''We'd do the same thing if some foreign dudes rolled into San Diego"

Into the Heart of Falluja

<snip>The orders that morning were to check out a village where mortars were being fired at an American base. ''I don't begrudge them,'' a Marine officer told me. ''We'd do the same thing if some foreign dudes rolled into San Diego and set up shop.'' snip

I nearly wiped out just swinging my leg over the side. Bullets pinged. A piece of the truck's hood went flying. Mortars started dropping like snowballs. Whoosh, thud, whoosh, thud. I buried myself in an irrigation ditch and kissed the mud.

But the marines were pros. Nobody panicked. They crawled behind a berm, got on their knees and judiciously fired back, bullet after bullet. We escaped that firefight with no casualties. But soon we were in another. And then another. The countryside was so lush and pretty. But it was swarming with insurgents.

One battle ended with people fleeing into a palm grove and the marines firing after them, felling them one by one.

''Man, I think some of those guys were kids,'' a lance corporal told me afterward. ''Or they were midgets.''

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