David Bellavia - House to House: An Epic Memoir of War

Advance Praise for House to House

House to House is a charged and honestly stark view down the rifle-sights of an infantryman during a crucial period in Iraq. Bellavia is our man with boots on the ground. To read this book is to know intimately the daily grind and danger of men at war.

Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead

House to House is a terrifically realistic account of the hardest kind of combat known to man. Staff Sergeant Bellavia puts you right there with his men as they see it. This is a must read.

Gunnery Sgt. Jack Coughlin, USMC (Ret.), author of Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper

Bellavia is the legend from Iraq. He went house-to-house in Fallujah killing the terroristsalone! MUST reading for all grunts.

Bing West, author of No True Glory

House to House is a rare and gripping account of frontline combat. While many who contemplate the nature of war focus on technological change, Bellavias account reveals the continuities of close combat. Bellavia illuminates the human, psychological, emotional, and sensory experience of combat at the level of leadership that wins battlesthe infantry squad leader. Bellavias story unfolds in a compelling narrative that helps readers understand what it is like to be in battle and what it is like to be a soldier.

Colonel H. R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty

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Copyright 2007 by David Bellavia

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Free Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bellavia, David.

House to house: an epic memoir of war / David Bellavia with John Bruning.

p. cm.

1. Iraq War, 2003Personal narratives, American. 2. Bellavia, David. I. Bruning, John R. II. Title.

DS79.76.B4465 2007

956.7044'3092dc22

[B] 2007010697

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-7184-1
ISBN-10: 1-4165-7184-1

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For the Ramrods of the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment

Noli Me Tangere

Do Not Touch Me

Contents

Authors Note

This is a work of nonfiction. Events, actions, experiences, and their consequences have been faithfully retold as I remembered them and based on interviews with a number of the participants. Events to which I was not an eyewitness have been recounted based on documented accounts and interviews. Every event within the book took place, but a few have been reordered or combined for narrative clarity. Conversations presented in dialogue form have been re-created from my memory of them but are not intended to represent a word-for-word documentation; rather, they are intended to invoke the essence of what was said.

HOUSE TO HOUSE

PROLOGUE The Coffins of Muqdadiyah April 9, 2004 Diyala Province, Iraq

Dust cakes our faces, invades our sinuses, and stings our eyes. The heat bakes the moisture from us with utter relentlessness. Our body temperatures hover at a hundred and three. Our ears ring. On the edge of heat exhaustion, we get dizzy as our stomachs heave.

We have the spastic shits, with stabs of pain as our guts liquefy thanks to the menagerie of local bacteria. Inside our bases filthy outhouses, swarms of flies crawl over us. Without ventilation, those outhouses are furnaces, pungent with the acrid smell of well-cooked urine.

All this, and we get shot at, too.

Welcome to the infantry. This is our day, our job. It sucks, and we hate it, but we endure for two reasons. First, there is nobility and purpose in our lives. We are Americas warrior class. We protect; we avenge. Second, every moment in the infantry is a test. If we measure up to the worst days, such as this one, it proves we stand a breed apart from all other men.

Where we work, there are no cubicles. There are no break rooms. Ties are foreign objects; we commute in armored fighting vehicles.

Our workplace is not some sterile office or humming factory. It is a stretch of desolate highway in a vast and empty land. A guard tower burns in the background. Shattered bodies litter the ground around us. Vacant corpse eyes, bulging and horror-struck, stare back at us. The stench of burned flesh is thick in our nostrils. This was once an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) checkpoint, designed to regulate traffic in and out of Muqdadiyah, one of the key cities in the Diyala Province. Thanks to a surprise attack launched earlier in the morning, it is nothing more than a funeral pyre. We arrived too late to help, and our earnest but untrained allies died horribly as the insurgents swept over them. One Iraqi soldier took a direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). All thats left of him are his boots and soggy piles of bloody meat splattered around the guard tower.

This is our workplace. We began to acclimate to such horrors right after arriving in the country. While on our second patrol in Iraq, a civilian candy truck tried to merge with a column of our armored vehicles, only to get run over and squashed. The occupants were smashed beyond recognition. Our first sight of death was a man and his wife both ripped open and dismembered, their intestines strewn across shattered boxes of candy bars. The entire platoon hadnt eaten for twenty-four hours. We stopped, and as we stood guard around the wreckage, we grew increasingly hungry. Finally, I stole a few nibbles from one of the cleaner candy bars. Others wiped away the gore and fuel from the wrappers and joined me.

That was three weeks ago. Were veterans now, proud that we can stomach such sights and still carry out our job. It is this misery that defines us, gives us our identity. It also cleaves infantrymen apart from everyone else in uniform. Some call it arrogance. So be it. We call it pride since we believe fervently in what we are doing.

Check it out, calls Staff Sergeant Colin Fitts. He points to a Humvee rolling up the highway toward our battlefield.

The two of us pause and watch the rig approach. Fitts is a Mississippian with a gravelly voice and intense eyes. Were so close that long ago I learned to tell every entertaining story from his life in more detail than he can, and he can do the same with mine.

The Humvee screeches to a stop a short distance from us. In the right seat sits a clean-cut major. With his tiny, wire-rimmed glasses, he looks like an accountant in Kevlar. Hes so clean that I doubt hes more than a few hours removed from his last shower. I cant even remember when I last had one. Weve been making do with whores bathsbaby wipes to the armpits and private partssince running water is a luxury not bestowed upon the infantry.

Right here we have the dichotomy that defines our military. We all wear the same uniform, but we might as well be from two different armies. Were the frontline bullet-chewers. This officer embodies all that we despise about the other half. He is scrubbed; we are filthy. His skin has rarely seen the sun. We are sunburned and leathery. He is well fed and a bit on the pudgy side. Most of our platoon has lost over ten pounds since getting to Diyala. Maybe thats because when we get a chance to eat, the appetite doesnt stick around long. Our mess hall is an abandoned Iraqi morgue.

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