All language subtitles for Once.Upon.a.Time.in.Iraq.S01E03.720p.WEBRip.x264-GalaxyTV_track3_[eng]

There was an SUV full of four
Blackwater contractors who were,

you know, driving around Fallujah.

And they got ambushed.

SHOUTING AND CHEERING

The Iraqis gathered round,
just like having a party.

SHOUTING
CAR HORNS BLARING

Then they picked up what was left
of the bodies and they take 'em

up to the bridge on the Euphrates
and, you know, string 'em up.

It was like on television,
beamed around the world

and the Iraqis are partying,
and they love it

and they're making fools out
of the Americans,

they're hitting them
with their shoes.

And that was like...
That was like the end, you know.

I mean, it was,
what a frigging nightmare.

Major combat operations
in Iraq have ended...

It had been a year since George Bush
had claimed the Iraq war was won.

..and our allies have prevailed.

But the story was far from over.

After the toppling
of Saddam Hussein,

the old regime
lost its grip on power...

..but it was not about to give up
without a fight.

Terrorists and regime remnants
have been attacking our forces

and our forces have been going in
and killing them.

America found itself struggling
to keep control

as a violent insurgency took hold
across the country.

And there was worse to come.

NEWS REPORT: London's morning papers

are calling it a torture
scandal, shocking pictures...

Another bad news day for America
in the Arab world.

The battle to win hearts
and minds had failed.

The US Army was feeling the strain.

I wanted to ask about the convoy
campaign and to find out...

HE BREATHES HEAVILY

..if you can confirm that yest...

Get him out of the room,
it's really embarrassing.

The politicians have
had their say about the Iraq war.

I was going to start off tonight
telling some self-deprecating jokes,

then I couldn't think of any
mistakes I had made to be

self-deprecating about.

In this series, civilians,
journalists

and soldiers tell their personal
stories of the 2003 invasion

and how the years of chaos that
followed changed the world for ever.

Who said that thing,
was it Churchill?

Said the thing,
like you never feel so alive...

..as when you are being shot at
or when you're...

Something like that, such bullshit.

You know, call me or Dexter
what you want,

but going into risky situations
and inviting danger,

like almost inviting danger,

certainly wasn't some, like,
thrill-seeking mission.

There were moments where both of us
were scared shitless, erm,

and that wasn't
the point of the work.

It was to try to find a story
that we felt compelled that needed

to be told.

Ashley Gilbertson came to Iraq
as a freelance photographer

at the start of the war.

After a photograph
he took of an American soldier

in one of Saddam's palaces
was published in Time magazine,

he began working
with Dexter Filkins,

a journalist attached
to the New York Times.

Working with Dexter was amazing.

There was almost nowhere
that he wouldn't go

and the same went for me.

What gets me out of bed in the
morning and what makes me continue

to work is this absolute fury
that I have that things are wrong.

You know, he was like a kid.
He was like so young.

Erm, you know, I thought,
huh, you know.

But he's immensely talented
and really fearless

and very enterprising
so we got along really well.

In moments of extreme chaos,
a bomb would go off,

gunfire,

I think my blood pressure
goes down, not up,

and I think very, very clearly
about what I need to do.

Was there a time when you thought
you had pushed it too far?

Definitely. Erm,

more than once, erm, I felt that.

I felt that in Fallujah.

I definitely felt that in Fallujah.

There's so much that happened there,

like I've got 2,500 pictures
or something from that week.

I barely remember taking
any of them.

Up until November 2004,
I'd been able to cover Iraq

as somebody else's war,
but in Fallujah,

it turned into not just a war
that I was covering,

it turned into something that
I was involved in.

I am here today
because another man died.

A year into the war, Fallujah,
40 miles outside Baghdad,

was a hotbed of anti-American
insurgency.

Fallujah was bad,
like from the beginning.

It just like wasn't a nice place
to go if you were American.

It had become like a giant
car bomb factory.

They were just like making car bombs
and shipping them to Baghdad,

you know, like every day.

Go, go home! Go, go home!

