Ep. 221 | Fallujah Bodies | Hanthorne, Moran, Ites - Former Action Guys Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It was by Welcome to the former podcast. Before we
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(00:23):
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let's get to it. Former Actually Guys podcast Marine Corps Birthday.
Let's start off by saying happy birthday. I you know,

(00:44):
really appreciate you guys coming on here. Brian, Michael, and Cheryl.
You know we uh small world. Brian posted the other
day on Facebook about going into Fallujah and being part
of the mortuary affairs detachment, and I was like, holy shit,
Udy Michael from from high school was on that detachment,
and we did we did a couple interviews already and

(01:06):
discussed that, and then he knew Cheryl, who was the
I believe you were the team leader correct for that detachment.
I was the IC, the OIC correct, Okay, So I
was like, Wow, what a small world. Michael actually was like, Hey,
we should all do a podcast. So he's the one
that kind of got this together. And I really appreciate
you guys coming on because you know, I understand it
was a not so pleasant time, you know, going into Fallujah.

(01:29):
Obviously everyone knows about Fallujah. Everyone knows it was a
vicious fight, and but a lot of people may not
know about the part what the role you guys played,
which was cleaning up all the dead bodies and stuff
of the insurgents and stuff. That way the Iraqis coming
back into their city wouldn't have to do it themselves.
And you know, it's just unsanitary, and you know, it's
just one of those things. So I really appreciate you

(01:51):
guys coming on to talk about it again. Michael Hanthorne
has been on a few times, so we we'll do.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
If you want to check out his episodes, go back
and look, he's been on like three times, so check
those out. Brian, if you want to introduce yourself and
kind of give us a little bit of a background
of how you came into the Marine Corps and then
kind of up into this deployment, and then we'll move
on to Cheryl.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Okay, name is Brian Moran. Joined the Marine Corps in
nineteen ninety four. I'm a third generation Marine. My grandfather
was in World War Two and Hewjima. My father and
my uncle both did multiple towards at Vietnam. They were
both radio operators, so I gravitated towards the communications field
became a radio operator myself. Initially joined the reserves and

(02:35):
immediately regretted it. Wanted to go on active duty. At
the time, once you were in, they got you in
the contract. They didn't want to let people go. When
I was sixteen years old, I started working in the
hospital until the time I was about twenty one and
I left for boot camp. And in that time I
worked in the emergency room and I had a had
been able to you know, not just you know, witness

(02:58):
people people passing away as they do, but also you know,
being able to like do CPR and things like that.
So kind of seeing death in my teen years, you're
not really being tremendously effector being able to kind of
process it. I think better than some of my peers
would have been set me up for that future. Time

(03:22):
went in two thousand and three, deployed to Iraq for
OIF one, attached to the British and the Nincomb Battalion,
and then the next year came back as an individual
mobilized augmentee, checked into CSSG fifteen, which was a part
of at the time First Force Service Support Group now
first MLG, and that led up to, you know, around

(03:45):
that time, the battle was on the horizon. The supply
and logistics were moving these things called Iron Mountains, which
were just tremendous amounts of materials to Camp Fallujah and
preparation for this fight. That knew it was going to
becoming Second Battle of Fallujah and UH. And it was
around that time that I believe it was probably somewhere

(04:06):
in the early days of November of two thousand and four,
I found myself in a tent with a bunch of
other marines getting briefed on what the mission was going
to be and what my role was going to be
in it, which would be the communication achief for the
Special Purpose Mortuary Affairs Company that was stood up.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
When you when you did the invasion, you said you
did the invasion with the British.

Speaker 4 (04:29):
I did.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Were you guys in Basra? Is that where they pushed
I was.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
I lived on the I lived on the roof of
Bosser Airport for about a month.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
We lived in Tomato Fields.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
We moved all over Lower Saffoon area and you know
Boser Airport. Uh set up a retransfhere. We got left
in the middle of the night by our our brothers.
That was wild, waking up in a in a vehicle
with things for miles just a you know, forty five
foot antennas sticking up in the air. But the the
invasion for me combat wise was it was kind of

(05:02):
you know, it was nothing really going on down down
in that area at the time.

Speaker 4 (05:07):
It was pretty quiet.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
The Iraqis were waving American flags, uh, you know, all
the all the Iraqi uh, you know, tanks on the
side of the road with their AMMO just swinging, abandoned
uniforms strewn everywhere. Uh so, uh, that was a totally
different period. You know what a difference a little over
a year could make. Uh, you know, coming back and

(05:29):
into what it now morphed into a full scale in certaincy.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah. Now, I know during field ops, guys that set
up retrans kind of a skate job. You know, they
go up and get everything set up, and once it's
set up, it's like flip out the lawn chairs and
kind of wait for calm to go down or have
to move or anything. Can you kind of explain to
like the radio operators that are out there that haven't
experienced an actual retrans site in a combat zone, what
that was like and kind of how it differs from

(05:53):
what you've seen in training.

Speaker 5 (05:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
So in training, you know, there's there's all the the
RM Operational Risk MAUNA matrixes. There's all these different you know,
checks and balances that are put into place. I was
basically given a Mark and forty two vehicle, which is
a multi channel vehicle. I was given no single channel
radio asset. We were not even given a We were
given a map basically told this road to this road.

(06:16):
The Iraqis had an incredible interstate highway system there, you know,
so that they could they could move around their country.
And uh, you know, we filed the directions with the
with the two brick uh you know, range rover defenders,
land rover defenders in front of us and behind us.
And then we set up and the only thing that
we have for commps, it's called the order wire. We
basically push a button, it brings down on the multi

(06:38):
channel radio on the other.

Speaker 4 (06:39):
End and somebody picks up.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
So until we got that circuit up there, we had
a no comms and that the no comms plan was like,
if we don't hear from me in like two days,
we'll go to where we think that you should be at.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
That's crazy.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
And then waking up with those guys gone was like, okay,
it's me and another marine and an M sixteen a
four rifle.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Just you know, Oh, there was only two of you.

Speaker 4 (07:02):
There's only two of us in the Vico.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
So I was gonna I was gonna ask if you
were providing your own security. But I guess if there's
only two of you like.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
We were, you know, so uh.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
But then moving to Basra Airport, Uh, you know, being
being there with the Brits, uh, you know, they there
was there became a time where while we were with them,
there became a lot of friction, uh within the with
the between the American and the British side. A lot
of a lot of little little funny stories out of that.
But but for the most part, I mean, it was
still one team, one fight. We did live in the

(07:33):
tomato field. The Brits we had a track one seventy
which was like a massive terrestrial or system radio system
puts out like a thousand wants of power and every
morning they would fly their helicopter right through the beam
which would activate their their their anti air and they
would start popping chaff all over the people picking tomatoes.
So not a good way to win heart some months

(07:55):
at the time, and we we kind of voiced our concerns,
uh you know, with with the way that.

Speaker 4 (07:59):
They were they were working.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
I did work with the Bricks again in twenty eleven
in Afghanistan and it was a totally different experience.

Speaker 4 (08:06):
They were they were awesome.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
So yeah, I had worked with some Brits in Afghanistan
as well. The I think it was the Fifth Scots
and the twenty fifth Royal Marines maybe, like I believe
that's who it was, and they were they were pretty legit.
Did you have any Anglico guys down there with you,
because there were, ye.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
So at the time it was m L They were
in my camp and a bunch of the other reserve
guys that that I'm buddies with, they were attached to them.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
So those those guys would go out, they would assist
the bricks with with fires and uh, you know, we
had we had uh you know, under under.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
The division that we were supporting the British division.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
We had tanks, we had commando and we had a
aerosol component of of the Brits. So we were we
were working pretty pretty tightly with those guys and moving
around uh Southern Iraq.

Speaker 4 (08:55):
Uh you know, yeah, for the majority of the time.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
Shout out to the Anglico dudes. They were, I know,
they were attached to the Brits. They were and well,
never mind, I'm thinking of something else. I'm thinking of
the Golf War now. They were attached to like the
Sais and stuff during the Gulf War. Yeah. Cool, Yeah,
different era though. Yeah, man's that's always cool to work
with another force because you kind of see how they
operate and how you know, there's those little differences, and

(09:20):
then you see their strengths and weaknesses and it kind
of identifies some of your own strength and weaknesses. You're like, oh,
we should do this better next time, like you know.
But yeah, so, Cheryl, welcome to the show. I really
appreciate you coming on as well, if you could give
us any kind of a little bit of your background.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
So I joined the Marine Corps in nineteen actually seventy
four and who retired in two thousand and nine. So
I did thirty five years in the Marine Corps. I
did three deployments to Iraq, first one being in two
thousand and three, continuing small breaks back in the States

(10:05):
between three and five, but.

