Fallujah Awakens. Bill Ardolino
a battlefield” and consequently he “thought it was the right thing to do.” Inman nonchalantly followed orders, but he recalled the times he had had to drive a seriously wounded Marine to the hospital at high speeds on a road potentially packed with bombs. It didn’t seem quite fair that an Iraqi would be rushed out on a medevac bird in only a few minutes.
Zofchak tried to fix the radio and raise the helicopter, but it was a lost cause. To compensate, the Marines played a high stakes version of the game “broken telephone.” Their walkie-talkies were unreliable and had a very limited range, so Muñoz used his personal role radio to relay instructions to a Marine on the roof. The altitude allowed the second American to switch frequencies and project a message farther, to Sgt. Christopher Dockter’s 2nd Squad, which had moved into a position a few hundred meters away.113
Dockter’s radios to air support had also failed before they rushed out to back up Kopera’s squad after the first engagement, so he was relaying instructions via short-range radio to Greco. Mercifully, the platoon leader’s encrypted line to the helicopter still worked, and one of his Marines interpreted these instructions and tried to direct the inbound helicopter toward a field set up as a landing zone immediately northeast of Kopera’s house.114 Muñoz, Kopera, and three Marines waited near the front of the house, while the rest of the men maintained security and overwatch from the roof.
The Americans were annoyed by how long it took for the helicopter to arrive.115 Some became concerned. After two ambushes in the last hour, they could not rule out a third attack as the vulnerable helo landed in an open field and the Marines escorted the patient to meet it.116 Within a few minutes, a distant hum gestated into the unmistakable beating of the large, tandem rotors of a CH-46 Sea Knight. The ancient airframe resembled a light gray-blue beetle that had been grabbed at both ends and stretched out. The pilot made a low pass over their position. A sleek AH-1 Super Cobra attack helicopter circled nearby as an escort.
The Marines had thrown a dark smoke grenade on the road next to the landing zone to signal the pilot. After spotting his destination, the CH-46 pilot banked sharply and circled back through the blue midday sky toward the field. The helicopter’s lumbering outline grew and then receded as it flew toward and then past the marked landing site.117 “What are they doing?” wondered Muñoz, as the pilot cut speed and raised the bird’s stubby nose to descend 75 meters to the south of the field. “That is the dumbest fucking thing in the world,” thought Zofchak. The chopper was landing in the middle of the frequently bomb-sown street, where Alpha Company had lost Gilbert and Thornsberry to a massive IED. The large crater left by the deadly bomb was still visible less than twenty meters from where the helo was setting down. For all anyone knew, there were other bombs hidden beneath the surface.118 “Oh God, please don’t let them land on an IED,” thought Muñoz.
When the helicopter touched down and nothing exploded, the Americans directed one of the Iraqi men to start the sedan and slowly drive the wounded woman toward the nearby intersection. Some of the Marines and the corpsman jogged in a loose cordon around the white car, weapons poised and eyes peeled for ambushing insurgents or bombs along the road’s shoulder. At least three Marines fanned out to form an ad hoc perimeter.119 Once in the open, they were “sitting ducks,” according to Inman. Others weren’t worried much at all, because the presence of a Cobra attack helicopter escort overhead tended to scare off insurgents.120
Through the dust-filled air, a female corpsman or nurse commanding a stretcher crew emerged from the back of the helicopter to meet them.121 Inman saw blonde hair and for a moment, he forgot his surroundings. She was “really hot,” he recalled. The thirty-something-year-old medic, whose gender and attractiveness were apparently distinguishable in a bulky helmet, vest, and flight suit, jogged to the vehicle and yelled a brief report to Kopera. Muñoz shouted an assessment of the patient over the deafening engine whine and rotor wash. Two crew members set down the litter and gently loaded the Iraqi woman onto it.122 Her four male relatives, who had been projecting resignation and quiet gratitude despite lacking an interpreter, now made agitated gestures and raised their voices.123
“Can we send someone with her?” Kopera yelled in the ear of the medic. “We can take one,” she replied. Kopera made eye contact with the worried men, pointed at them, raised one finger, and pointed at the helicopter. The eldest male, who might have been her relieved father, uncle, or husband, moved to the side of the litter and trotted along with the crew members as they loaded the injured woman onto the chopper.124
The engine whine became urgent as the rotors gathered speed and beat rolling clouds of dirt over the Marines and remaining Iraqis. The Sea Knight strained its cylindrical bulk into the sky, gaining altitude and speeding the injured woman northeast, to the care of doctors in the surgical shock trauma unit at al-Taqaddum Airbase. Her journey would end at a U.S. hospital in Baghdad. She would live. Kopera never met her again, but he later learned that she had been able to return to her home about a month later.125
Kopera bid the remaining Iraqi men goodbye and consolidated his squad back at the house. They were to hole up in the home until thirty minutes after sunset and then make their way back to the rest of the platoon at the patrol base. The men had time to review the day and fill each other in about what they had witnessed. There was still a lot of confusion. They itemized their close calls: the rounds hitting the ground near Muñoz and Kopera, the accurate RPG near Inman and Zofchak, bullets chipping at the stairs over Auton’s head. Some thought they may have cut down some of their attackers.126 Firefights were exciting and to some could almost seem like fun when no Marines were seriously hurt.
Kopera reflected on the day’s events. It was never a good thing to have a firefight blow up in the middle of someone’s neighborhood and wind up with a wounded (or dead) civilian. They did, however, fight off two ambushes, possibly kill some insurgents, and give the wounded woman a fighting chance—all without an injured Marine. He liked to think that the care they had shown the civilian differentiated them from the insurgents and would help win local favor, but he knew better than to expect it.127 The sergeant and the members of his squad didn’t rehash things long. They had had a lot of enemy contact in the past few days, and certainly more would come. It was almost always time to get back to work.128
The officers at the platoon and company levels were pleased with the day’s engagements. Subsequent intelligence reports relying on Iraqi sources drily quantified the squad’s effectiveness: three enemies killed, one enemy wounded, one civilian wounded, and no Marines injured or killed. In Alpha Company’s growing tally of good, bad, or downright confusing days on the peninsula, this was considered a small victory.129 Other battles ended differently.
Three weeks later, near the southwestern village of Hasa, Kopera would be shot in the head. His Marines were conducting a patrol when an insurgent’s bullet penetrated his Kevlar helmet and embedded itself in his brain, briefly knocking him down and out cold. Zofchak was about twenty meters away and had immediately jumped into a ditch for cover. When he turned around, the corporal watched in horror as a now conscious Kopera stood up and began stumbling around in the open, dazed, as machine-gun fire cracked around him. Zofchak ran to his squad leader and pulled him into the safety of the ditch.
Muñoz assessed the injury.130 “My head hurts,” slurred Kopera.131 The sergeant tried to take his helmet off but Muñoz stopped him; the corpsman feared it was the only thing keeping his head intact.132 A mostly lucid Kopera was quickly medevaced, walking onto the helicopter under his own power. He survived after having a nickel-sized piece of his brain removed. Now medically discharged, Kopera suffers short-term memory loss and loses his temper a little more often than he did before his injury. It sometimes strains his marriage. He jokes that he’s “the same asshole, but now [he has] an excuse.” He voices no regrets about his days as a Marine.
For his actions during several engagements prior to his injury, Kopera was nominated by Greco for the Bronze Star with Valor Device, which the sergeant received. The lieutenant was impressed with his squad leader’s ability to maintain focus, go after and kill attackers, and successfully conduct the difficult symphony of decisions demanded by counterinsurgency. Quickly