The place was a powder keg.

Whether you were being robbed,
whether you were being held up by

armed bandits, whether somebody was
trying to kidnap you,

whether they were trying
to kill you,

or they were trying to get
under your car to do who knows what.

In Fallujah, the Americans were no
longer just facing

a home-grown Iraqi resistance.

GUNFIRE AND SHOUTING

Since the war began,
foreign Islamic extremists had begun

entering Iraq, bringing with them
a jihadist mentality.

Led by a Jordanian named
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,

they would organise themselves
into Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Zarqawi was a bloodthirsty
psychopath

but, man, he knew had to run
a group like Al-Qaeda.

He set up this kind of
a perfect organism.

Very few people who were in Al-Qaeda

knew other people
who were in Al-Qaeda.

You could kill individual
parts of it,

but the rest of it would just
continue.

He kind of turned this thing loose,
this perfect organism,

on Iraq and it was just
a gigantic killing machine.

By November 2004,

al-Zarqawi had taken control
of the city of Fallujah.

For the Americans,

an Al-Qaeda base just 40 miles from
Baghdad was a propaganda disaster.

If our country shows any
uncertainty or weakness

in this decade, the world
will drift towards tragedy.

This is not going to
happen on my watch.

CHEERING

Buoyed up by an election victory,

the Bush administration
began making preparations

for a full frontal attack
on Fallujah.

Civilians mostly cleared out,

I mean, certainly
from what I witnessed.

It's very strange because usually
when an army attacks,

it wants to have surprise.

You're not going to announce
when the attack begins.

The Americans essentially did that.

They were like, on the bullhorns,
we are going to attack.

The city will not be safe.

There's a good chance you will die
if you stay.

ANNOUNCEMENT IN ARABIC

BOYS SHOUT

TRANSLATION:

Nidhal Abed, a young wife
and mother,

was one of 50,000 citizens
who didn't leave Fallujah.

Like many other working-class
families, hers was too poor to go.

CHEERING

Action!

What do you want me to do?

..admire my dress? Yeah.

Do you like my dress? Yes.

Why are we whispering?

Billy's still asleep.

Billy!

Did you have a good night? Huh?

Oh. Oh, you want to get
in the pictures too?

Smile. Come on, smile.

You're on candid camera.

Billy was born
on November the 24th, 1981.

He just sort of popped out.

I was in labour for 53 painful
hours with Sabrina

so this one was like a cakewalk.

I was excited.
He was excited because it was a boy.

A man always wants a boy,
carry on the namesake.

I think he's Mom's favourite.
She'll say no, but...he was.

Hi!

He was very outgoing, very busy.

He always looked for adventure.

He was always pushing his limits.

He definitely wasn't college
material.

You know, he struggled in school

and that would have been good
for him, you know,

to go into the Marines.

Miller was a great guy.

He was someone that could talk to
you without the typical marine

yelling and calling you an idiot,
you know.

Christian Dominguez joined the same
company of Marines as Billy Miller.

I was really scrawny.

I was 130lbs and I thought that
I was just going to become tough.

I was one of the first people
from my high school

to join the Marine Corps
and it was really great.

MILITARY MUSIC PLAYS

APPLAUSE

I was proud of the fact that this
was what he wanted to do.

I was also very scared.

When he joined,
it was just a peaceful little world.

It wasn't a peaceful little
world any more so... Yeah.

..just over a week after 9/11
when he graduated from Boot Camp.

After he graduated and he left us,
he went to Spain.

He came home December 2003
and we surprised my parents.

Is Billy in that box? No.

And I said, "Is Billy in that box?"

She said, "No, Mother."

I said, "Did y'all buy me
a dog or some animal

"because I don't want any animals?"

"No, Mother,
we didn't buy you any animals

"but you need to open it up now."

SHE SQUEALS HAPPILY

It was probably her best Christmas
ever and her last Christmas...

..with him.

In October 2004, Billy Miller

and Christian Dominguez were
deployed with

the 1/8 Marine Battalion,

just outside Fallujah, to prepare
for the assault on the city.