Speaker 6 (10:09):
In Iraq for that entire time. So the joke is
that I.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Was a military. I had been with the I and
I out in Dayton, Ohio, where they had a small
group called mortuary affairs with the reserves, and since I
had done that, when the war kicked off, they contacted
me and recalled Lieutenant Colonel John Cassidy and asked us

(10:39):
to put a capability together for OIF, which we did.
So I did those three tours, all of them as
a services slash mortuary affairs officer with the first f SSG,
and it was an interesting time. To joke is since

(11:01):
I was military police and I didn't throw up at accidents,
it would be great for me to head up the
mortuary affairs unit.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Man, that's a rough time.

Speaker 6 (11:10):
Most of my time. It has an interesting job. So
in three we weren't.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
The death estimates were extremely high. So we trained over
four hundred reservists to do this mission and from four
different companies to do that. By two thousand and four
we had kind of formalized the process somewhat, but we

(11:38):
were still an ad hoc capability bringing in from different
mien it's to make up that capability and do those
rotations overseas.

Speaker 6 (11:49):
Now it is a.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Has a table of organization and a table of equipment.
In the mortuary affairs is a war time requirement.

Speaker 6 (12:01):
So when the that's where we told them it belonged.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
And so now we have a company of two hundred
and fifty marines spread between two different units Georgia and
over here in Anacostia, Virginia, where the two parts of
the company are now housed and maintained, so it is

(12:27):
a permanent capability. Now in the Marine time, it was not.
They had a platoon, one platoon of reservist that man
equipped or trained very well to do this mission because
they hadn't used it in decades. They needed it, needed
an overhaul, and it needed permanent home. So that's what

(12:50):
we've done with it. It's but in thirty five years
in the Marine Corps, I would say that it was
probably just important and interesting and rewarding job given because
it allowed us to recover remains, transport them back to

(13:13):
their families. And this is the first and where we
didn't leave somebody behind. So kudos to us for recovering
everybody and getting so it doesn't have have to go
back into Iraq for Afghanistan to recover remains or fine

(13:38):
missing personnel.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, that's a huge thing right now for like the
Korean War veterans and Vietnam veterans. There's like always these
task force that are looking for remains on battlefields and
stuff like that, which, yeah, you think that wouldn't be
I mean, I understand mortuary affairs. I mean, I guess
it seems like common sense that you would have that.
But even having been in the Marine Corps, Like I

(14:02):
would have never even thought of that as something. You know,
that's something you don't really think about until it becomes
like an issue right for the.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
For most people, right and it's something nobody really wants
to discuss or have a conversation about even now, even
at Headquarters Marine Corps now at d O D now,
nobody really wants to maintain that capability. And further so,

(14:31):
when you talk about planning, it's the last thing that
comes up.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah, it's crazy that that's a Do people sign up
for that job? Now? Is that a I mean, it's
got to have its own MS if it had you said,
it has its own table of organization and stuff like that.
So do people enlist for that or is that a
job they get stuck into? Like they listen to Well, so.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
You you sign up and join the Marine Corps as
a mortuary affair specialists so for ninety one and so
they recruit to it and if you join the reserves,
this is what you'll be doing at the time. When

(15:15):
we were there last time, it was for the most
part volunteer, but there were volunteers.

Speaker 6 (15:23):
That's brought into it.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
A major bonus for me to sign up for a
job like that, it.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Was something that we had to really comprehend understand because
if you're doing it well time, not everybody is equipped
to do this, and so we had to worry about
post traumatic stress individuals that did this. However, I will
gladly say that our numbers for PTSD anxiety disorders are

(15:56):
extremely low. The Army, uh, theirs is it about forty
eight percent for that time period. In ours is about
seven to ten.

Speaker 6 (16:07):
Yeah, some of our people had problems.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
I just don't know. I just don't know how I couldn't.
I've always said on the show, like I would never
want to be like a corman or something like that,
just because I don't want to deal with that, you
know what I'm saying. I don't want to deal with
like someone's life in my hand, someone dying, you know,
especially it beat just to death. You know, I don't
think most people want to be around death, even though

(16:30):
we're in a combat job. You know, I don't know.
I just wouldn't want to do I mean, that's just
such a crazy job. It's I imagine, so I imagine
the people that work at Dover that do the dignified
transfers and stuff. Those are mortuary affairs people.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Uh, there are the dignified transfer part. No, they're logistictions. Okay,
So they're off, they're they're taking remains off that been
casketed or put in transfer cases and have flags over them.
They're moving them, and they're logistitions. The people that come

(17:10):
out from the mortuary, they work in the mortuary all
the time. So you're talking logistics personnel. You're talking morticians
and the people attached to the Armed Forces.

Speaker 6 (17:22):
Medical Examiner System.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
So, but most of the people moving remains are either
detailed for it the same way you would be for
a funeral, or or their people permanent personnel, or they
work with the flight line, and so they're logistictions.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Okay. And so you guys, now, if I understand it correctly,
anytime a service member is killed in combat, they still
get an autopsy. Correct.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Anytime a military personnel die as unaccompanied, not in a hospital,
they get an autopsy.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
Okay. And that's is it. Do people within your you know,
realm do that or is that just kind of okay?
So that's like a side piece.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
That's only the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System is the
only system that performs those. They have licensed medical examiners
that perform those.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Man, what a crazy job. It's again, this is stuff
that like probably most people don't even consider. And then
it's one of those like afterthoughts like oh shit, we
gotta do this, like we got to do we gotta
have a system for this. Especially we're lucky. You know.
Is as awful as the casualties and stuff were that
we saw during the Global War on Terror, it was
nowhere near what they were seeing in like Vietnam or

(18:45):
like Korea world War two. I mean, you would think
after that they would have already had something in place,
like it would be like an a known thing. But
like you said, people don't really want to discuss it.
I guess's kind of a taboo topic.

Speaker 6 (19:01):
It is a taboo topic.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
And the fact that we hadn't used it since Vietnam
and then things were a little bit different. So military
personnelity in the Army, they had mortuary affairs. They have
that set up and they are responsible for theater level
support for mortuary affairs. So having the theater mortuary affairs

(19:27):
evacuation point, they're required to have that. But every branch
of the service that's in charge of an area has
an AOAR, they're responsible for that within their within their area,
and so people were thinking it was an army responsibility

(19:48):
when in fact it's not.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
All right. So and then, Michael, just a real, real
quick recap of your career. You and I went to
high school together. I'm actually the one I think that
talked you into joining the Marines, and I didn't enjoyed
for a couple of years later. Yeah, and then you
you were a motor T operator and this was your

(20:12):
this was on your first deployment.

Speaker 5 (20:14):
Correct, first deployment? Yeah, old on just a second chat.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
My door, so you were Yeah, you were a motor
T operator. This was your first deployment. You know, what
were your expectations going into this deployment.

Speaker 5 (20:27):
I mean I just thought we're gonna be trucking goods.

Speaker 7 (20:29):
I mean when we got to t Q in August
of those four we did turn over with Alpha Company,
and you know, they had been doing convoy ops obviously
Tolujah and Ramody in all the different places.

Speaker 5 (20:43):
So we took over from them.

Speaker 7 (20:44):
It was pretty easy transfer, and uh it was I'd stay.
Mid September they started talking about Felujah. We started running
you know, sur jobs, you know, NonStop, pretty much every
every day. I mean we were running maybe two convoys
a day bullets and beans up there to Campellujah.

Speaker 5 (21:09):
I would say October.

Speaker 7 (21:10):
They had us originally, I think they had us doing
some kind of humanitarian stuff.

Speaker 5 (21:16):
Because they had us, we had to learn to get
back like the.

Speaker 7 (21:22):
What you call the prison things, yeah, like for right
riot control yeah yeah, and then we got OC spray
and then it kind of our mission change. We you know,
came to rumor that we're gonna do more true affairs
and like five of us I think they wanted at first.

Speaker 5 (21:41):
You know, and then ended up being my whole unit went.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
So, now, before this, when you're running these convoys and stuff,
what was the ied threat at the time? Was it
was that really a thing yet or was it kind
of ramping up at that point?

Speaker 5 (21:55):
Yeah, yeah, that was a huge threat.

Speaker 7 (21:58):
I think my unit we found one of the thirty
six thirty six one five fives.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
Damn, that's crazy.

Speaker 5 (22:04):
They changed.

Speaker 7 (22:06):
Yeah, So it was there, it wasn't as prevalent as
I mean, it was still there, but like the second
tour and when I was at Ali Saide was a
lot more, a lot more pronounced than ibs. Yeah, but
that this appointment, I mean it was there, Like, dude,
we helped I don't know how many millions of pounds

(22:28):
of goods. I like to know the numbers that Camp Felljah.
I mean we hauled day and night there.

Speaker 5 (22:36):
It was. It was pretty pretty cool to do that.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah, Now when did Cheryl, when did the word come
down that this was going to become a thing, like, Hey,
there's gonna be a sweep and this is going to
be your guys' mission, Like when did you start prepping
the detachment for the job that you guys are gonna do?

Speaker 6 (22:53):
Okay? So I was the moretuary affairs officer.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
I ran five collection points throughout that area, our area,
So we had them at all Asade, we had him
at Tiq, we had him at Felujah, we had had
him at on Na Joff, We'd had him at ar Ramadi.

