October 19, 2025 • 16 mins
This is our introduction and setting the stage. There are very few show notes, as Major General Kennedy’s speech grounds the story in raw detail. Please listen closely.
This conversation sets our mission forward: to record Weapons Company stories with fidelity. Every story is vital to paint the picture, and we hope every Marine from Weapons company, and any associated observers of Weapons company will help us in this archive.
If you are interested in further reading, there are a few private books that have captured some pieces of the story. The most complete is mentioned in this episode and listed here first:
"Unremitting" by Gregg Zoroya
"The Magnificent Bastards in Ramadi & a Father's Journey There" by Gregory Janney
"Joker One" by Donovan Campbell
"No True Glory" by Bing West
"First Fights in Ramadi" by David Kelly
"War Stories" by Oliver North, and also the TV series of the same name.
Numerous Army and Marine Corps leadership publications available from military command libraries and archives.
----------------------------------------------
If you like what you heard, please subscribe on your favorite podcast service or follow our webpage for direct downloads @ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2525088
If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ RamadiPodcast@gmail.com, or via the podcast website above.
All music used with permission by soundbay: https://www.youtube.com/@soundbay_RFM
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:09):
This is the Constant Combat Podcast.
SPEAKER_00 (00:14):
So in the last 18 months or so, uh, we've had a
couple bigger things happen withour the history of 2nd Battalion
4th Marines, weapons company inparticular, going back to Ramadi
2004.
Uh the biggest one last year wasour 20th anniversary.
Of the biggest battle that wefought in the first battle of
(00:34):
Ramadi.
And while out there, uh nowMajor General Kennedy, um, but
then our battalion commandergave a great speech, which we'll
have you listen to in a littlebit.
But the more recent thing thathappened was the book
Unremitting came out and was agreat writing recount of two of
(00:56):
the companies in particular,which is Echo Company and Golf
Company, and a phenomenal job.
But and as uh as we've discussedbefore and as we have over the
last 20 years of our friendship,uh trying to capture some of
these things has been somethingthat's been on our mind.
Um and we kind of have thislittle bit of a we get we have a
little bit of a call to actionfrom uh General Kennedy, and uh
(01:19):
we're setting ourselves up tokick something off to talk to
our brothers.
SPEAKER_02 (01:24):
I think it's very important that we capture the
stories of weapons company.
Uh, while unremitting did reallya good job, like you said,
capturing golf and echo company,and even to a limited degree,
Fox Company, and touched onweapons experience.
Our individual Marinesexperience between the companies
was so unique and the differencein mission was so high that by
(01:45):
capturing these stories directlyfrom the Marines themselves,
really will add something to it.
But let's listen to GeneralKennedy's speech.
SPEAKER_01 (01:53):
The warriors that we don't talk a lot about, and
history is fickle about who theywrite the stories about.
In the 20 years since we'vegotten back uh from Ramadi,
there has been no officialhistory to record the exploits
(02:14):
of the people that are assembledhere today, which I think is a
crime.
And you've seen other units inother cities telling their story
to the news, and there are booksthat have been written, and
somehow to date, the magnificentbastards of Vermont have still
not had their story told.
(02:36):
And so, what I wanted to do isjust tell you a couple things
that maybe you didn't know aboutthis magnificent group of men.
That 21 years ago, today, the1st Marine Division was standing
outside the gates of Baghdad,waiting to knock out the
dictator.
21 years ago today, 2ndBattalion, 4th Marines was stuck
(02:59):
with the 31st Meal in Okinawafor almost a year.
And the minute those poor soulscame home, they made a feline
for the exits because of stoploss, and they thought that they
had missed the war, theirgeneration.
21 years ago today, 230 youngmen were in high school or had
(03:24):
just recently graduated, andthey'd seen the news, and they
had either enlisted or they wereabout to enlist, and they had no
idea what history had in storefor them.
21 years ago today.
As the division came back fromIraq and we started losing the
(03:45):
folks that didn't want to uhstick around to the next
deployment of Okinawa, uh ournumbers get went down to about
450 soldiers, which is small.
And by the end of October, wewere at the lowest uh point of
of our uh of our manning strike.
And we were attending the MarineCorps ball in in November, and
(04:07):
General Mattis tapped me on theshoulder and he said, Hey
partner, your battalion is gonnabe the first to go back to Iraq
next year.
You're not gonna go to Okinawa,which I breathe, you know, every
good fighting person wants to uhgo to an adventure.
I asked him, sir, how much timedo we have to get ready?
