The Dead Don’t Stay

Iraq, November 2004, and I was covering the Second Battle of Fallujah as a Department of Defense stringer. My job was to take photographs, collect names, and write stories. I wasn’t there to fight. I followed a squad of Marines into a half-finished two-story house in Jolan, a rough neighborhood in an even harder city. Fallujah was the worst fighting the Marine Corps had seen since Hue City. The enemy was different here. In the south, it was Shiite militias. In Baghdad, it was former Iraqi Army soldiers fighting from the shadows. But in Fallujah, there were jihadists from all over the world. They were the survivors. They were still alive because they were good at what they did. The first battle had been a lesson. The enemy dug in deep. A city rigged to kill. The commanders had pulled back, reinforced, and planned for something bigger. Now, the Marines were taking it back, one block at a time, one house at a time. War in Fallujah was like chess but worse. You moved a piece forward, and sometimes it disappeared. That day, the Marines moved toward a house surrounded by a high wall. There was a single hole in the concrete—blown open, likely by the enemy. Recon had seen no movement, but that didn’t mean no one was inside. The Marines went up slow. As they stacked up outside the door, they heard a voice inside. A man calling a name. Mustafa. Mustafa. He thought we were his friends. Then he realized he was wrong. A Marine kicked the door open. The man stood in the hallway, AK in his hands, his face frozen in shock. He tried to lift his rifle. The SAW gunner fired first. A burst tore through the man’s chest and stomach. He fell. Dead. Three Marines moved downstairs to hold the perimeter. I stayed up with the others. A few minutes passed. Then one of them called down. “Get the dead guy’s phone.” Enemy phones were gold for intelligence. With entry made and our perimeter covered, it was safe to move through the building. I stepped out into the corridor, but the body was gone, just blood where it had been. There were no drag marks. Only a few drops into the back of the house. I stood there a moment. Cold. Dead men don’t get up and walk away. “Something’s wrong down here,” some shouted. A Marine came downstairs. We followed the blood, slow, rifles ready, to a doorway at the end of the hall. Someone popped a grenade and tossed it in. Then we heard it—scuffing against concrete. The man burst from the room, knife in hand, eyes wide and empty. He made no sound. Just charged. The Marines fired. Two, three rounds. He didn’t stop. The Marine closest to him backed away, but the man kept coming. I heard shouting. Shoot him in the head. A Marine stepped in close, raised his rifle, and fired three times. The man’s head came apart. Then he stopped. Later, they searched the house. They found syringes, bottles of adrenaline, and amphetamines. The enemy had been shooting up before battle, making themselves difficult to kill. It didn’t make them better fighters. It just made them worse at dying. It wasn’t the only time. I heard stories from others. Marines had to shoot a man in the head to make sure he stayed down. It wasn’t a war movie. It was real, and I saw it myself.