Speaker 5 (23:11):
There.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
We had already been setting up these collection points when
they actually extended me, actually had me come back for
another rotation.

Speaker 6 (23:22):
I never went home between two rotations.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
I just stayed there except for to go back for
two weeks to train people to do it. When we
knew that it was going to be kicking off. So
I had about a month's notice that we were going
to be kicking off the second Battle of Felujah, And
at that time, I said, what are we doing about
the insurgent remains that are going to be left in

(23:46):
the city, because they're not going to be policing up
there own dead, They're going to be fighting for their
lives and trying to kill as many Americans as they can.
And they weren't too concerned about it. And so I
went to Math and was trying to get them to
understand the need for mortuary affairs in the city while

(24:08):
combat operations were ongoing. And it wasn't until the war
had kicked off, the battle had kicked off that the
Fiji of One Moth came looking for me and said,
I understand you were trying to convince us to do this,
and called me into a meeting and asked what the

(24:31):
plan was. So he had been in Fallujah and seen
a dog carrying an arm through the street in their
mouth and decided maybe I was right that we actually
needed some mortuary affairs personnel.

Speaker 5 (24:48):
It.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
You know, you said at the beginning that it was
so people didn't have to come back to human remains
in their housing area.

Speaker 6 (24:57):
But it was bigger than that.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
It was is to protect the lives of US service
personnel who were still waging a war in the city
of Fallujah. To have remains decomposing in the city was
a health hazard for them, and we wanted to make
sure that that health hazard was eliminated.

Speaker 6 (25:18):
So game up.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
I had a plan. I informed the General what it was.
He said that sounds like a great plan. We had
Civil Affairs find a location that we could set it up,
but wound up being the Potato Factory. They took me
to three locations. The Potato Factory was the best suited.
It was close to the MSR. It was close to

(25:42):
the city of Fallujah, but far enough away that we
could work without threat to us, and it allowed us
room to put in security elements, trucking capabilities. The calm
unit the more where your affairs people. Plus, we had

(26:03):
a cool area because the potato factory housed all the
seed potato for all of Iraq in that facility, so
it was temperature controlled. So we were able to take
over two of the storage areas and set them up

(26:23):
for human remains storage and a processing area for my
marines and myself to handle them, and we also brought
in intel.

Speaker 6 (26:33):
But that whole thing.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
Of actually setting it up, getting people in place, to
include the calm, the motor tea, the security element, and
the intel piece took me three days.

Speaker 6 (26:47):
It was.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
I put in the call telling him exactly what I needed.
I needed about two hundred personnel and these were the
areas that I needed and to get that set up
and work out the kinks. Initially, the reserves, I'm sorry,
the infantry was supposed to bring them to the train

(27:11):
station and we would be collecting them from the train station.
General Natonski pade me a visit at the factory and
said he didn't like my plan, and I told him
it was not my plan, it was General Settler's plans,
so please go.

Speaker 6 (27:25):
Discuss it with him.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
But we were willing to do this. And what we
wound up doing, which is you provide us security direct
us to where the remains are, how many there are,
and we'll bring teams into the city during combat operations
to recover those remains so that your men can continue

(27:46):
to press the fight. And that's what we wound up doing,
so they didn't have to recover remains. We were doing
those actual physical recoveries in the city.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
And that's what Michael was doing. You were on the
actual recovery team there. Now, did you guys? Did you
have them set up? Each battalion had like a team
attached to them. Is that how it worked? And I
know the army had their own AO with the Infelujah.
How was the attachments doled out?

Speaker 2 (28:14):
What we did is we coordinated through calm He We
coordinated with the infantry battalion in the city and they
would tell us whether we were going to one, three,
one eight, where we were going within the city, and
how many remains we were.

Speaker 6 (28:33):
Recovering that day.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
So they moved us around in the city and provided
a security element. It was usually one jeep full of
their personnel kind of giving us direction of our personnel,
brought their own weapons. Still worried about security, but we
had them leading us through the city to the areas

(28:58):
that we were going to be working in that day
and then leading us out of the city when we
were done at the end of the day.

Speaker 6 (29:05):
But it was.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
One mortuary affairs marine or two mortuary affairs marine in
each truck with the services personnel truck personnel security teams
that would go in and do those recoveries and then
come back out. They'd come back to the data factory
where we'd offload then we would process them there. So

(29:33):
I was in the city several days, and some days
I would stay back to coordinate efforts or.

Speaker 6 (29:42):
Do other tasks that I needed to do, and.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
My marines would go into the city to oversee the
recovery of the remains.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
And Brian, is that's where you kind of came into play,
right where you were. You were on the hooks, you know.
You ran the calm guys to work out the logistics
here of sending people out right.

Speaker 3 (30:02):
Yes, so I'll let me walk you through what we
ended up doing. We uh so on the fifteenth of November, Cheryl.

Speaker 4 (30:12):
If I'm wrong on.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
Any dates, please please keep me honest. This is what
I'm I'm tracking from one of my buddy's diaries. We
and I remember so I set up as part of
the quartering party we had the MP's could not have
done it without it was Gunnie Becker and Gunny Lege.

Speaker 4 (30:31):
They were phenomenal helped us, you know.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
And the year before when I had been with the Bridge,
we we were you know, pushing up firms all over
a sudden in Iraq. So I had an idea of like, okay,
what right looks like when it comes to security. So
everybody kind of came together strong pointed seven tons in
the corners with fifties on them. Ran seawire got prick
one fifty three or xts five thousands at the time,

(30:58):
I was able to encrypt them.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
While while I started noticing when I was over at
TQ that every time somebody's kicking a xts, it's chirping,
uh because it wasn't wasn't filled. So we were able
to get ahold of cables, get the kvls and actually
fill those devices so that you know, we couldn't be
collected on.

Speaker 4 (31:16):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (31:17):
And there was some collection that did go on over
a radium phones later and I can I'll talk about
that later.

Speaker 4 (31:23):
But we set up in a way station.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
There's two way stations inside the grounds of Potato factory.
So a vehicle will drive in laden, dump their stuff,
drive up to the other scale unladen, you know, and
and check out. So we started operations working out of
this this way station building.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
UH.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
Put sandbags up in the windows. Uh that that's another.
We'll talk about where we got the sandbags from later.
It was pretty bad, uh, but we uh started off
with I want to say I had like three uh
singuars radios in there, and Colm gets calm. I'd say,
by the time we were done, I had no fewer
than six radios and mark them, forty two multi channel

(32:04):
vehicle showed up to get us a link back to
TQ because the you know, our masters back there were
like insatiable with their needs for for reporting, and we
still needed to talk to units we were tied into
for you know, not just for coordination and link up,
but also for our safety, for our left and right
you know live uh you know, sides of the line

(32:25):
that we could tie into from the factory. So every
time they send me a radio, I'd use it for
one of those nets for survival. And then they you know,
you didn't you didn't call us. I'm like, yeah, I need
an the radio. So we just kept kind of stacking
the radios. I have some pictures, I'll I'll send our
Thanksgiving meal which is set up by the by our
little radio radio desk. But the yeah, that that was

(32:47):
the initial piece of it setting up in that in
that room.

Speaker 4 (32:51):
I got the log books. I have two of them.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
These are the radio ones that the radio logbook and
the n A coordination logbook. And these logbooks when we
closed down and went in a box ended up back
in my shop and I'm like, oh, okay, we'll bring these, uh,
and they detail it's uh, you know, the way that
it worked basically. And I'll send you a picture of
this of one of the pages too, you can you
can add it. But on the left side would be

(33:14):
the call side of the unit.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
And they would come through like right here, Banshee six
ten bodies need to be picked up. Ned I D
one five five three Joel on Park zero nine would
be like the coordination So there's your net I D team.

Speaker 4 (33:27):
Would roll out. They'd be talking to other units as
they roll through the city.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
To pass through lines to make sure that they weren't
going to have any issues, and then they would they
would go out and start facilitating the recovery of those
enemy remains and many many times under fire. Uh you know,
we're you know, and I think I saw it in
your your podcast, Like you know, you're in one house
and four houses down they're still.

Speaker 4 (33:50):
Shooting going on and you know that's uh, it was,
it was, it was. It was intense.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
Uh, it was an opportunity to see what every marine
that's been to a CATS may only even see a
small part of which is you know, the entire combined
arms you know, the Mahavi Vipra and even and you
know enhance mob the Vipra right for the anybody that
doesn't know, but these, you know, it was a truly
like a combined arms exercise put to use. I don't
think there was anything that wasn't levy against that city,

(34:21):
you know, just I.

Speaker 4 (34:22):
Think you said it as well.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
Just you know, piles of fifty at fifty coal and
spent forty forty millimeters shells, you know, up to your
knees on the corners where you know, gun truck just
rolled up and just you know, dumped two thousand pound bombs.
We were we ended up with the UHF NET and
remember a I think it was a Hornet pilot.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
It's like I got a thousand pound er.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
I don't want to go back hot, and you know,
like it was like jtax just fighting over each other
to you know, we'll.