Accompanying them would be Ashley
Gilbertson and Dexter Filkins,

representing the New York Times.

No journalist likes to embed with
military, it's too confining.

You know, imagine you're walking
through an Iraqi village.

You know, I'm a journalist,

I want to know what's going
on inside people's heads,

in their hearts, like what are you
feeling over there, you Iraqis?

Um, and you're standing with a group

of 19-year-old Americans
with giant guns.

And you ask an Iraqi guy,
"Hey," you know, "How's it going?"

You're not going to get
a real answer.

But what happened in Iraq was
it became essentially impossible

to work unless you embedded
with the military

for the simple reason
that you would get killed.

If you could picture young
buck warriors, we're very tribal.

And anybody's who's not in our tribe
is basically the enemy

as far as we're concerned, you know,
just to varying degrees.

Sam Williams was Sergeant
of 1/8 Bravo Company.

Sure enough, when the press starts
showing up, we didn't like 'em.

Turns out they're sleeping
in our squad bay with us.

And when I first saw Ashley,
he had one of those...

..sleep things that covers
your eyes, like a sleep mask?

He's got long curly hair.

I was just, like, "Really?"

You know, "Who's this guy,
and why is he even here?"

And you see Dexter,
Dexter looks like a frat boy

who just woke up from
the biggest party ever, you know?

Just kind of this blown-away look
on his face all the time.

So we were all just, like,
super judgy,

and like, "Look at these guys.
I'm not talking to them."

You see right here, I'm standing on
a model of our battle space.

Whenever, like, something changes

or there's gonna be, like,
a significant operation,

the military gets a briefing
from a legal officer

who will tell you, essentially,
"Here are your rules of engagement,"

which is to say, "Here's when
you can pull the trigger.

"Here's when you can't." And...

..I had never been invited
into one of those.

I think they brought us in
because they thought,

"We're going to be killing
a lot of people,

"so we're going to want
the reporters

"to kind of understand
what the rules are here."

So normally rules of engagement

would be, "Don't shoot
unless you're being shot at."

That's a general conflict
rule of engagement.

These ones were really different.

The rules were like...

..dialled really far back.
Like, really loose, you know?

Guy picks up a cellphone,
you can kill him.

If, you know, if you fire
one warning shot at a car,

if it doesn't stop coming at you...

..you can kill.

The expectation was,
and I think it was correct,

"We're going in to attack

"and anybody who resists us
is going to be an enemy.

"It's not going to be a civilian,
because the civilians are gone."

Hey, how you doing?

THEY SHOUT

How you doing, soldiers?

THEY SHOUT

How you doing, sailors?

THEY SHOUT

RECORDING: This is a whole can of
whoop-butt, all combined, OK?

And I'm going to tell you one thing.
It is an honour

for me to be able to serve with each
and every one of you hard chargers.

I mean, I look out here and it's
no different than when we took...

..the damn war over in Korea.

We raised the flag in Iwo Jima.
It's no different.

I'd go to Fallujah right now
after hearing that speech.

I mean, this stuff was...
It was motivating.

But it's disheartening,
at the same time, looking at it now.

And, you know,
one part they don't show is,

oftentimes they start off with
the speech and saying,

"I want you to look to your brothers

"to the left and the right,
and behind you, and realise that

"some of them aren't going to
make it out of there."

And you don't really look, right?

Like, it's part of a speech,

and you're just sitting there like,
"OK, yeah, we get it."

And I just watch that video now
and I can point out

everyone that was killed.

And they were almost in every clip.

Kick some butt. All right?

THEY SHOUT

You're always worried about
your child,

but knowing that he's in a war zone

is a different kind of worry.

But it's not a worry that you can...

At least, I couldn't allow, myself,
to overwhelm me.

Being a police officer for 32 years,

you have to live every day
at a time, as you live it.

And you can't worry about it.

If you worry yourself,
it'll just worry you sick.

After a month of waiting,
on the 7th of November, 2004,

1/8 Bravo Company were given
the order to move into Fallujah.

