop part of the way into Al Muwaffaqiyah. Weare within view of the bridge and the eucalyptus trees across the river where we almost got killed the night before. Now, in the glare of the midday sun, the rubbled town looks deserted. Everyoneas nerves are hinky. Colbert leans out the window, observing likely sniper positions through his rifle scope, and starts singing that Gordon Lightfoot song again.

Originally, the Marines in Bravo were told they were going to speed through the town, but there is a delay. While we wait, young adolescent boys trickle out of the deadly ruins. They come to within thirty meters or so of the Humvees and wave. One kid, probably about eleven, stands in the wreckage of a building destroyed by the Marines. He blows kisses and shouts, aI love you, America!a Colbertas team is ordered to advance farther into the town. In sections that are not destroyed you can see how it had been a nice place until eighteen hours ago. There are walled gardens with metal gates painted bright colors. To our right thereas a wrecked caf, decorated with azure highlights around its smashed windows. Lying along the waterfront of the broad ca.n.a.l, the town almost has the Mediterranean feel of a Greek fis.h.i.+ng village.

Colbert orders most of his men out of the Humvee. The Marine Corps has spent years studying the Russian experience in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Among the mistakes they made was to stay inside their vehicles when they entered urban terrain. As Colbert says, aIf you coc.o.o.n in your vehicle, you get schwacked. Even if itas a tank, theyall find a way to blow it up.a Colbert and his men stalk through the streets, peering over walls and around corners. Even though increasing numbers of civilians are straying out, the Marines are tense. Itas a hot day, and the Marinesa facesa"recessed behind puffy MOPP suits, helmets and radio micsa"have that throbbing, blotchy look people get after running a marathon.

Colbert stands on the corner by a building, scanning an alley. An old man in brown robes, sitting cross-legged in front of a building, smiles at him. Colbert smiles back, while still mumbling the words aSometimes I think itas a sin/When I feel like Iam winnina when Iam losina again.a He pauses. aI wish I knew the rest of the words.a WE REMAIN IN AL MUWAFFAQIYAH because engineers attached to First Recon have discovered a large cache of weapons in the town. One of the few public buildings not destroyed by Marine artillery in Al Muwaffaqiyah is the schoolhouse. Itas an L-shaped, two-story brick building with a basketball court in the middle.

The schoolhouse was taken over by the Iraqi military sometime after Valentineas Day. Marine engineers know this because the walls of one cla.s.sroom are covered in childish drawings of pink hearts, some with the words aHappy Valentineasa scrawled in English. The fact that schoolchildren in an Arab dictators.h.i.+p commemorate Valentineas Day comes as a surprise to the Marines, but previously, in a rural school south of Al Hayy, they found drawings done by children depicting girls with blue eyes and blond haira"suggesting that somehow Western pop culture and its idealization of blondness had seeped into the minds of kids living in primitive hamlets. You find surprising things about the private life of a country when you invade it. Itas not unlike breaking into someoneas home, ransacking the occupantsa possessions and learning the ordinary secrets of their lives.

Sometime after the schoolchildren of Al Muwaffaqiyah celebrated Valentineas Day, a battalion-size force of Republican Guard soldiers moved into the town and turned their school into a military headquarters. They shoved all the desks into one room and filled the others with military supplies. Marines find maps, uniforms, gas masks, as well as recently cooked, partially consumed bowls of rice, peanut sh.e.l.ls and chicken bones. Apparently, the Republican Guard soldiers stayed back here eating peanuts and chicken while the Syrian jihadis were sent out to the bridge to delay the Americans.

The Marines also find several cla.s.srooms piled to the ceilings with weapons and munitions, including 600 mortar sh.e.l.ls, 10,000 AK rounds and a couple dozen launchers and rifles. They rig the weapons caches with explosives and prepare to blow the school complex sky-high.

WATCHING THE TOWNaS only school blow upa"which we see as a funnel of black smoke jetting up from the western side of the towna"comes as a relief to Colbertas team. Its destruction means they can finally roll north and get out of Al Muwaffaqiyah. The atmosphere in the town has changed markedly. Locals have warned Marines in other teams that foreign jihadis have infiltrated the area and plan to attack the Americans with suicide car bombs. The civilians whoad come out earlier to greet the Marines have fled.