Speaker 4 (34:50):
Take it, you know.

Speaker 3 (34:51):
And then a few minutes later just hear this massive
explosion potato factory for those that you know, to get
to get an idea if uh and I have Google
Earth pulled up. If you go on Google Earth, you
look at the city of Felujah. On the right side,
there's a clover leaf. Uh, it's very nice now, it's
like very very nice and manicucord uh. And then to

(35:12):
the right of that you'll see a little icon for
a school. Apparently there's a university there now. And then
right next to that it's just this like burned area
that was the potato factory. So it's it's been leveled
except for there's some houses out in the front of it,
uh and a guard shack, and then up behind it. Uh,
they've built apartments that look like the McMansions that you
know that are been going up behind my house.

Speaker 4 (35:35):
So uh there the.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
People of by Racine to be thriving a bit, and uh,
you know things are growing uh in that area.

Speaker 4 (35:42):
But that's that's where the factory was.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
Uh, literally right on the other side of a highway
from uh, you know, from the city. You know, it's
kind of like you know, if you're Camp Pendleton at
Delmar from you know, from the from the base house
built to Delmar kind of deal like that. That that
was a difference distance to the city right there.

Speaker 4 (36:01):
It was.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
Yeah, Michael, you know the night like your first night
before it all, Like you guys went in for your
first time. What was it like being on the outskirts
watching you know, you're a lance corporal, motor t guy
and now you're about to get thrust in the middle
of this huge battle. You know what was that like
for you?

Speaker 5 (36:21):
Definitely surreal.

Speaker 7 (36:22):
I mean, like Brian said, like seeing the capabilities of
the Americans can wage war in every facet. I mean artillery,
you know, close close airport, you know, small union combat
Like it.

Speaker 5 (36:37):
Was, Wow, it was crazy.

Speaker 7 (36:39):
I just remember sitting on the Brian and trail remember
remember the water tower yep, Yeah, sitting up there on
posts and just watching that through nbg's watching what was
going on.

Speaker 5 (36:52):
I was just insane.

Speaker 7 (36:53):
And I remember one night spooky it was above and
they were like waving it in with the I R
just up there, rain and hell down. It was just insane, man,
I got Goosebum's talking about it right now. I mean
just a bowl crazy. But like back to what you're asking,
Like Cheryl gave us a brief. I remember, you know,
like when we did the three days in the city.

(37:16):
I think it was three days or one day, I
can't remember. But we had a rotation of some sort,
like we go when we did bodies, we got to
go back and Okay, hold on, Brian's got to take
a break.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
No, you're good, you can keep going.

Speaker 5 (37:30):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (37:30):
We we got to go back to Campfulusion and take
a shower, get hot chow.

Speaker 5 (37:34):
When we did bodies.

Speaker 7 (37:36):
But like we had a brief, like we couldn't check,
we couldn't shave. Cheryl told us the build trick with
the Vicks in the in the surgical masks, like we
vapor ups since then.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
For the smell.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yeah, do it because if you use it, the next
time you spell Vicks vapor rub, you'll be back at
Felujah collecting.

Speaker 5 (38:03):
Yeah that's.

Speaker 7 (38:07):
But yeah, like she gives a brief, I think we
would they we well, the grappling hooks with the engineer table.

Speaker 5 (38:14):
I believe that was.

Speaker 6 (38:14):
All, like that was the training.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
Yeah, so I gave them a brief on what the
mission was, how to ensure that remains weren't booby trapped
because we were worried about it. There were there were
remains in the city that did have ordinance on them.
Some of the ordinance made it back to me, but
and then we had to remove it. And we had

(38:40):
a ordinance pit in the behind the potato factory that
EOD would come and blow.

Speaker 6 (38:44):
Periodically for us.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
But how to check for that and make sure it
wasn't booby trapped. How they were to handle the remains,
not stack them, place them in the back of the
truck single layer. We didn't want the visual of Germans
putting throwing bodies in the back of the truck. We
didn't want to have that appearance. We wanted to make

(39:09):
sure that we were handling them respectfully, even though they
were insurgents, because once they're dead, they're just somebody's family member.
They're no longer a threat to us. So we had
to do it respectfully. That's what we'd want from somebody
else if they were handling ours.

Speaker 6 (39:27):
So we tried to follow that protocol.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
But I kind of gave them brief on why they
were there, what we expected of them, how to do
it respectfully, how to protect themselves, what things to look
for in each other and in themselves to make sure
they didn't come up with post traumatic stress disorder and
how to try to put it out of their mind,
and if anybody had any problems to please come and

(39:54):
see me and we'd have a conversation. Because I was
concerned about the welfare of the marines doing this. They
weren't trained other than a day or two brief on
how to do this.

Speaker 6 (40:09):
They didn't have to.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
They they recovered the remains, but they didn't have to
process the remains or so they didn't have to do that.
That was done by mortuary affairs personnel we had. I
had eight marines with me that did all five hundred
and thirty six remains were processed by eight of us.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
Now when so like, if Michael goes out to recover remains,
is there like an intelligence person there with him to
look for any kind of active intelligence or is that
something that happened when they got back to you.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
That was something that we did. We checked for pocket litter.
We were able to and I had five intel personnel
with me in the potato factory working so when we
found pocket litter, we were able to have it translated
and provided so radios, cell phones, documents of any kind

(41:11):
they were we were able to collect that up and
provide that information along with the makeup of the insurgencies.
So they weren't all Iraqis. We had Chechenians, we had Jordanians,
we had uh Egyptians. We had them from several different locations,
so it was not a homogeneous group that we were

(41:32):
fighting against. So they were coming in from from Syria
and other places to press this fight. And but what
we were able to do by checking for that and
utilizing this time to gather that intel off these remains,
we were able to discover where they were coming in,

(41:52):
what paths they took across, where the money was flowing from.
There were there was a lot of action all intelligence
that we were able to clean from these remains.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
Yeah, Now, Michael, when you were recovering remains, you know,
can you kind of give us a breakdown of like
different roles on those teams that were going out to recover,
kind of how that recovery went, and then maybe kind
of explain like what an average day, if you will,
you know, in air quotes, what that was like.

Speaker 5 (42:23):
Yeah, So we had like the body bag guy, which
was me. Basically we'd go up with the body bag.

Speaker 7 (42:29):
We had guys that would take the engineer tape with
grapple hooks and they'd run up, put the grappling hook
and like a piece of clothing or whatever to try
to roll them over to make sure they weren't booby trapped.
As we had the truck drivers. We had a security
element on the trucks, stayed with the trucks, and then

(42:49):
it was just a coordinated effort. Once it was clear,
we would just go up, you know, load the body
and the body bag. Like Cheryl said, if there was
any stuff laying around them like popela or we put
it in the body bag so that could get processed
with them.

Speaker 5 (43:03):
That they would do. That was pretty much it.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
What about like weapons or anything like that.

Speaker 5 (43:10):
Uh, usually the grunts did a good job of de
arming them.

Speaker 7 (43:15):
Uh they were you know, like they're being ak or
something laying there, but it was never loaded or anything
that they'd usually break, and like everything was proved pretty much.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Yeah, they just kept it from falling the enemy hands.

Speaker 7 (43:28):
And we try to take like their bandoliers or like
their lbb's off that we try to take all that
still wouldn't.

Speaker 5 (43:34):
Go back to the to the morgue. So but yeah,
that I mean typical day.

Speaker 7 (43:40):
We get up pretty much each cow and you know,
like like Brian said, they'd say it's joel On Park today,
and we would roll out there and we'd roll up
to the and we'd always have a mortuary affairs marine
with us, sometimes Charel's with us. I believe the photo
that you you took when you had your interview when
you're the when the log book wouldn't the Marine Corps Museum,

(44:01):
I believe you're trucks.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
That was like.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Yeah, going to the city that was taking by kindly
and wound up being in the museum.

Speaker 6 (44:11):
I was going to say, your log books.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
Coordinate to get your calm log book into the museum
in that exhibit.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
And I had reached out to the museum IF a
few years ago before they had the ex everything up,
and they were not sure if they would be able
to include it. And if they are, if they can
include it, I'll drop them right right in the mail.
It's uh uh yeah. So just to go back a
little bit, uh talking about explosive ordinance, and I do

(44:42):
want to recognize Cheryl so uh you know, in thirty
years of a Marine Corps career, you know you need
uh meet breathing people.

Speaker 6 (44:50):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
You know, you meet people that you know just starre,
you know, cut from a different cloth. And Cheryl definitely
is that you said the uh you know, disarming or
a lot of the bodies would come in with like
grenades and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (45:05):
Sorry, you.

Speaker 6 (45:08):
Go ahead, Okay, got it.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
They would they would come in with you know, grenades
and stuff, and some of them advanced decomposition would be
like stuck in their bodies right the second they discovered it.
She would kick everybody out. And she was the one
that would go in uh and pride these things.

Speaker 4 (45:27):
Out and not knowing you know, what was next.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
She'd come out and I had a file cabin on
the side of the way station, and that's where I
would keep all the grenades. Uh, you know, just kind
of like open the drawer, put them in and close it.