As we were assembling,
they opened fire.

GUNFIRE

It was just...like a symphony.

Then the voices came over
from the mosques, which were...

..in Arabic, "Come to the fight."
You know, "Come. Defend the city."

And there were so many mosques
and so many loudspeakers,

the intensity of their voices -

they were screaming
into the loudspeakers.

Um, "God is great, God is great,"
like, "Come to the fight."

Um, "They're here.
The Americans are here."

OVERLAPPING VOICES

I could see the tracers coming out.

OK. They're shooting at us,

just kind of spraying machine-gun
fire at us.

You know, and it felt a lot like,
if you've ever seen Star Wars,

where they're attacking
the Death Star,

where they're flying through
this trench

and there's, like, laser guns
just shooting at them

from all over the place.

MACHINE-GUN FIRE

It never looks or feels like
what you imagine.

But in this case,
it looked remarkably like a movie.

I was on the ground
and I was kind of looking up

and I thought, you know,
"That looks like a bottle rocket."

You know, it looks like fireworks
from 4th of July.

And then from out of nowhere...

..we hear these pops above our head.

And you look up, and it's these
shells that have exploded,

and it's like an octopus and
tentacles coming down from the sky.

This bright white light,

with a trail on it, like a comet,

comes sailing in and then
it explodes right above us.

And... And these flaming
sort of chunks of rock

were coming off, and they were...

People were just scrambling
and, like, trying not to get hit,

and, you know,
"What the hell is that?"

I got hit in the back, in my pack,

and it just burned right through
my pack.

It burned through my sleeping bag.

As I learned later, it was
phosphorous, white phosphorous,

and those are our -
meaning American - rounds.

I mean, those were fired
by American guys.

Like, at what? For what?

Uh, at whom? Like, I had no idea.

We go from there,

still on this road, like,
200 metres into Fallujah.

We're right on the edge of the city,
and it's... It's a big city.

And then they get to this road
that they called Phase Line Cathy,

and it's this big east-west road
that crosses Fallujah.

And just to get to that road,

it took them all morning.

Hours and hours of fighting.

Like, every step of the way,
they had to fight.

Spread out, squallers!
Spread them out!

Like, you're running
down the street,

and you can hear the bullets
ricocheting around you, like,

bouncing off the street,
coming off the concrete.

GUNFIRE, BULLETS RICOCHET

And then it stops.

And you get up to this area
that the fire was coming from,

and there's the Marine Scout team
up there

and three dead insurgents
on the road.

Whoo, yeah!

EXPLOSION

The first house we cleared
was a little bit of chaos.

A lot of adrenaline rushing.

Fortunately there was no insurgents
in that house.

But it wasn't exactly how we
planned. There was a lot of people

in there, we were congested,
and it's not how we do things.

But we wanted to make entry, and...

..in Fallujah, the safest place you
can be is inside a cleared house.

And now we're in this house
on a corner

and we had to cross this road
to get to the cultural,

what they were calling
the cultural centre -

this big, like, five-storey,
four-storey building

on the other side of the street.

And so one of the lieutenants
stands at the gate and says,

"All right, go. First platoon go."

And these 40 guys like,

stacked, stream out
and just run across this street

and then it begins.

GUNFIRE

All of this gunfire starts.

A guy falls on the street.

Second platoon goes out.

Some guys drag this guy
out of the street...

..and another guy gets dropped.

And then I'm with this last platoon
sitting in this house

and I remember saying to Dexter,
like, "I really...

"I don't know if I can do this."

Like, you're running
straight into gunfire.

And I don't remember
what he said, but...

I remember them just shouting, like,
"Third platoon, go, go, go!"

so I watched everybody go out
and then just ran.

And they say time slows down,
but it really, it really does.

Like, you can feel every step
that you're taking.

You can see everything taking place
in slow motion around you.

I saw so many bodies
and I saw so many marines go down,

but I never saw an insurgent.

Like, I never saw an insurgent
alive, with a gun.

They were ghosts.

GUNSHOT

They blended in with
this environment so perfectly.