He says, You're leaving inJanuary.
(04:31):
Mind you, this is the 10th ofNovember.
And so over the course of thenext two and a half months,
because we didn't actually leaveuntil uh February, every single
graduating class from the Schoolof Infantry on both coasts were
vectored to this parade deck.
And Sergeant Major Booker andthe first sergeants were joining
(04:54):
people virtually in an endedcycle of new of new joints
showing up.
We joined the last people tothis battalion two weeks before
we deployed.
And my guess is that they neverfired the weapons that they were
assigned until they were firingthem at the enemy a few months
later.
That is not the way you wishthat you'd go to war.
(05:19):
In many cases, we were virtualstrangers, and we were sent to a
fight that back then they calledstability and support
operations.
And we thought we were gonna bebuilding schools and handing out
soccer balls and running Medcapand doing all the things that
you would see after a conflict.
And the day that we took overRamadi on 13th March 2004, we
(05:45):
took our first casualties.
In fact, the casualties were sohorrible that I had never
actually seen anything.
Um that survived those wounds.
And Cather even pulled me asideuh with some grim news.
And that did not look like thepicture that had been painted
for us.
It did not look like we were outhelping a nation to recover.
(06:10):
And over the course of the nextseveral weeks, we had increasing
violence to build and build andbuild until the top 20 years ago
today.
And we lost our first Marines onpatrols, and we took some
wounds, but it was still of amanageable level.
(06:33):
But on the 6th of April,everything changed uh for in our
world.
Uh many of you lost your unitson the 6th of April.
The the blush of of what ispossible made it seem no longer
possible.
And as the patrols went out thatmorning, the companies executing
(06:55):
their missions as they wereassigned, like any other day
that they went out, they didn'timagine that history would deal
them a fate that few hadexpected.
Sergeant Major Booker and I wereback at the command post, and
the calls started coming in ofMarines that were wounded.
(07:17):
And it wasn't in one locationlike you normally would see, or
a single event.
Uh this was the entire cityseemed to be attacking the
battalion at once.
And we had Marines pinned downin the cemetery along Route
Michigan.
We had Marines pinned down atthe tank graveyard uh over
(07:38):
watching that locale.
They were at the fish hook underfire.
And the QRF's quick reactionforces were sent out to try to
figure out what was going on andget it get our people back uh to
safety.
And as the day snowballed, wehad the unfortunate reports of
(08:00):
Marines that had lost theirlives.
And by the end of that evening,a makeshift morgue was created
out of combat outposts.
And I remember seeing SergeantMajor Booker under a single
light bulb hanging from theceiling and seeing um my worst
(08:21):
nightmare of Marines that wewere gonna have to send home to
their parents.
And as you can imagine, theMarines were angry, they were
bewildered, everything that theythought that they were deployed
for was no longer valid, andthat this enemy was not here to
(08:43):
welcome us, but we were gonnahave to fight them to the bitter
round.
The next day the patrols wentback out on the 7th of April,
and within about an hour thecall started coming in again
that they were Marines werereceiving contact.
But unlike the 6th of April, onthe 7th of April, these were no
(09:06):
longer Marines that could befooled by the treachery of the
residents in Ramadi.
But this time, you had men thatovernight became pardoned
veterans, and they took thefight to the enemy, and they
fought in some of the sameneighborhoods that they had the
(09:27):
day previous, and they continuedout to the Sofia district uh
pursuing these terrorists.
And I got a call the next dayfrom the division commander that
200 enemy bodies were stacked upat the morgue in Ramadi.
(09:49):
And that's in addition to thebodies that had already been
claimed by their families.
And so never again would themagnificent basses be fooled by
the treachery of people thatsmile at you when you're passing
and plant a bomb under the roadwhen they think they they got
you unawares.
(10:09):
That we were gonna fight them.
General Madison said, no betterfriend and no worst enemy.
These are their worst enemies,these Marines of 2nd Battalion,
4th Marines.
On the 8th of April, all the uhplatoons filed up to their line,
their respective lines ofdeparture to take the fight back
(10:33):
on the third day.
And they line up in the dark,and the guidons are snapping in
the breeze, and they cross ontime, so that's what our leaders
insisted upon, and they wenthunting for the enemy.
And all day long on the 8th ofApril, they looked for these bad
(10:55):
men.
By the end of the day, we had nocontact, we had no idea where
the enemy had gone to, and wefinally got a report back that
night that the planned three-dayjihad that they had they had
meticulously laid out that theywere going to eject 2-4 from the
(11:19):
city had suspended itself aftertwo days.