Speaker 4 (45:40):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
And she would come with these just like you know,
like look like it was packed and cosmin, but it
was body fat.

Speaker 4 (45:46):
You know, he's just you know, brownish.

Speaker 3 (45:49):
She's like here you go, you know, like like all right,
it was in the ziploc bag and said it there.
And then the EOD guys would show up and they,
you know, they would like like, oh, where's the grenades.

Speaker 4 (45:57):
You know, they're thinking.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
It's like, you know, some some cleaning and you're like,
here's here's this bag, like a Russian pineapple or a
Mills Mills bomb or whatever.

Speaker 4 (46:06):
So, I mean it was you know, you you talk
about leaders.

Speaker 3 (46:10):
In leadership and people that you know go go to
the front do the hard thing. That was definitely Cheryl
over there, you know, going out checking on us, making
sure that you know, we had everything we needed to
do our jobs. We were I'll say, like when you
when you look at that city, you know, we're probably
like the softest target.

Speaker 4 (46:29):
You know.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Me as a staff sergeant, I had thirty days MCT
training from nineteen ninety four. Yes, I had done a
tour before that, but it was you know, it wasn't
a two way shoot range at all.

Speaker 4 (46:40):
You know, so going into that city.

Speaker 3 (46:42):
Where you know you got these these you know, some
hardened some some regular insurgents that you know, and and
grunts and just kind of going out there and you know,
so when I found out we were going, I had
an m sixteen eighty four. I went to the armory
and I got a shotgun. I'm like, yeah, because they
told me I'm going to be Claren Burams. So I'm like, well,
you know, I got like a ten minute crish course
from the MPs that that knew how to do it,

(47:04):
and uh, you know, I was was we would go
out on some of these uh these link ups, and
they're always the grunts are like, you want to take quote,
you know, you want to take points staffs on. I'm like, sure,
I have absolutely no business doing that, but okay, you
know we're here's your opportunity, right. So, uh, but you know,
clearing rooms to the shotgun, it's a lot a lot better.
You know, a little set, a little bullet big room.

Speaker 4 (47:25):
You know, you can you can you know, pump and
dump if you had to.

Speaker 5 (47:28):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (47:28):
But the things that we saw, uh and kind of
touched a little bit on earlier when when I said,
you know, everything brought to bear. Uh, every single engagement
aftermath that we stumbled on, every single body was was different, uh,
you know in the way and the method uh that
they that they died in the uh you know, and

(47:49):
and there's some that stick with it. When we went
in the house and there was like seven bodies around
like a in a living room, right, and like no, no,
obvious sign of injury, like food on the table, Like
what do we just walk into?

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Right?

Speaker 3 (48:01):
Like fuel air bomb? Who knows, you know, it wasn't
as small that would have dropped the house. You know,
you're just sitting there like, what's going on here?

Speaker 4 (48:07):
Right?

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Maybe they poison themselves, We don't know, but you know
it was every single one was was different. H remember
going out uh on one of them and we pull
up and there's literally you know, the shootings going down
the street and they're like, hey, that's the house. And
we started towards the house, you know, into the compound
and they had like a crawl space kind of deal,

(48:28):
like a little window on the bottom, and immediately just
started shooting. Uh don't know how they didn't hit anybody.
Like there was probably like four or five people like
literally standing you know, we're all like standing in that
little little you know, like the metal gate area. You know,
we don't We moved back and uh, the grunts I
think it was three one that I was linked up
with that day, and they were like, you know, hey,

(48:48):
there's a doser guy over there, you know, and they
start pointing at the D nine and uh, you know
those those guys are you know, I don't I don't
know where they found this this kid, you know, this
marine uh.

Speaker 4 (48:59):
But like he's got a skivvy shirt on.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
You know, in my head he's got like a white
construction helmet, but he probably didn't even have that. It's
got a massive dip and he's just got like this
the craziest smile ever. And he's just running this thing
towards the house. Uh and he just you know, ends
up hitting the corners or shooting at it, you know,
and he's just like got the you know, just set
grim uh drops the whole house on him. And that
was one of the you know, they're like, all right,
we don't have to go in that one like that.

(49:22):
You know, we're not gonna exhum yep. But Claire, you know,
other grunts are you know, they're like, should we chuck
a grenade under there?

Speaker 4 (49:29):
You or whatever? They're like, nah, it's it's it's fine.
They work itself.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
Out, and they just you know, we moved on to
the next But now remember getting sniped at as well,
coming coming around a corner.

Speaker 6 (49:40):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
So there was there was sniper's active in the city,
you know, shotgun, very sniper rifle, not a not gonna happen, but.

Speaker 4 (49:46):
It was, you know, the one time out of I
got twenty two.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
Twenty three months in country in Iraq and alone, and
I'd say that that one month period was the most it.
My first fear was losing to any of my marines,
but not knowing if I was gonna, you know, come
out of this thing alive, just because of you know,
all the death, all the things we're seeing, all the
things we're experiencing. Uh, totally living on on edge, you know,

(50:14):
we live. I lived in a way station with my marines.
We moved uh to the other side of the camp.
Uh and you know, it was pitch black, no lights.
You know, you go outside and take a leak. It's
like everybody's up, everybody's putting on mvgs. You know, it's like,
damn it. You know, open up the door, you know,
take take five steps out, like look, you know, looking around,
just fully expecting uh, you know, somebody who've gotten into
our our compound. But it was it was definitely uh,

(50:39):
you know different, there's a.

Speaker 4 (50:42):
For a lot of us.

Speaker 5 (50:43):
It was.

Speaker 4 (50:43):
It was in a weird way closure. We We've been
at TQ getting idf like every day rockets, mortars, uh,
streaking in.

Speaker 3 (50:51):
At one point there's artillery fired at the base from
they found a gun.

Speaker 4 (50:54):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
I'm watching one day and I'm seeing round skipping across
the flight line from like a near flat tree actory
shot that these guys we were shooting at, so uh
kind of seeing the other side of it now, like
all right, you know, you guys are you know, and
the and the shooting a TQ stop for a little bit,
uh during after that that event, so uh, you know,
but that that was the the insanity of it too,

(51:17):
just seeing all the people that came misguidedly from all
these other places.

Speaker 4 (51:22):
Just to die.

Speaker 5 (51:23):
Ah.

Speaker 3 (51:24):
You know, it's a it's a it's a waste on
both sides.

Speaker 4 (51:27):
You know, in that way.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
But now, during the during the build up, the preparation
to go into the city, they basically cord in the
city off right, and then they were like dropping flyers
or leaflets and saying like hey, if you're not a
bad guy, get out of here, because we're about to
come through now I understand. H most of the civilians
left and some fighters left. I know, guys that were

(51:50):
in Ramady at the same time said their aos picked
up because a lot of fighters left there to not
die in the city and continue to fight elsewhere. When
you guys were in the city, how often were you
running into civilians that decided to stay because imagine not
everybody had the means or the want to leave.

Speaker 4 (52:06):
None alive, that none alive.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
Well, when I was there, we had an insurgent come through,
realized we were there, and turned around and high tailed it,
and one of my marines started running after him. I said, nope,
get got back here.

Speaker 6 (52:24):
We're doing that.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
Somebody else would take care of him because you're afraid
of them leading you into an ambush, So for sure,
keep your focus and do what we're here to do.

Speaker 1 (52:37):
So, Michael, did you see any fighters, I mean alive live,
not for long? No, I am, And that, like.

Speaker 7 (52:47):
What Brian said, like that happened to us also, like
you know, we'd be going out to get somebody and
there be a situation very similar, snipers or whatever, and
then there's actually a guy from town from Lofayette was
the droser operator?

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Oh really?

Speaker 4 (53:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (53:05):
Nice?

Speaker 7 (53:05):
I didn't Yeah, yeah, who was David Rose?

Speaker 6 (53:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
The infantry did a good job of guiding us to
an area that they had recently cleared.

Speaker 6 (53:21):
So there weren't too many.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
I'm not going to say there weren't any, because there
were some, but there were not too many insurgents in
the same area as us because they they had us
kind of cordoned off. They had us in an area
that they had cleared, so we were as safe as
we could be if you were in the middle of
a combat. So, yeah, combat was being engaged.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
So were these were you guys at armored trucks or
were they up Were they up armored at that point?

Speaker 5 (53:53):
They had that they had the l armor on.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
Them, Oh, like the original armor.

Speaker 5 (53:56):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Yeah, I had it underneath to protect from ied explosions underneath,
but nothing side to side and they were open trucks,
so you were sitting in an open truck.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Yeah. Man, it's just such a wild job to have.
I mean, Michael, can you talk about you know, you
were you were there doing it with the guys and
girls that were out picking the bodies up on the regular.
How did like the attitudes of the people doing that
change over that month, because I imagine it's got to

(54:34):
start getting to you a little bit. I mean, maybe not,
but it feels like it's that's like something that after
a while, after seeing so many bodies and ways people
are getting killed and stuff like that, it's just got
to be a mind fuck for sure.