GUNFIRE

Where is it?

It's coming from in there.

Aah!

Is he inside?

GUNFIRE

Watch out!

GUNFIRE

You got him!

GUNSHOTS

Hey! He's wounded,
in between these two houses.

GUNSHOT

He's done.

Hold on, I got one!

Our mission was to clear the city
of insurgents.

It's not right to use the term
seek and destroy, but...

..it was a full-on frontal assault,

into the city of Fallujah,

and you don't stop
until everybody stops shooting.

EXPLOSION

When you have 8,000 of them

moving into a town like that
with all their firepower,

it's a terrifying, uh, force.

I mean, 50 marines
is a terrifying force.

8,000 is just
a massive killing machine.

Target!

TRANSLATION:

EXPLOSION

For a few long days, Ashley and
Dexter moved with 1/8 Company

as they pushed deep into Fallujah,

clearing houses
and coming under sustained attack.

GUNFIRE

Once you start getting shot at,
it all changes.

Once you start getting shot at
and don't run for the hills,

then you start building trust
really quickly.

Because they realise...

And I heard this from multiple
different military units -

they think that the way
we work as journalists,

is we have a template,
an idea of what they're doing,

and we are going out there
to show how bad they are.

But once you cross
the wire with them,

then they start saying, "Ah, OK.

"You're here to see
how it really is."

And I think that
as the war dragged on,

the marines, and, like, the grunts,

these door-kickers,
the trigger pullers,

they realised nobody gave a shit
what they were doing in Iraq.

So we would come out and actually
tell stories, their stories.

Well, it turns out Dex and Ash
held their ground pretty well.

They kept themselves out of
as much trouble as they could

and the times where they got
themselves into trouble

we were there to help them,

and it was never really a burden
on us to have them there.

I mean, these guys were, like,
in the thick of it,

terrified just like we were.

We'd been trained for it.

We have weapons to defend ourselves

and body armour
and that type of stuff.

Those guys were just...
thrown right into it,

like, "Go get 'em."
You know? "Go tell the story."

Ashley and I just... It was so hard
trying to file our stuff, you know,

like, I'm trying to write my story

and Ashley is trying
to file his pictures,

and I was always
looking for electricity.

And so I remember,
it was like the first day,

I don't know what I was thinking,
but I ran into the street

because there was a car out there,
and, you know, pulled the lid up

and tried to put my little
battery clips on the car battery.

I don't want to think about that,

cos there were snipers everywhere.

I remember thinking, like, "This
dude is insane. That is crazy."

Like, he's in the middle of...

Like, so many guys have just been
shot on this exact corner.

The insurgents are everywhere.

And Dexter's out there

trying to pull a car battery
out of a burnt-out car.

Of course the battery doesn't work.

Cos it's a fucking bombed,
burnt-out car.

But it...

It was classic Dexter.

Like, he will file, no matter what.

GUNFIRE

I remember one night
I decided to sleep on the roof

and a couple of hours later
I woke up

because there was something
hot on my neck.

I tried to brush it off
and then it was hot in my hands,

and it's brass casings.

There was... While I was sleeping,

a machine-gunner
had come up above me.

Somehow I'd slept through
this machine-gun automatic fire.

So, then, like, I stretch,
I wake up,

like, "OK, I gotta get out,
gotta go, gotta work."

And then I'm like,
"Shit. My sleeping bag is wet.

"Some asshole must have
spilt water on me."

No. I had also pissed myself
in my sleep.

And I get out of my sleeping bag,
I was wearing blue jeans.

And I had this, like, huge wet patch
on my jeans and like...

Why I'm embarrassed in front of all
these marines, I don't know -

I shouldn't give a shit.
But I did. I was so embarrassed.

So I went downstairs.

"Morning, lads."

Kept going downstairs
to see what they were doing,

like, what are they shooting at?

And they've got these guys

with no shirts on,
who are coming in off the street.

And the sun is rising.

And it was in that moment
that I shot the only picture

of the Iraq war that I think

even comes close to being
a successful picture.