You killed the people because wehad a mono that you kick a man
(11:40):
once he's down.
On the 10th, we figured outwhere they had gone to lick
their wounds, and Echo Companyand Weapons Company went out
there uh Operation Bug Hunt andkilled a whole bunch more.
And we know it was effectivebecause when you look at our
combat reports, we really didn'thave any uh significant
(12:03):
firefights for over a monthafter the 10th of April.
The city heated back up over thecourse of the summer, more
people filtered in to try to getrid of the nuisance that was
2-4, and they just couldn't doit.
Meanwhile, other cities alongthe Euphrates were blowing up.
Fallujah boiled over, Al Kaimboiled over, heat boiled over.
(12:26):
And General Mattis summarized itin a book later that he said as
the division was fighting acrossthe entirety of Al Anabar
province, he didn't have toworry about what was going on at
Aromati because the Marines of2-4 held.
(12:47):
It means you never broke.
It means you never let the enemybreathe again after their
treachery on the 6th of April.
It meant that they will telltales to their children as they
write their histories of howterrible an enemy we were,
(13:09):
chasing them to their chasingthem to the end when we departed
in September of that year.
Most of you don't know becauseyou'd already gone to Alasada
and we were flying back toSouthern California, that we
left small um groups of NCOs inthe fogs to turn over to 2-5
(13:32):
that replaced us um for theirsix-month deployment.
And somehow the enemy foolishlyuh underestimated Fox Company
who was sitting out in the snakepit, weapons platoon fox company
sitting out in the snake pit.
And I didn't see Gunnar Dunhamhere yet.
Maybe he maybe he's out therelurking.
(13:56):
He counted 50 Iraqi bodies inthe street after they foolishly
tried to take the snake pit onthe last day that we were in
that city.
I hear a voice.
(14:17):
Ladies and gentlemen, it it'stough, it's tough to make those
sacrifices to bond with peoplewithin your squad and the
company and the battalion.
We don't do it for medals, butwe would have we wouldn't mind a
little recognition that theseMarines did what they were asked
to do, and they did it in afashion that virtually no other
(14:37):
battalion has done before orsince in this war.
And I'm hoping that this newestgeneration of 2-4 Marines
understands the honor and legacyof those that went before them.
And even though this looks likea motorcycle reunion, uh these
(14:58):
were the finest infantry marinesand support Marines that this
country has produced in thisgeneration.
And they have written a chapterthat I hope is developed, it is
retold, that ought to serve as amarker for generations to come.
(15:19):
Ladies and gentlemen, those thatdid not serve with the
magnificent bass in Ramadi in2004, I would ask you to give
them a round of applause.
SPEAKER_02 (16:05):
About the events surrounding, and directly from
the mouths of the people whowere in Ramadi, two thousand
four.
This is the Constant Combat Podcast.
SPEAKER_00 (00:14):
So in the last 18 months or so, uh, we've had a
couple bigger things happen withour the history of 2nd Battalion
4th Marines, weapons company inparticular, going back to Ramadi
2004.
Uh the biggest one last year wasour 20th anniversary.
Of the biggest battle that wefought in the first battle of
(00:34):
Ramadi.
And while out there, uh nowMajor General Kennedy, um, but
then our battalion commandergave a great speech, which we'll
have you listen to in a littlebit.
But the more recent thing thathappened was the book
Unremitting came out and was agreat writing recount of two of
(00:56):
the companies in particular,which is Echo Company and Golf
Company, and a phenomenal job.
But and as uh as we've discussedbefore and as we have over the
last 20 years of our friendship,uh trying to capture some of
these things has been somethingthat's been on our mind.
Um and we kind of have thislittle bit of a we get we have a
little bit of a call to actionfrom uh General Kennedy, and uh
(01:19):
we're setting ourselves up tokick something off to talk to
our brothers.
SPEAKER_02 (01:24):
I think it's very important that we capture the
stories of weapons company.
Uh, while unremitting did reallya good job, like you said,
capturing golf and echo company,and even to a limited degree,
Fox Company, and touched onweapons experience.
Our individual Marinesexperience between the companies
was so unique and the differencein mission was so high that by
(01:45):
capturing these stories directlyfrom the Marines themselves,
really will add something to it.
But let's listen to GeneralKennedy's speech.
SPEAKER_01 (01:53):
The warriors that we don't talk a lot about, and
history is fickle about who theywrite the stories about.