Speaker 7 (54:46):
But that's when you have great leadership that you know,
can do the grooming standards or you know, something to
fuck with you to you know, make sure that you
you know, bring you.

Speaker 5 (54:56):
Back to reality like that. Like I could imagine being.

Speaker 7 (55:00):
In their position, like yeah, we went out there and
did the job, but you know, trying to keep all
the junior Marines, you know, level headed and you know,
eyes on mission like it would have been. That's that
was why I was super pumped to do this to look,
you know, hear their perspective because my perspective, but that

(55:20):
I have a perspective of E three like they have
the perspective of the six and whatever.

Speaker 5 (55:25):
Harol was, I know she was the chief one officer,
but I can't remember grade.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
But justin I got something for you to what is
the chief one officer for doing in combat? That's just
crazy talk. You're supposed to be stipping coffee somewhere, skating
out of work.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
Right female in a combat zone going out picking up
dead bodies. So actually I was in charge of the
whole shebang. So mortuary affairs was my umbrella, and I
helped put that capability together for the Marine Corps.

Speaker 6 (55:56):
And I was.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
The senior officer in charge of mortuary affairs. Even when
I had majors in charge of a collection point, they
reported to me because I was the only one in
theater who knew what the hell we were supposed to
do and how it was supposed to get done.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
I imagine the generals would not have looked kindly on
you going out on missions. You know, there was probably
something they didn't want to see you doing.

Speaker 6 (56:25):
That that was true.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
And my young Marines, my lance corporals, my corporals go, ma'am,
but you got to stop coming into the city with us.
And I go, why, because I'm not having you do
something that I'm not doing. And they said, ma'am, because
if you die, then we're all fucked. Then we're all

(56:47):
screwed because nobody will know what we're supposed to be
doing if something happens to you. And so I did
restrict the number of times I went into the city
because it lowered their anxiety. I still went into the city,
but I didn't do it as often, and that was
that was the primary reason, is because they were overly concerned,

(57:10):
and the general officers were a little bit concerned. I
know that when I got there there I was, I
was in an office, and they asked why they needed me,
because if I was sitting in.

Speaker 6 (57:28):
An office and.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
I had I had written to the army. The Army
had what they considered to be their mortuary affairs officer.
Theater mortuary affairs officer turned out to be a young
lieutenant who didn't know much about mortuary affairs or how
we were supposed to do things.

Speaker 6 (57:50):
And I had sent an email.

Speaker 2 (57:53):
To the Army within about three weeks of begetting into
theaters saying asking them very pointed questions about what we're
going to be doing with insurgent remains that die in
our hospitals, how we're returning those two to the to the.

Speaker 6 (58:12):
To the civilians on.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
The combatants right, how we're getting them back back to them,
how we're coordinating.

Speaker 6 (58:20):
With the with the Iraqi government.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
Such as it was that we actually had to function through.
But I had about ten questions, and I knew the
answered all the questions, but I needed to know how
it had changed since two thousand and three, What their answers,
how their answers might be different. So I sent this
off and the time that Colonel Hudson came in and said,

(58:46):
why do I need you? You just sent away all
these questions. I've got the answers. They came back from
meth and and he handed it to me and I
there and I said, sir, here's here's the email traffic
from them to me three days ago asking me what

(59:08):
the answers to these questions were, which I provided, and
then they sent them back to me through channels. So
I answered my own questions for the.

Speaker 6 (59:20):
Just and the and the colonel.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Came back down and he said, you know you're never
going home right, And.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
You just worked yourself into a really busy job.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
Yeah, really busy job. So that's I mean. Mortuary affairs
is interesting and if you don't do it right, bad
things are going to happen all around. You're gonna have
real egg on your face in in the media if
you failed to something correctly right, if you don't recover

(59:52):
ours correctly, if you don't recover theirs correctly, there's there
can be a a lot of blame going around. We
didn't have any of that, so that was a success
on our part.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Yeah, what were we gonna say, Brian?

Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
Yeah, so, uh kind of go back a little bit
about like grooming standards and and things like that. Uh
So Generaltansky and Sergeant Major Kent uh future at the
time from Major and Marine Corps. They rolled in into
our position. Now one of my buddies was he was,
uh had been General Madison's radio operator and now he

(01:00:28):
was the I believe it was the calm com chief
for for the division CG.

Speaker 4 (01:00:32):
Jump. Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
They rolled in in like it was like like two
la V's I think they had maybe you know it
was it was it was like, uh, you know, a
real entourage, right, it was like some some amtracks I
think some la v's.

Speaker 4 (01:00:44):
They had a cobra or two flying overhead. Uh. You know,
they they came in and it was kind of like, you.

Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
Know, you know there's fighting, but you know, no, you know,
and and they ate their words at think of the
time he said nobody was shooting at us. And then
later that day or the next day. Uh, you know,
my buddy told me all about you know, they got
engaged and it didn't well for for the bad guys.
But I had my blouse off because I was outside,
We're filling sandbags to stack up along the windows of

(01:01:11):
this way station because you were taking a lot of
closer impacts.

Speaker 4 (01:01:14):
And he came over and started yelling at me about.

Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
How marines are dying, were dying wearing this uniform, you know,
like like the skivvy shirt. I guess gets you shot,
you know outside so you know, it's not like it's
it's not hot out or anything. And we're you know,
we're like, okay, I'm in my compound literally.

Speaker 4 (01:01:30):
You know, filling sand bags.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
Uh but uh one of my guys is is kind
of nasty, but he's like, I'll go get some sandbags,
and I'm like, okay, Well, in the in the seven
tons put sandbags on the floors because sometimes the bags.

Speaker 4 (01:01:44):
Ad leak and some nasty stuff to get in there.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
And a bunch of those dumped bags that had been
leaked on were like in a pit in the back,
and of course my marine goes and and are stacking
them all over the place. Ungodly amounts of flies start
like attacking the waste station. We have no day, you know,
because the smell uh permeated the entire compound from the
from the warehouse anyway. Uh so rarely was you know,

(01:02:10):
another bad smell wasn't going to make a difference. But uh,
these were you know, kind of the things that you
you know, you get into, like all right, we stop
feeling sand bank, but now you know, like, hey, where
where'd you get these? Because I'm looking and there's like
stuff on them, you know, like oh the pit in
the back. I'm like, oh, man, like okay, like just
just break it down with teasel or something.

Speaker 4 (01:02:28):
But uh, that was uh, you know, the smell.

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
I remember being in that tent and people are like, hey,
you put vics here, and and you know, She's like, nope,
Like every time you smell vix for the rest of
your life, you're going to be right back, right back
in this place.

Speaker 6 (01:02:42):
Uh yeah, go.

Speaker 4 (01:02:42):
Ahead, man.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
No, he was agreeing you stepped away. We actually had
so he mentioned that Michael mentioned that a minute ago
when you stepped away. He said the same thing that
that he used vixed and that she had told him
not to do that because of that thing.

Speaker 3 (01:02:57):
Right, and and the the other thing was, uh, you
know and kind of get I'll get it a little
bit into the visceral part of it. So uh, there
was a point where we did. I think they there
was a couple of trucks that rolled through with more
than one one level. Uh, they were kind of stacked
and uh I think CNN had a camera at the
at the door to our facility to get like that

(01:03:19):
perfect shot at the back of the seventh on with
just like you know cord Wood stacked bodies in the
back entering into the into the compound, and I think
like within like an hour it was like one level,
only like not up over the tailgate not you know,
because you know, just the sheer.

Speaker 4 (01:03:35):
Amount that that meant.

Speaker 3 (01:03:36):
I think we added or we had like three deaths
high school one, two, and three. Our call sign was
high school out there, and uh, you know, they they
they added the debts to to just kind of be
able to keep the the sheer numbers coming and getting
them onto those trucks. But you know, just the right people,
uh were there at the at the right time, I

(01:03:56):
think to make the whole thing happen.

Speaker 4 (01:03:58):
And there in the you know, as I as I
moved on with.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
My career, retired last year as a master guns from
from one meth Uh, you know, that was probably the
place with the least the egos that I think I've
ever seen. There was nobody you know, chest beating or
anything like that, other than when I got to to
put my glass on right future rummage in the Rine Corps.
But uh, you know it's like everybody, everybody's working, everybody
is dedicated to this mission.

Speaker 4 (01:04:22):
Uh and and coming back and then uh you know
the the uh the other the other thing. Yeah, I'll
perspect you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
I was gonna say, like the reality of war. You know,
it was like in your face every day. You know,
It's not the recruiting commercials that you saw or anything
like that. Like I'm sure, I mean, did it. We'll
start with Michael and then go to Sheryldon back to Brian.
Did it change your perspective of what combat is and
what the reality of war is?

Speaker 5 (01:04:54):
For sure?

Speaker 7 (01:04:55):
I mean I said it my other in the first
podcast when we actually went over everything, like Hollywood did
a good job on you know how things look, because
it's pretty pretty similar, I mean.

Speaker 5 (01:05:08):
Other than the smell.

