Fallujah Awakens. Bill Ardolino
The Marines could have used some help over the previous few months. Alpha Company of 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment took over its area of operations on the Fallujah peninsula on October 7, 2006. It did so with resolve, but only limited direction—a missive to improve security and somehow snuff out the local franchise of Iraq’s resilient insurgency.1
Alpha 1/24 is a Marine Reserve infantry unit based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was filled out for this tour by augments from the 3rd Battalion, 24th Marines from Indiana, Missouri, and Tennessee and a smattering of active duty volunteers and Navy corpsmen from across the United States. Its ranks were generally dominated by working- and middle-class young men from the Midwest and a significant minority of hardy Jacksonians from the South. The vast majority attended school or worked civilian jobs, but had joined the Marine Reserves looking for something extra.
For some it was the chance to proudly serve their country or continue a family tradition. Many sought action and adventure, and more than a few wanted to be a part of something that officially minted them as mentally and physically tough. Others had drifted through life before grabbing on to the disciplined structure of the Marine Corps for direction. Some were the sons of immigrants who wanted to pay back the United States for the opportunities afforded their families. A few admitted to being lured into the Corps after falling for the Dress Blue uniform as a kid. One man signed up on a whim, after stopping for Chinese food next to a recruiting station in an airport.
Some of the Marines had previously been on active duty and felt a little out of place in the civilian world, and some needed the extra money that came with two days a month of Reserve duty or the combat pay of deployment. Regardless of the reason, all who volunteered for the Marine Corps shared the perception that they were part of the best, toughest branch of the U.S. armed forces.2 This reputation, and the ambitious people it attracted, helped define the attitude and quality of Marine Corps recruits. Many proudly believed in a description of the Corps as “America’s shock troops.” This pride was reinforced by a pervasive, particular culture in the expeditionary service branch. In contrast, Marines thought of the Army as a bloated, pampered institution with more room for hard warriors and soft office workers to coexist without cross-pollinating values. The Marine Corps was smaller and leaner. From the truck drivers derisively nicknamed POGs (pronounced “pogue,” persons other than grunts) to the elite Recon warriors, every Marine was somehow touched by an insular culture of macho one-upsmanship and reinforcement of their idealized values: “Every Marine a rifleman.” “No better friend, no worse enemy.” “Always Faithful” (Semper Fidelis).
There also was an attitude that any given Marine unit would “get shit done.” Army units might vary from stellar to awful in the motivation department. To hear Marine grunts tell it, most members of the “blue-side” Navy and all of the Air Force would have issues if they missed a hot meal. But the odds of coming across a pack of hard, motivated men in any group of Marines were a lot better, if admittedly not assured. That said, the Corps also had no shortage of sarcastic generation-Y commentary lampooning the “moto” (stereotypically motivated) ways of true-believing contemporaries and certain squared-away, cigar-chomping superiors appearing to endlessly audition for a recruiting poster. One need not look far for some wise-ass junior Marine poking fun at officers or his fellows’ “Oo-rah” mentality, a mockery usually accomplished with a burst of creative profanity. And the unofficial Marine motto of “Improvise, Adapt and Overcome”—a legitimate educational device in a service that relied on hand-me-down equipment from the Army—could be expanded to “Improvise, Adapt, Overcome and Bitch about It the Whole Time.”3 Careful observers weren’t fooled by the cynicism, however.
Many Marines could be disillusioned by the infamously soul-killing military bureaucracy or by the political machinations of careerist non-commissioned officers (NCOs) or officers. For them, the superficial idealism was gone. If one scratched a Marine with the most cynical strut, underneath was often a romantic. Most were men who yearned for meaning, and for many, the Corps met that need, whether via a belief in the institution, the development of rare friendships under duress, or the satisfying knowledge that they were going places and doing things that most modern, soft Americans just didn’t have the stomach for.4
In the macho hierarchy of the Marines, the men of Alpha 1/24 might fall somewhere around the middle of the pack. In their favor, they were infantrymen; the infantry was the military occupation specialty of those who sought spartan hardship and danger as features. They were Reservists, however, a status that sometimes garnered eye rolls and patronizing comments from active duty Marines, who questioned the tactical proficiency and aggressiveness of “weekend warriors.”5
Jerome Greco, a first lieutenant and commander of Alpha Company’s 3rd Platoon, came to reject this stereotype. An active duty Marine who had volunteered to augment 1/24’s shortage of officers, he had plenty of experience to render judgment. Greco had previously deployed to Afghanistan as well as Iraq, and had led a rifle platoon during the brutal Second Battle of Fallujah in 2004. Often considered the most difficult of the few set-piece battles during the war, Operation Phantom Fury—also known as al-Fajr (the Dawn) in Arabic—was one of the few engagements to penetrate the American consciousness, through dramatic, extensive media coverage of the campaign. By the time the city was taken, and average Americans’ disinterest in news from Iraq had resumed, Phantom Fury had shaped a cadre of young officers like Greco into experienced veterans with an understanding of combat.
As he began to work with his men on their new deployment, Greco discarded the idea that his Reservists were inferior. He came to believe that active duty and Reserve units each had unique advantages. For one, the slight defensiveness about their status seemed to drive his men from 1/24 and 3/24 to excel. They had something to prove to him. In addition, their varying experiences in civilian employment gave some a skill set that let them more naturally adapt to counterinsurgency, which could resemble social work and police duty as much as it required closing with and killing the enemy. A Reservist’s advantages were also evident in the company leadership. Greco speculated that Maj. Dan Whisnant’s experience as a civilian sales manager granted an intellectual flexibility that helped him juggle demands from higher command and work with difficult local sources from a different culture.
It also didn’t hurt to have a major as a company commander, a slot usually filled by a captain. Reserve units often had more-senior officers filling traditional billets, and the gold oak leaves gave Whisnant more influence when he dealt with higher command. Combined with the major’s background in Marine intelligence from a previous deployment to Iraq, these traits set the tone for Alpha Company’s initial, ambitious, and nominally successful efforts to take a crack at counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN).6
The doctrine of COIN comes from a school of military thought that is conceptually simple but achingly complex to execute. The strategy has no shortage of clever slogans to describe it in academic circles filled with professional officers and military studies geeks. It’s been likened to “playing three-dimensional chess in the dark while someone is shooting at you,” and it sometimes exemplifies the idea of the “three-block war,” a pithy description of modern conflict coined by Gen. Charles Krulak in a 1997 speech. Then commandant of the Marine Corps, Krulak was attempting to describe “fourth-generation warfare,” which is often carried out in an urban battlefield, by outlining its various demands beyond destroying the enemy. In a conflict like the Iraq War, soldiers and Marines may be called on to wage classic combat on the first block, conduct peacekeeping operations on the next, and deliver humanitarian aid to a third within a matter of hours or even minutes. Some analysts later insisted the “three-block war” analogy was insufficient for describing modern conflict; it needed a few more missions, on a few more blocks.7
The complexities of counterinsurgency can be distilled to an even simpler shorthand, however: In COIN, the people