In the 20 years since we'vegotten back uh from Ramadi,
there has been no officialhistory to record the exploits
(02:14):
of the people that are assembledhere today, which I think is a
crime.
And you've seen other units inother cities telling their story
to the news, and there are booksthat have been written, and
somehow to date, the magnificentbastards of Vermont have still
not had their story told.
(02:36):
And so, what I wanted to do isjust tell you a couple things
that maybe you didn't know aboutthis magnificent group of men.
That 21 years ago, today, the1st Marine Division was standing
outside the gates of Baghdad,waiting to knock out the
dictator.
21 years ago today, 2ndBattalion, 4th Marines was stuck
(02:59):
with the 31st Meal in Okinawafor almost a year.
And the minute those poor soulscame home, they made a feline
for the exits because of stoploss, and they thought that they
had missed the war, theirgeneration.
21 years ago today, 230 youngmen were in high school or had
(03:24):
just recently graduated, andthey'd seen the news, and they
had either enlisted or they wereabout to enlist, and they had no
idea what history had in storefor them.
21 years ago today.
As the division came back fromIraq and we started losing the
(03:45):
folks that didn't want to uhstick around to the next
deployment of Okinawa, uh ournumbers get went down to about
450 soldiers, which is small.
And by the end of October, wewere at the lowest uh point of
of our uh of our manning strike.
And we were attending the MarineCorps ball in in November, and
(04:07):
General Mattis tapped me on theshoulder and he said, Hey
partner, your battalion is gonnabe the first to go back to Iraq
next year.
You're not gonna go to Okinawa,which I breathe, you know, every
good fighting person wants to uhgo to an adventure.
I asked him, sir, how much timedo we have to get ready?
He says, You're leaving inJanuary.
(04:31):
Mind you, this is the 10th ofNovember.
And so over the course of thenext two and a half months,
because we didn't actually leaveuntil uh February, every single
graduating class from the Schoolof Infantry on both coasts were
vectored to this parade deck.
And Sergeant Major Booker andthe first sergeants were joining
(04:54):
people virtually in an endedcycle of new of new joints
showing up.
We joined the last people tothis battalion two weeks before
we deployed.
And my guess is that they neverfired the weapons that they were
assigned until they were firingthem at the enemy a few months
later.
That is not the way you wishthat you'd go to war.
(05:19):
In many cases, we were virtualstrangers, and we were sent to a
fight that back then they calledstability and support
operations.
And we thought we were gonna bebuilding schools and handing out
soccer balls and running Medcapand doing all the things that
you would see after a conflict.
And the day that we took overRamadi on 13th March 2004, we
(05:45):
took our first casualties.
In fact, the casualties were sohorrible that I had never
actually seen anything.
Um that survived those wounds.
And Cather even pulled me asideuh with some grim news.
And that did not look like thepicture that had been painted
for us.
It did not look like we were outhelping a nation to recover.
(06:10):
And over the course of the nextseveral weeks, we had increasing
violence to build and build andbuild until the top 20 years ago
today.
And we lost our first Marines onpatrols, and we took some
wounds, but it was still of amanageable level.
(06:33):
But on the 6th of April,everything changed uh for in our
world.
Uh many of you lost your unitson the 6th of April.
The the blush of of what ispossible made it seem no longer
possible.
And as the patrols went out thatmorning, the companies executing
(06:55):
their missions as they wereassigned, like any other day
that they went out, they didn'timagine that history would deal
them a fate that few hadexpected.
Sergeant Major Booker and I wereback at the command post, and
the calls started coming in ofMarines that were wounded.
(07:17):
And it wasn't in one locationlike you normally would see, or
a single event.
Uh this was the entire cityseemed to be attacking the
battalion at once.
And we had Marines pinned downin the cemetery along Route
Michigan.
We had Marines pinned down atthe tank graveyard uh over
(07:38):
watching that locale.
They were at the fish hook underfire.
And the QRF's quick reactionforces were sent out to try to
figure out what was going on andget it get our people back uh to
safety.
And as the day snowballed, wehad the unfortunate reports of
(08:00):
Marines that had lost theirlives.
And by the end of that evening,a makeshift morgue was created
out of combat outposts.
And I remember seeing SergeantMajor Booker under a single
light bulb hanging from theceiling and seeing um my worst
(08:21):
nightmare of Marines that wewere gonna have to send home to
their parents.
And as you can imagine, theMarines were angry, they were
bewildered, everything that theythought that they were deployed
for was no longer valid, andthat this enemy was not here to
(08:43):
welcome us, but we were gonnahave to fight them to the bitter
round.