Colbertas team is ordered to move to the front of the battalion and set up a roadblock at the north end of the town. We stop near a large industrial complex that looks like a cement factory or machine shop. There are some houses beyond that, then open fields.

Espera pulls his vehicle up beside Colbertas on the road. The two of them orient their guns north. With the battalion and all of RCT-1 behind them, their two Humvees const.i.tute the northernmost Marine unit in central Iraq. Their job is to turn away any cars that come down the road from the north. Itas a little before six in the evening. There are tall, leafy trees to our left casting blue shadows over us in the fading daylight.

In the past few hours Colbert and other team leaders in the battalion have developed what they hope will be less lethal means of stopping cars at roadblocks. Instead of firing warning shots from machine guns, they will launch colored smoke grenades. The hope is that drivers will be more likely to heed billowing clouds of colored smoke blocking the road than warning shots fired over their vehicles. Fick and other commanders had initially opposed this kinder, gentler method to halting traffic, with Fick arguing, aMarines are supposed to be an aggressive force. If our stance is less aggressive, weare more likely to be challenged by bad guys.a But the enlisted Marines, tired of shooting unarmed civilians, fought to be allowed to use smoke grenades.

Now, when the first vehicle, a white pickup truck, approaches, Colbert strides into the road, ahead of the Humvees.

aDo not engage this truck!a he shouts to his men.

He fires a smoke grenade from his 203 launcher. It makes a plunking sound almost like a champagne cork popping, then bounces into the road, spewing green smoke. Three or four hundred meters down the road, the white pickup truck turns around and drives off.

A couple of cars arrive. The second is a taxi. It speeds up after the launching of the smoke grenade. The Marines by the Humvees hunch lower on their weapons, getting ready to fire.

aDo not engage!a Colbert shouts. He fires another smoke grenade.

The taxi drives through the smoke; then moments before the Marines are about to light it up, the driver cuts a tight, wheel-squealing U-turn. Even on good days, Arab motorists tend to drive like kamikaze pilots. Itas not easy for a Marine to differentiate between run-of-the-mill reckless Arab driving and erratic behavior that would indicate a suicide bomber.

The Marines discuss the taxia"debating whether the driveras nearly fatal game of chicken with them was a result of his poor judgment, or the possibility that heas a Fedayeen scouting Marine lines. Their conversation distracts them from the next caras approach.

The blue sedan seems to appear out of nowhere. Perhaps it came from a side street behind the cement factory. In any case, Colbert doesnat step into the road to launch his first smoke grenade until the car is less than 200 meters away.

aDo not engage!a Colbert repeats.

As soon as Colbert fires his smoke grenade, a Marine SAW roars to life, spitting out a short burst. The car, maybe a hundred meters away now, rolls to a stop, green smoke blowing past it. The winds.h.i.+eld is frosted. Two men in white robes jump out. One, who looks to be a young man in his early twenties, has blood streaming from his shoulder. The men run hastily toward a mud-brick house by the road and disappear behind a wall.

Ha.s.ser stands to the left of Colbert, with the b.u.t.t of his SAW pressed to his shoulder. It was his gun that fired.

aThat was a wounding shot, motherf.u.c.ker!a Colbert yells, uncharacteristically p.i.s.sed. aWhat the f.u.c.k were you doing? I said, aDo not engagea!a Ha.s.ser remains frozen on his SAW.

Colbert walks around to him. He lowers his voice. aWalt, you okay?a Ha.s.ser lowers his SAW and stares at the car.

Colbert squeezes his arm. aWalt, talk to me.a aThe car kept coming,a Ha.s.ser says, mechanically.

The smoke disperses in the breeze, and Marines make out the outline of a manas head behind the shattered winds.h.i.+eld. He is sitting upright, as if still holding the wheel. Pa.s.senger doors on the right side of the car hang open. The driver seems to be alive, rolling his head from side to side.