Speaker 7 (01:05:09):
And but I'll never forget the first time we went
out and I believe Cheryl was with us on that
truck when we got off the truck and go to
get the first bodies of my team was the first
one to go out in the city and there was
a pair of legs and blue swet sweatpants in the
middle of the road, and I was like, I just

(01:05:29):
I was like, what the fuck are we doing? Like
it was very surreal at that moment, Like and now
till the day I die, I'll always remember that that
one pair of legs, blue sweatpants in the middle of
the road.

Speaker 5 (01:05:43):
So yeah, it definitely changes your perspective a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
Cheryl, you were kind of more ingrained in this because
that was you know, you know, you knew about this
job and you were coordinating it. But I mean having
it at that level, did it kind of change your
thoughts about the job and what you were doing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
Well, I knew what we were going to do, but
just like daies gentlemen, there's always a first time for everybody.
So this was my first time that I went into combat.
I went in two thousand and three to do it,
but I was I had to train, man, quip, plan,

(01:06:23):
and execute. So every time the town was open, I
was there and I was processing along with the Marines
as they came. Every time there was a convoy, I
was out on a convoy recovering remains unless we had
multiple convoys going out at the same time, and I
was doing I did everything they did the insurgent remains

(01:06:47):
at the Potato factory, but we did us coalition, civilian children,
and enemy dead.

Speaker 6 (01:06:58):
So we processed everything.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
If you were with the mortuary affairs unit, if they
died in our aor we were responsible for the recovery, processing, return,
or internment of those remains. So my main concern was
always how is this affecting my young marines and what

(01:07:22):
can I do to ensure that they go home safely?
And I had done research and realized that one of
the biggest causes of post traumatic stress isn't just having
a catastrophic event occur, but it was feeling out of control,

(01:07:43):
like you had no control, and so therefore you were
constantly reliving it, trying to trying to figure out if
there was something you could do, some way of you
reacting or interacting, that could change the outcome of that.
And my concern was always how can I put more
control into the hands of my young marines with the

(01:08:09):
understanding that they still needed to perform the mission. So
we always had a saying, and that was that if
for any reason something comes in and you go not today,
not this remained.

Speaker 6 (01:08:25):
You could walk out.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
You could go take a break, go back to your
huge put on a movie, read a book, write a
letter home, whatever you needed to do.

Speaker 6 (01:08:32):
And the joke was you all have that ability.

Speaker 2 (01:08:36):
You just can't all do it on the same day,
you know, and leave me here in the tent alone.
You have to somebody has to stay. But everybody had
that right. And talking to my marines even years later,
they said three things helped them cope with what that
mission was, whether it was ours or theirs, or children,

(01:08:58):
and it was if it was a child who was
always me. I never had young marines doing that. It
was older marines volunteer myself that did those remains. But
the three the three things that they said was one
is you told us we didn't do anything to get
them to us, But what we could do is get

(01:09:18):
them home safely to their family, so their family had closure.
One was that they could step out at any time
and take a break and come back when they were ready.
And if they weren't ready to come back, I would
find them another job to do with with the unit,
so that they were never passed off to somebody else.

Speaker 6 (01:09:41):
They didn't go to.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
Over to the headshed, they didn't go over to.

Speaker 6 (01:09:47):
The mess tent. They stayed with us.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
They cleaned weapons, they fixed vehicles, they they packaged up
things for us, but they they didn't have to process
remains until they were ready to do so. And the
last thing was that everybody has a breaking point and
I don't know where that breaking point is, and hopefully

(01:10:13):
you'll never reach it, but if you do, we'll take
care of you. Well, we'll try to help you through it.
And we've been true to our word on those areas,
and my marines have been okay. So that was That's
the biggest perspective I think I have that's different than
anybody else's or than most people's, is that regardless of

(01:10:33):
who did this mission, it was because of me they
were doing it. So I have to take ownership of
that and the successes as well as the failures. So
I have marines with problems that still have problems to
this day, and that's partly on me. So, yeah, changes
your perspective, But at the same time, we did more

(01:10:54):
good than we did harm.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
Yeah, Now for you, I mean, leadership is a lonely position, right.
You know, you said you can't walk away. The Marines
can talk to each other about what's going on. Who
did you talk to I didn't.

Speaker 6 (01:11:10):
I don't need to talk. I'm good.

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
Yeah, honestly, yeah, I honestly was. I was lady at
the thing. They'll tell you. I was one of the
older people. I was probably forty nine when they met me,
and I think I was forty nine when they met me.

Speaker 6 (01:11:29):
So I was a little bit older.

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):
I grew up in a family where people died and
you went to funerals. I was going to funerals when
I was four, and.

Speaker 6 (01:11:39):
So life and death were a part of my upbringing.
And so I came from a big family.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
We have even to this day, we have over one
hundred people that show up at family reunion. So somebody
was always passing away and you were, and.

Speaker 6 (01:11:58):
From various causes.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
So I had a respect for life and a respect
for death when I started this, and so I never
had it. I never had a problem with it, but
I realized that there were people that that did and
you had to take care of them.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
Yeah, now a question I had or you know, once
you're processing like these fighters, I've read a couple of
articles about the whole the mission, the detail and stuff,
and it sounds like they were almost put into a
mass grave right outside of the potato factory. Now is that?

(01:12:35):
How was that? How did that go? I mean, was it?
Were they from the time a fighter is picked up?
Obviously Brian showed us the log book and it said, hey,
they're being picked up from this location? Are they tracked
from that point all the way until you know? How
long are they tracked? Could if I'm in Iraqi and
I know my son fought there and died, can I

(01:12:56):
find them? Is there a way for them to locate
that that person's body? Can you can you kind of
explain how that worked?

Speaker 6 (01:13:02):
Sure, so.

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
We knew we were recovering the remains. And I worked
through nine ministries in of the of the Iraqi government
in quotes, because the Iraqi government wasn't truly formed and
it was still undergoing a lot of changes. But I
worked through locally, moms, I worked through the Ministry of Health,

(01:13:27):
I worked through their various ministries to make sure we
could do the transportation, that we were putting them in
the ground at the right place, that it was an
approved location, and so coordinating with them, I finally got

(01:13:50):
a bagdad to send me. They sent us five people
to help coordinate this, and initially they didn't even want
to talk to me.

Speaker 6 (01:13:58):
Here I am a woman.

Speaker 2 (01:14:01):
They don't like women in positions of authority. And so
I had a major who was with me, who was
a doc, and.

Speaker 6 (01:14:09):
He was from originally from Egypt.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
His family spoke Arabic, and so he was my translator
when these guys showed up on my doorstep, and they
told him to tell me to go away and the
two of them would sort it out. And he had
to inform them that nothing was going to get done
less I had there. I had buy in on it
and approved it because I was in charge. And so

(01:14:38):
they begrudgingly started talking to me, and we went into
the potato factory and I showed them. At that time,
I think I had maybe four hundred remains in there,
and because we hadn't had a we had permission to
gather them. We didn't have permission to bury them or
anybody to turn them over to. So they were in

(01:14:59):
this potato in a cool room waiting for that approval.
And so these moms and government officials came.

Speaker 6 (01:15:08):
I took them into the factory.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
I had strategically placed remains that were not pleasant near
the front so that I could unzip them and show
them what they had and told them.

Speaker 6 (01:15:21):
They could bury them.

Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
We'd be happy to when we were done cleaning up
the city, to turn over the potato factory and all
of the remains to them, and they could do it,
or I would do it in accordance with international law
and US procedures, which is to dig a trench about
seventy feet long, four feet deep and about three feet wide,

(01:15:45):
and put remains in there from head to toe throughout there.
So a seventy foot one you could fit about ten
remains in a row, right, because bodybags about seven feet long,
and you could just put them in the ground and
then bury the trench right. And then you mark the

(01:16:05):
ends of the trench with how many remains are there,
and in a log you record what numbers they are
so numbered. Personnel of each remain got a number, and
you'd be able to tell who was in what spot
within that row. And that's how we buried them. We

(01:16:28):
made two concessions. One is we made the trench one
hundred feet long, because they don't want remains to touch,
and we still put ten remains in each row, but
we now had a separation between them, and we put
them on their left side facing Mecca. So we dug
the trenches so that they faced Mecca, and then we

(01:16:51):
placed them on their side so that they were facing Mecca.
Those were the concessions that we made on that, but
it was not a mass grave. They were in row
and then they had separation because when you filled it in,
we filled it in by hand initially, and then when
they were all the remains were covered, then we pushed

(01:17:11):
dirt in with the little baccos and finished doing it.
Then we ran little bobcats up and down in between
the aisles and did what we called the cemetery beautification process.
The locally moms came out and blessed the ground before
we started bearing. They observed the initial day of interment

(01:17:35):
for each of these remains, and after a day of
seeing the process, they signed off on the procedures that
as outlined and they went away and they didn't come
back until the cemetery was full, and then they came
back reblessed the land, and I turned over all the

(01:17:57):
records to Core Army Corps up at Camp Liberty and
they turned them over to the federal government. We made
three copies, one for us, one for the local imams,
and one for the government of Iraq, so that they

(01:18:17):
could at any time go back and try to recover remains.
So if we had identification on the remains, knew who
they were, replace that in the log book. Most of
them did not. Most of them were unidentified remains.

