Into The Danger Zone

By Brian Bennett/Fallujah

Charlie Company had never done a foot patrol in downtown Fallujah before. There's a good reason: Fallujah is the most dangerous place in Iraq for a U.S. soldier to set boots to ground. The 82nd Airborne Division took command of Fallujah and its environs last month and wants to increase its presence inside the town that plays host to Iraq's most active resistance network. Taming the city that detonates an average of three homemade bombs a day against coalition forces is a duty of the 1-505 Parachute Infantry Regiment. On Thursday afternoon, Charlie Company's first platoon took the inaugural walk through the middle of town. The battalion commander was just sitting down to meet with a committee of local sheiks at the mayor's office when the shooting started across the street.

At the front of the squad, Specialist John Fox was walking point, the first man in the formation. When he reached the corner in front of the mayor's office, Fox heard a pop and felt a round hit his bulletproof chest plate. Fox returned fire on a man in a blue shirt and jeans in the middle of the street, then took cover behind a silver Oldsmobile. The bullet had hit the smoke grenade on Fox's vest, and gray plumes were spraying into his face. The squad opened up on the gunman. His RPK machine gun dropped to the ground, and he collapsed in the street. The wounded gunman was still alive and quietly repeating in Arabic, "God is great!"

Sergeant Roger Vazquez decided the bleeding attacker might still be a threat and sprinted into the street to drag him away and search him for weapons. He grabbed the man by the belt and started pulling him under an overhang. A machine gun opened up from the roof across the street, and bullets hit the dirt around Vazquez's feet. The gunman's body was stuck on the curb. "Leave him, leave him," shouted a soldier. Still Vazquez persevered, getting the man onto the sidewalk and out of the line of fire. Vazquez patted him down, taking a set of prayer beads out of the dying man's pocket and placing them in his left hand.

An American machine gunner atop the mayor's office shot up the roof where the fire was originating. After a few minutes, the squad threw cans of gray and yellow smoke for cover. They carried the wounded man across the street to the mayor's office, where a medic did his best to save him, but within five minutes he was dead. The squad cleared the apartment building from which the shooter had fired but found nothing. Down the street, a 32-year-old woman had caught a bullet in the throat during the cross fire. After it was all over, Fox, 26, showed off the M-16 magazines on his vest that had exploded when the bullet hit them. The flak vest saved his life. Inside his breast pocket, the picture he keeps of his daughter Amanda, 4, survived the shooting without harm.