The next day the patrols wentback out on the 7th of April,
and within about an hour thecall started coming in again
that they were Marines werereceiving contact.
But unlike the 6th of April, onthe 7th of April, these were no
(09:06):
longer Marines that could befooled by the treachery of the
residents in Ramadi.
But this time, you had men thatovernight became pardoned
veterans, and they took thefight to the enemy, and they
fought in some of the sameneighborhoods that they had the
(09:27):
day previous, and they continuedout to the Sofia district uh
pursuing these terrorists.
And I got a call the next dayfrom the division commander that
200 enemy bodies were stacked upat the morgue in Ramadi.
(09:49):
And that's in addition to thebodies that had already been
claimed by their families.
And so never again would themagnificent basses be fooled by
the treachery of people thatsmile at you when you're passing
and plant a bomb under the roadwhen they think they they got
you unawares.
(10:09):
That we were gonna fight them.
General Madison said, no betterfriend and no worst enemy.
These are their worst enemies,these Marines of 2nd Battalion,
4th Marines.
On the 8th of April, all the uhplatoons filed up to their line,
their respective lines ofdeparture to take the fight back
(10:33):
on the third day.
And they line up in the dark,and the guidons are snapping in
the breeze, and they cross ontime, so that's what our leaders
insisted upon, and they wenthunting for the enemy.
And all day long on the 8th ofApril, they looked for these bad
(10:55):
men.
By the end of the day, we had nocontact, we had no idea where
the enemy had gone to, and wefinally got a report back that
night that the planned three-dayjihad that they had they had
meticulously laid out that theywere going to eject 2-4 from the
(11:19):
city had suspended itself aftertwo days.
You killed the people because wehad a mono that you kick a man
(11:40):
once he's down.
On the 10th, we figured outwhere they had gone to lick
their wounds, and Echo Companyand Weapons Company went out
there uh Operation Bug Hunt andkilled a whole bunch more.
And we know it was effectivebecause when you look at our
combat reports, we really didn'thave any uh significant
(12:03):
firefights for over a monthafter the 10th of April.
The city heated back up over thecourse of the summer, more
people filtered in to try to getrid of the nuisance that was
2-4, and they just couldn't doit.
Meanwhile, other cities alongthe Euphrates were blowing up.
Fallujah boiled over, Al Kaimboiled over, heat boiled over.
(12:26):
And General Mattis summarized itin a book later that he said as
the division was fighting acrossthe entirety of Al Anabar
province, he didn't have toworry about what was going on at
Aromati because the Marines of2-4 held.
(12:47):
It means you never broke.
It means you never let the enemybreathe again after their
treachery on the 6th of April.
It meant that they will telltales to their children as they
write their histories of howterrible an enemy we were,
(13:09):
chasing them to their chasingthem to the end when we departed
in September of that year.
Most of you don't know becauseyou'd already gone to Alasada
and we were flying back toSouthern California, that we
left small um groups of NCOs inthe fogs to turn over to 2-5
(13:32):
that replaced us um for theirsix-month deployment.
And somehow the enemy foolishlyuh underestimated Fox Company
who was sitting out in the snakepit, weapons platoon fox company
sitting out in the snake pit.
And I didn't see Gunnar Dunhamhere yet.
Maybe he maybe he's out therelurking.
(13:56):
He counted 50 Iraqi bodies inthe street after they foolishly
tried to take the snake pit onthe last day that we were in
that city.
I hear a voice.
(14:17):
Ladies and gentlemen, it it'stough, it's tough to make those
sacrifices to bond with peoplewithin your squad and the
company and the battalion.
We don't do it for medals, butwe would have we wouldn't mind a
little recognition that theseMarines did what they were asked
to do, and they did it in afashion that virtually no other
(14:37):
battalion has done before orsince in this war.
And I'm hoping that this newestgeneration of 2-4 Marines
understands the honor and legacyof those that went before them.
And even though this looks likea motorcycle reunion, uh these
(14:58):
were the finest infantry marinesand support Marines that this
country has produced in thisgeneration.
And they have written a chapterthat I hope is developed, it is
retold, that ought to serve as amarker for generations to come.
(15:19):
Ladies and gentlemen, those thatdid not serve with the
magnificent bass in Ramadi in2004, I would ask you to give
them a round of applause.
SPEAKER_02 (16:05):
About the events surrounding, and directly from
the mouths of the people whowere in Ramadi, two thousand
four.
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