Like, I regard the work that I did
in Iraq as a total failure.

People look at all my Iraq pictures
like, "Wow, looks like a movie" -

like, fuck you.

Or fuck me. I failed.

If you think that my work
looks like a movie,

it means that you're disassociating

from the reality
that is in those pictures.

But this one picture
that I made in that moment

while I was trying to dry piss off
my jeans so I wasn't embarrassed...

..is the only time that I think
that I inched towards

understanding how we fight.

Which was what my intention was

in spending that much time
with angry men with guns.

It's called The University
Of Jihad, Motherfucker.

Cos when the guys were detained,

the marine said,
"What are you doing here?

And the detainee said,
"We're here studying."

And the marine said, "Yeah,
University of Jihad, Motherfucker."

A couple of days goes by,

and, like, I settle into some rubble
on another night, next to Dexter.

And I say, "Goodnight,"
and he says. "Goodnight.

"Don't piss yourself."

Smart arse.

SHELL FIRE

EXPLOSION

TRANSLATION:

Many local men fled Fallujah,

but Nidhal's husband Ahmed decided
to stay with her and their son.

EXPLOSION

CHILD CRYING

EXPLOSION

GUNSHOT

When I was 13 years old,
I killed this deer

in Centerville, Texas,
and it was a real long shot.

17 steps.

17 steps!

Why don't you go hunting any more

and fishing any more
like you used to?

I don't know. It just doesn't do
anything for me any more.

And after Billy died,
I just lost a lot of, um...

..get up and go.

This is a Corsican ram.

Billy killed that one.

And Billy killed this one here.

Look here, Billy.

Look at it again. Billy.

GIRL LAUGHS

By the 15th of November, 2004,

just a week after entering Fallujah,

Bravo Company had almost finished
the first part of their mission.

Fallujah's this weird town.
It looks like a movie set.

And there's these very
defined borders

and then after those borders,
it's just desert.

So, we went from the top of the city
all the way to the bottom,

one end to the other,
and we got to the end,

and, like, the street ended
and then the desert started.

MACHINE-GUN FIRE

Fallujah is the City of Mosques.
It's called the City of Mosques.

And the insurgents knew that
the Americans

couldn't go into the mosque

so they would use them to stage
and attack the marines

cos they knew that
they had more safety there

than they did in a regular place.

So this mosque just short of
the southern edge of Fallujah -

a tank fired a shell
through the minaret.

And they apparently killed
the insurgent who was inside,

and I said, "I've got to go
and see that."

I needed...a photograph as evidence,
as a reporter,

to show that these mosques
were being used as staging grounds.

A picture of a dead insurgent
inside a minaret

showed that without question...

..these spaces were being violated

and were therefore no longer
protected by the Geneva Convention.

So we went to the Captain and said,
"Hey, man, can you please,"

you know, "radio everybody
and tell them

"that we're gonna be running up
the street to this mosque

"and just tell everyone
not to shoot us."

And this time Reed said, "No.

"If you wanna go, this time
you gotta go with the squad

"because it's too dangerous
out there."

And I said, "No,
I've got a policy against...

"like, this non-intervention policy

"where, like, stuff shouldn't
happen on account of me."

So, the Captain said,
"Well, you can't go."

And I said,
"Well, I need the picture."

Dexter and I agreed to it.

That we would go with the squad.

I was chosen to lead a patrol,
along with my Lieutenant,

out down to this minaret
that was 400m away, maybe,

that had this dead sniper in it.

What did you think about
doing this job? I was angry.

I did not want to do it
in the first place,

because we were pretty much done
with the city,

so for me it was like
that one last patrol thing

and I'm just like, "I don't want
to do this," you know,

just so he could take a picture?

You know, all right, if that's
the job and that's the mission

then that's what I'll do,
but I don't agree with this at all.

WHISTLES

I remember the moment I thought,
"Maybe this isn't a good idea."

We were walking towards the minaret.

And, you know,
Fallujah had been so violent,

so destructive,

smoke and ruin everywhere.

