Table of Contents
Praise for We Were One: Shoulder to Shoulder with the Marines Who Took Fallujah
A magnificent tale of combatmixing valor, grit, love, blood, and sacrifice.
BING WEST, author of The March Up and No True Glory
ODonnell brilliantly and compassionately recounts the story of our American sons called upon to fight, bleed, die, and survive in a hostile land.
CARLO DESTE, author of Patton: A Genius For War
Here in these gripping pages is the Iraq Wars fiercest battle, seen from the adrenaline-charged vantage of a few Marine buddies, and feelingly narrated by an intrepid war historian who risked his own life to capture every raw minute.
HAMPTON SIDES, author of Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers
ODonnell paints a picture of intense bravery.Read ODonnells excellent book and you will know that they are indeed, as were each preceding generation, The Greatest.
New York Post
ODonnell depicts in graphic detail the sights and smells of urban combat and the bravery of young leathernecks.
Military Heritage
A graphic accountportraying in the starkest terms the infantrymans war.
Roanoke Times
First-rate readingadmirably depicts the brutal realities of street-to-street, house-to-house fightingWe Were One, more than the others, captures the sensory details and emotional drama of good men killing and dying for one another and their country.
Marine Corps Times, Air Force Times,
Navy Times, and Army Times
ODonnell takes the reader into the private world of a Marine infantry platoonHis descriptions of the Marines clearing houses, fighting the heavily doped-up insurgents, as well as the physical, mental, and emotional toll it takes on the Marines are among the most descriptive and heart-breaking accounts to come back from the Iraqi frontFor those who want to begin to understand the deadly nature of fighting in an urban environment, the determination of the enemy, as well as the inherent problems in 4th Generation Warfareas well to begin to understand the determination and dedication to their fellow Marines of those young men who are doing the fightingthen this is the book for you.
Leatherneck
Cover[s] the war that the mainstream media neglects: the story of countless acts of courage and sacrifice among the young soldiers and Marines who tend to remain anonymous unless they make a mistake.
Military.com
ODonnell paints an authentic picture of our nations most precious assetsthe Marine riflemenengaged in one of their fiercest fights.
J.N. MATTIS, Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps,
Commanding General, I Marine Expeditionary Force
Pat ODonnell was with us on the ground in Fallujahhouse to house. His story is historically accurate and describes the greatest personal and professional test of our lives. We Were One is destined to be a classic of urban close combat, and honors the memory of all who made the ultimate sacrifice for their brother Marines. I am deeply thankful that Pat kept his oath to Lima Company.
LT. COL WILLY BUHL, CO Task Force 3/1,
Operation AL FAJR
This book is dedicated to Americas fallen in the war in Iraq,
and the Marines of 1st Platoon who gave their lives for a cause
greater than themselves.
They fought with honor and for their brothers.
They are the next Greatest Generation.
PREFACE
TEN MINUTES AFTER I HELPED DRAG A MORTALLY WOUNDED MARINE out of a firefight, I was crouching in the courtyard of a nondescript Fallujah house, watching two exhausted, grimy, visibly shaken Marines gently load the bloodstained body into a Humvee. The fallen man had been a close friend. Out of the blue, an angry gunnery sergeant confronted me: Is this what you came here to see?
No, I responded.
What are you going to write about here?
That I was with a band of heroes and I am going to tell the truth about what happened here.
Good. Thats what these men deserve. People need to know what happened here, their courage, and the sacrifices these men made for each other and their country.
I volunteered to go to Iraq to become one of the first civilian historians to accompany American men and women into combat, be present as the action unfolded, and then write the history of their war, allowing them to tell the story as much as possible in their own words through oral history. I also went to Iraq to find out whether it was true what several senior officers had told me, that our current crop of young warriors is a remarkable group that deserves to be called the next Greatest Generation.
After spending several weeks in combat with U.S. Army and Marine special operations units, doing everything from conducting raids in Baghdad to inserting Special Operations teams, I joined the Third Battalion, First Marine Regiment, one of the infantry units mounting the frontal assault into the city of Fallujah. Through fate, or as one Marine captain described it, It was meant to be, I was assigned to Lima Companys 1st Platoon, the unit that saw some the worst of the battle of Fallujah. After twelve days of house to house, hand to hand urban combat, only fourteen of the platoons original complement of forty-six were still standing when Lima Company was withdrawn from the city.
First Platoon was more than just a fighting unit. The platoon was a closely knit family of men, best friends, who could and did lay down their lives for one another. The focus of this book is four pairs of best friends including the heart and soul of 1st PlatoonLance Corporal Michael Hanks. Several of the more experienced men in the platoon didnt even have to be in Iraq; they selflessly extended their tours of duty so that they could protect the younger Marines who hadnt seen combat.
After the battle, the father of one of 1st Platoons fallen Marines, with tears in his eyes, gripped my hand and said, Tell my sons story. I leave it to the reader to decide whether, in telling this story, they are the next Greatest Generation.
The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here... It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before usthat from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.
President Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address
PROLOGUE
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM I, SADR CITY, BAGHDAD, APRIL 2003: For Lance Corporal Michael Hanks and his best friend, Lance Corporal Bill Sojda, it was one more day in paradise. Their nostrils were assaulted by an ungodly stench of rotting garbage and the putrid stream of raw sewage trickling in the gutter along the worn cobblestone street. Flies swarmed everywhere, in numbers so vast you could hear their wings beating, affixing themselves to sweaty upper lips until they were swatted away. The people were dirty. Even the womens faces were routinely smeared with dirt. Nearby, a young Iraqi child was swinging an IV bag full of bloody tissue. Thump! The child dropped the bag, spattering its gruesome contents all over the ground, making a bloody mess.
This place is a hellhole, observed Hanks with his signature George Bush-like smirk. Hanks and Sojda had been inseparable since meeting two years earlier in the Marine School of the Infantry (SOI), a training school for basic combat skills attended by all recruits after boot camp.