None of the Marines say anything for a moment. Colbert looks at the car, then down. He breathes deeply, as if struggling to put his emotions aside. Having watched him cry a few days ago after the shooting of the shepherd, I suspect itas not always easy being the Iceman.

aItas okay, Walt,a Colbert says. aYou were doing your job.a Since the Marines on these vehicles are at this moment in history the foremost units of the American invasion here, thereas a burden that comes with that. Theyare not allowed to simply run up to the car and see if they can help the guy. Colbert radios Fick, whoas a couple hundred meters behind, and tells him thereas a man shot in the car ahead. He requests permission to go up to it and render aid to the driver.

aNegative,a Fick tells him. The battalion has ordered the platoon to advance a few hundred meters past the car.

We drive toward the blue car. The shot man behind the wheel appears to be in his forties. He sits upright with good posture, his hands on his lap as if they slipped off the steering wheel. He wears a white s.h.i.+rt. His right eye stares ahead; his left eye is covered in blood dripping down from the crown of his head. Heas alive. When we pa.s.s within about a meter of him, we hear his rapid breathinga"a shus.h.i.+ng sound.

Due to a temporary rotation in the team, Trombley is on the Mark-19 and Ha.s.ser is in the seat to the left of me. He rides closest to the man he just shot, and stares ahead, refusing to look as we drive past, listening to his dying gasps: Shhhh! Shhhh! Shhhh!

n.o.body in the Humvee says anything.

As Team Three rolls behind us, Doc Bryan raises his M-4 and tries to get a bead on the man. Without telling anyone else, he has decided to shoot the man in the head and give him a mercy execution. But his Humvee bounces, and he misses his chance for a clean shot.

We stop several hundred meters up the road and get out. There are some huts ahead. Fick and I see a pregnant woman walking toward them. Fick gets a bright yellow pack of humrats from his truck to give to her, and we walk toward her, with Fick holding the humrats high. The woman sees us and veers toward the huts. We walk faster. She starts running, and we do too. Then Fick stops abruptly. aThis is ridiculous,a he says. aWeare terrorizing a pregnant woman.a We watch her flee. aGiven the way things are going,a Fick says, aitas probably wise of her to run when she sees Americans.a ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES LATER, First Reconas headquarters units roll past the blue car with the wounded man it. Navy Lieutenant Aubin, the battalion physician, insists on stopping so he can examine the driver.

What Aubin finds is yet another testament to the skills of the Marine Corps rifleman. Of the three rounds Ha.s.ser fired, one hit an occupant in the shoulder (whom we saw jump out), one skimmed into the hood and the third entered the driveras left eye. The 5.56mm round then did a ninety-degree turn through the manas brain and went straight up, exiting through the top of his skull. Basically, the man has been lobotomized. Aubin pokes and pinches the skin on the manas upper body and finds he is totally unresponsive, a vegetable. But no arteries were hit. The light, venous bleeding from the entry and exit wounds is not enough to kill him. His breathing and heart rate are good.

Aubin concludes that in a hospital a man with these wounds could live indefinitely. Here, without care, he will die of starvation, infection or swelling of the brain. Unlike Doc Bryan, who was ready to shoot the man, acting as a vigilante mercy killer falls outside of everything Aubin believes in as a doctor. He administers morphine and Valium to quell any pain in case the victim comes to (which is medically possible), but not enough to kill him. He is torn by the dilemma posed by this patient. Aubin later tells me, aIn the States we donat practice euthanasia. If we remove someone from life support, I donat make that decision. We have committees of doctors, lawyers, family members, clergy who all debate it.a Aubin knows that to leave the man is a death sentence, but he decides not to call in a medevac. Marine resources are stretched thin. He leaves the man in the care of medical personnel with RCT-1, who will be holding the town. The wounded man dies, unclaimed by anyone, a day later. Marines donat know anything about him other than that he was unarmed, behind the wheel of a blue car, when he drove onto a narrow, blacktop road where an American shot him in the eye.

TWENTY-SIX.