And we were walking to the minaret.

And for the first time in a week.
it was quiet.

There was nothing.

If you could picture,
you kind of enter a compound

and the main mosque is kind of
to your direct front and left.

The minaret is to your direct front
and right.

And there's two groups
of auxiliary buildings.

So we clear out
these auxiliary buildings,

we clear out the mosque...

And the last building left
is the minaret,

so we're going to go
clear the minaret,

see if we can get up
and find this sniper, dead sniper.

And when we got to the base
of the minaret,

Lance Corporal Billy Miller
was stacked at the door.

And he said, "Hey, Dominguez,
come stack on me."

Stack means "get behind me
and let's go up there together."

Ashley Gilbertson was there

and with his Australian voice
he was trying to tell us,

"Hey, you stay back,
I'm just going to go run up there

"and take a quick picture."

I wanted to get the picture
and just leave.

Get out of there as soon as we could
so that nothing happened.

Before we went there,
a marine stopped me

and said, "I've got to go ahead
and clear it."

So...that was Lance Corporal
William Miller.

He went up first.

He was followed by
Christian Dominguez,

then me,

and Dexter was apparently behind me.
I didn't turn around to see.

Itself, the minaret was scary.

It was dark, the stairs were creaky,

you know, the bricks were...

It just seemed like the whole thing
was going to fall apart anyway.

We're climbing
and it's just the sound of rubble,

like crunching concrete
under our feet when we're climbing.

There was a whole bunch of rubble
on these stairs,

like, it was such a confined area.

I mean, it wasn't much wider
than this chair.

And we're walking up there and...

The steps were pretty big
in that Billy Miller was going up

and he was almost a full step
ahead of me.

And we kept tripping,

and he almost said something.
He almost said...

"Shit."

And just as you start to get
a little bit of light

through a hole in the wall,

from where the tank shell went
through and killed this insurgent...

..and I'm thinking, "This is almost
over. Get my picture and get out."

Then there was a gunshot.

Maybe multiple gunshots.

GUNSHOT

And I felt water all over me.

You know, immediately I thought,
shit, somebody released their rifle

by accident and shot these CamelBaks
that they all wear,

it's like these little backpacks
filled with water.

Then I heard Dominguez screaming.

We basically walked into
this guy's muzzle.

I saw a guy's hand laying down,

and he was laying down the stairs

and we basically
walked right into his gun.

He shot Miller in the face...

..and then Miller's body kind of
turned and then he shot.

And at this point
Miller kind of fell down

and I was standing just below Miller

and the shots....
This guy was lighting up the wall,

shooting relentlessly,

and the rocks were exploding
in my face,

and it was so loud because of
how confined the area was.

And then I just remember, like,

all of us starting
to run down these stairs.

And I remember falling

and just rolling.

We rolled out of this minaret...

..and I looked down at my camera

and my hands...

..and it wasn't water.

It was blood, and brain, and...

It was Billy, like, just...

..all over me.

Ashley was just, like,
in a complete state of shock.

He... I just remember him sitting
there kind of mumbling to himself.

His helmet was on crooked
and he was just saying,

"My fault, my fault, my fault,
my fault, my fault..."

I couldn't breathe.

And Sam Williams was down there,

and he said,
"Dominguez, what happened?"

And out of some... I remember
hearing my voice was weird,

and saying, "Miller's dead,"

and the look of confusion
on his face, like, "What?"

SHOUTING

Everybody came running out
of the building.

Except Billy.

So obviously
we were going back in to get him.

I don't care about that picture
or anything at this point -

we've gotta get Billy out of here.

We've gotta get our wounded
out of here.

GUNFIRE

And it was a relentless effort
to go up there

and retrieve Miller's body and take
out the threat that was up there.

SHELL FIRE

They tried to go up there
a couple of times.

And on like the second
or third time

they were able to go up there
and get his body out.

They dragged Billy out.

They put him onto a stretcher.

And I remember thinking...

"Don't look.

"Because what you see will...

"What you see, you did,
and what you see will...

"You can't look."

So I turned around and looked.

He said, you know, "Please tell me
he's not dead, please tell me,

"please tell me,
please tell me he's not dead."

And so it fell to me to tell him
that he was.

I had stashed Dexter and Ashley
in the mosque

because it was the most
secure building.

I tell the Lieutenant,
"OK, we're getting out of here.

"The mission's over.
We're going home."

I've got Billy's weapon in my hand
and my weapon is slung,

so I come around the corner
into the mosque,

and I was like, "You're gonna
take this and hold it,"

I said, "And when I count to three

"you and you are gonna run out
this door and stay right behind me."

GUNFIRE

And we ran down the street
back to the firm base.

The second we started running,

a machine-gun opened fire
from insurgents behind us.

MACHINE-GUN FIRE

And at that point
I felt like we were surrounded.

There were shots
coming from everywhere.

We had been there
for a little bit too long.

And...I remember our tactics

not living up to what they should
have been at that moment

and we kind of lost
a little bit of discipline.

MACHINE-GUN FIRE

We made it back to the base.
Nobody else was shot.

Sam...

..told us....

..that this is what happens in war.

That it wasn't our fault.

We went to the Lieutenant.

I said, "I'm sorry,
it's my fault, I know."

He said, "Yeah, it's your fault."

CRYING: And then I called my editor
and said,

"I have to get out of here."

TRANSLATION:

According to the UN,
around 600 civilians

died in the attack on Fallujah.

Mustafa was one of the lucky ones.

He was among ten children
identified by a US NGO

who paid for them to come
and live in America for a few months

so that they could receive treatment
for their injuries.

Get ready! You better get ready!

Get ready, here it comes.

Whoa!

TRANSLATION:

OK, so can you ask Mustafa
to watch me?

NIDHAL TRANSLATES

MUSTAFA LAUGHS

NEWSREADER: A private graveside
service happening now

with the closest of family

as they bid their final farewell
to their patriarch,

President George HW Bush.

"Let future generations understand

"the burden and the blessings
of freedom."

It means that all the people in
this country that don't understand

what the men and women are dying
for - they need to understand it.

My son was one of the ones
that didn't come back.

But in some ways...

..he's better off,

because he doesn't have
to live with the guilt

that so many of them
are living with,

because they did come back
and their buddies didn't.

I know that Ashley
has a lot of guilt.

But...he was doing
what he was supposed to do,

and Billy was doing his job.

He loved being a Marine.
He really, really did.

ASHLEY: I waited so long. I was
so scared to call the Miller family.

I thought that they would be,
understandably,

really angry with me.

So eventually I called and saw them.

Lewis...

SWALLOWS

and Susie...

...were absolutely beautiful.
Like...

..amazing people.

I mean, I still love
talking to Susie.

E-mailing with her, calling her.

And I wish it was easier than it is,
but I feel like...

..I owe her...

..her son.

Fallujah was the deadliest battle
the Marines had fought

since the Vietnam war.

Billy was one of 71 servicemen

who died in clearing the city
of Al-Qaeda.

At the time we took over the city

and we did what our mission
told us to do.

On paper, it's a success.

For me?

It's difficult.

Looking back, you know,
14, 15 years now,

it's difficult for me
to define that,

because I hold on to my friends

and the ones that were killed
in our memories.

And you look back at the instability

of what's going on
in Fallujah now...

I'll take my friends back.

Ten years after the Americans

had declared the city
free of insurgents,

Fallujah would once again fall into
the hands of Islamic extremists,

when ISIS took over
huge areas of Northern Iraq.

For the next 18 months,

Mustafa and his family
lived through another occupation.

TRANSLATION:

MUSTAFA:

Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.

CHEERING

The door opens. The first thought
that came to my mind

was, "Holy shit, it's Saddam.
It's actually him."

TRANSLATION:

There was rumours that
the Americans asked Saddam,

"How much time do you need to make
the situation in Iraq better?"

He said, "I will need one hour.

"45 minutes to shave,

"and 15 minutes
to say my speech on TV."

He could do it.