WALTER Ha.s.sER, who shot the man in the blue car, is one of the most well-liked Marines in the platoon. Heas twenty-three years old, six feet two inches tall and knows the lyrics to just about every hit country song recorded between 1960 and 1974. Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash are his heroes. He has a beautiful country singing voice, and in his case Colbert makes a special exemption to his ano country musica rule. Following the ZSU AAA gun attack south of Al Hayy during which Ha.s.ser had climbed into the turret under fire and had taken out the enemy gun position, the team had seized the bridge north of the town to the accompaniment of his singing Glen Campbellas aRhinestone Cowboy.a Raised in a rented farmhouse in Louden County, Virginia, by a single mom who, he says, adidnat have no college,a Ha.s.ser grew up working on farms and hunting. He seems like your basic country good old boy, but what he enjoys most about the Marine Corps is both the brotherhood and the diversity. aBack home you pal around with your own kind,a he says. aI never thought my best friends would be Mexicans. Here, weare brothers, and we all look out for each other. Thatas the best part of being in a war. We all get to be together.a Earlier in the morning, when everyone had been complaining about the sorry state of MREs, Ha.s.ser had explained his basic philosophy of life. aEvery chance you have, you should try to hook people up. People in the MRE factory donat understand that. h.e.l.l, if I worked there Iad be sneaking in extra pound cakes, jalapeo cheese packs, Tootsie Rolls. You gotta throw things to people when you can.a Now, driving out of Al Muwaffaqiyah, with the sound of that dying manas gasping still fresh in everyoneas mind, Ha.s.ser stares out the window into a blazing sunset. The SAW is loose on his lap. His wrists are draped across the top of the weapon, but his fingers arenat touching it, almost like heas ignoring it.

aHow are you doing?a I ask him.

aJust taking it all in,a he says.

THE OBJECTIVE TONIGHT on April 2 is to reach the outskirts of Al Kut, the Marine Corpsa goal in central Iraq. Itas about thirty kilometers north of Al Muwaffaqiyah. Before the Marines set out from Al Muwaffaqiyah, several old men on the road stopped Second Platoon, offering detailed information about ambushes ahead. Fick, Meesh and I talked to them for several minutes. One of the old men caught my eye. He pointed up the road and dragged his finger across his neck, making a throat-slas.h.i.+ng gesture to indicate danger ahead.

Now, as we drive up the route in convoy with the battalion, Colbert picks up reports of sporadic gunfire from the radio. aWeare expecting enemy contact at the intersection two clicks up the road,a he says. aPerson, get your NVGs out. This could go past dark.a aOne thing about the Marines,a Person says. aWe always know how to wrap up a day.a aSmall-arms fire to the rear,a Colbert says.

aYeah. Game on!a Trombley says excitedly from the turret. Itas his first time on the Mark-19, and heas eager for the chance to blow stuff up with it.

aStay frosty, Walt,a Colbert says.

aYeah,a Ha.s.ser says.

I look over at him next to me. Heas still not touching the SAW. Heas just listlessly staring out the window. Iam glad of his humanity. The fact that heas clearly so broken up by his shooting of that civilian just confirms what a decent guy he is. But I wish he wasnat showing it right now.

We hit the intersectiona"the suspected ambush point, with berms on the left, a stand of palm trees on the right. No shots are fired.

aStop!a Colbert says.

We halt between the trees and the berms in the suspected kill zone.

aWhat are we doing?a Person asks, his voice betraying a hint of nervousness.

aThey want us to stop,a Colbert says. aI guess weare trying to flush aem out.a We sit for several minutes, trying to bait the ambushers into shooting. n.o.body says anything. Itas that leaden silence of old action movies where all you hear are heartbeats and watches ticking (though no oneas actually wearing a mechanical watch).

aMove up fifty meters,a Colbert says.

Again we sit in silence, broken abruptly when Trombley cuts a loud fart.

Everyone jumps. Nerves are so wired in the vehicle, some mistook it for the blast of a distant mortar.

aJesus!a Colbert says.

aSorry,a Trombley apologizes.