Speaker 6 (01:18:34):
But there again we gave.

Speaker 2 (01:18:37):
As much detail as we could, so if they had tattoos,
if they were a certain height, a certain weight, if
they had clothing that would identify and we provided all
those details on documents and photographed when possible the remains
said that they could identify them by a photograph.

Speaker 1 (01:18:58):
How big of an area was this, You're talking almost
six hundred bodies. I mean, yes, that's got to be
a massive area just for just for the bodies it was.

Speaker 2 (01:19:08):
But what it was was they had a cemetery already
constructed in the area, and they just extended the area
of the cemetery so that we could build on in
ture of the remains at the end of this cemetery.
So it's an expansion of that area. So but you're right,

(01:19:30):
it was. It was a large area because we had
to have rows for each of the individual remains to
be placed in and then mark those rows. And in
addition to that, we had a separate row that was
for portions, because when we couldn't identify a portion, it
would go in the in its own bag and placed

(01:19:54):
in the ground in this specific row that was designed
to accommodate unidentified portions. So it was an operation yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:07):
I mean that sounds like its own full time job
of just people just doing burials well.

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
And so we kept them until we were pretty much
done with the cemetery.

Speaker 6 (01:20:17):
And it was the last few days of.

Speaker 2 (01:20:19):
Our joint time at the Potato Factory before we moved
back into Camphalujah proper that we did the internment. So
we we finalized our day at the Potato Factory by
going out with truckloads of remains doing the interment and
then coming back the next day.

Speaker 6 (01:20:41):
We had to wait. We had.

Speaker 2 (01:20:44):
We had the CBS there with us digging the trenches
for us. So at a one hundred foot long trench
four feet between trenches, because you need to be able
to do bobcats in between to clean it up and
fill in in the roads, so they would dig trenches

(01:21:06):
for us.

Speaker 6 (01:21:07):
We'd fill them up as fast as they could dig them.

Speaker 1 (01:21:09):
That's so crazy. Did any I mean, were you guys
technically outside of the city. Could Were there any civilians
that came and tried to find their loved ones remains
or No?

Speaker 2 (01:21:25):
Not from not from the second Battle of Felujah. However,
when I was in the capacity at t q al
as Sad those bases, when we had insurgents or families,
Iraqi families, because we had Iraqi families.

Speaker 6 (01:21:44):
That.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
The driver of the vehicle thought it would be a
good idea to try to even though we had it
posted in Arabic and English on the back of the convoys,
do not try to go around this convoy.

Speaker 6 (01:22:00):
Do not come into us.

Speaker 2 (01:22:04):
VBIEDs were a real thing, and qual born i eds
were a real thing where families or individuals would in
cars full of explosive would run into the back end
or into the side of a convoy. So they posted
these signs do not go around us. If if a
family decided they didn't want to follow a convoy and

(01:22:27):
tried to go around us, they got lit up by
fifty cows. And because they were considered to be a
real threat because of the VBIE deeps in the area
that was that was killing Marines an army personnel. So
when we had those people and they they we recovered them,
we brought them back to base with us, or they

(01:22:48):
were in the hospital and died, they would be turned
over to us. Those individuals we did, we had family
members come and get them.

Speaker 6 (01:22:56):
It was usually.

Speaker 2 (01:22:59):
The local chief in or the police in that area
that would come with the family come to the gate
say that they had a family member that was killed
and was either at the hospital or still on base.

Speaker 6 (01:23:14):
And they wanted to know where they were.

Speaker 2 (01:23:16):
So at the mortuary affairs collection points, it was easier
to turn those remains over to family members than it
was to try to figure out where to bury them
on a base, which we also did, and so we
kept log books with that information and with photos of them,

(01:23:37):
and when family came, we asked them if they had
a picture or if they could identify.

Speaker 6 (01:23:42):
I had the.

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):
Interpreters with me, and I also had forms that I
made up that were release forms for release of remains
that were written in Arabic and also in English on
the other side, and the family members would sign for
the remains.

Speaker 6 (01:24:01):
If we had them.

Speaker 2 (01:24:02):
And we turned them over to them, we would place
them in a white human remains pouch because that was
more sensitive to that those families, and they would actually
bring a wood coffin and we would place the bag
in the coffin and then they.

Speaker 6 (01:24:22):
Would drive a drive away with it. So we had both.

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):
We had those things that did occur in those at
those locations.

Speaker 1 (01:24:31):
Yeah, that would be rough to have to interact with
the families, you know after in a situation like that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:38):
Yeah, yeah, you return children and adults to family members.

Speaker 1 (01:24:45):
Ye, what was that your hold? No, Brian, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:24:48):
So I got a couple of little things for show
and tell. So these are the leaflets that were dropped
in the city of Fallujah that're specific. They basically say,
you know, if you drive your car, you're going to die.
They they wanted no vehicles on the road. Uh, there's
a a radio station to listen to that was going
to give information for when they could.

Speaker 4 (01:25:08):
Start driving again.

Speaker 5 (01:25:09):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:25:10):
And when we.

Speaker 3 (01:25:11):
Did our link ups, a couple of those crunts were
real happy that at fours on their backs and anytime
they found a vehicle.

Speaker 4 (01:25:16):
Uh, they were lighting that thing up.

Speaker 6 (01:25:18):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:25:18):
It could be in somebody's backyard, you know, behind like
a three foot cement wall, not going anywhere, and they
were they were going to put around in it. Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:25:25):
So that that was the first leaflet.

Speaker 3 (01:25:26):
This leaflet was basically saying Coalition wants you wants this
Iraq for you, your leaders want this Iraq, and this
is what the terrorists want, so kind of give them
an idea, you know, you know, give us a call
and it's got it's got.

Speaker 4 (01:25:42):
Phone numbers that you can dial, uh to give up
the bad guys.

Speaker 3 (01:25:45):
And then these were dropped as well, just basically you know,
call this number if you have any information on any
anybody that's doing any kind of terrorist insurgent.

Speaker 4 (01:25:56):
Activities and will come roll them up.

Speaker 3 (01:25:58):
Mhm.

Speaker 4 (01:25:58):
So yeah. So so with the vehicles, I mean that
was a big thing.

Speaker 3 (01:26:02):
I remember being at the factory one day and a
Striker vehicle came in. They you know, the Army strikers,
and they had a guy that had ran a checkpoint
and they brought him in a.

Speaker 4 (01:26:13):
Big, kind of like heavy set guy.

Speaker 3 (01:26:15):
Uh and you know, we started looking at him and
he looked like he was alive.

Speaker 4 (01:26:20):
He wasn't alive.

Speaker 3 (01:26:21):
Uh, you know, started started checking him out and had
his wallet, and inside of his wallet were all these
photos he had been a pilot, uh, and the pictures
were of him in like Russia, learning the Russian how
to fly the Russian planes. He had like one of
those like the like those fur hats you know that
they wear. Yeah, you know, and you know, was he
an insurgent?

Speaker 4 (01:26:42):
Was he a part of that?

Speaker 3 (01:26:42):
We don't know, Uh, but it was you know, we
started also being that kind of point that one. And
then there was a teenager that had tried to run
over the highway to get into the city.

Speaker 4 (01:26:55):
Uh, and the army guys that just you know, took
their saw.

Speaker 3 (01:26:58):
And angled it and took him out, and they brought
him in sitting up in the backseat of the vehicle
in a body bag. And uh, you know, at first
you look at him, You're like, man, what did this
guy do? You're like, you're just trying to go home.
Right in his pocket, he's got one of those like
mahajedeen green headbands.

Speaker 4 (01:27:15):
So you know, you're like, oh, okay. You know, there
there was a.

Speaker 3 (01:27:20):
Lot of a lot of weirdness went on at that
time too, talking about like collections, Uh, you know, they
found the rat lines, they found the farmhouses that these
guys were stuck at.

Speaker 6 (01:27:30):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:27:30):
You know, he pulled USB Army intel guys who put
that in and these guys carried everything on them, uh,
from one point to another, and it showed like maps,
you know, all the safe houses that they took to
get from Syria down.

Speaker 4 (01:27:41):
So buddies that were ci.

Speaker 3 (01:27:42):
Human they would come in, we'd give him the info
and they were running out and they were doing hits
on these houses and just rolling these guys up so
before they could get into the city.

Speaker 4 (01:27:51):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:27:52):
So we saw that the Uh there was an HVT
that tried to gain access to the compound and he
left in cuff said he was the owner. I went
up there with one of the turps. He started talking
to him, and his story was not adding it up.
It seemed like he just was trying to gain access,
trying to scope the place. Sadd He's wearing like this
like brown suit, you know, and he's just like, yeah,

(01:28:14):
I owned this place, you know, and and you know,
the intel guys from the army that were there, we
had three houses that were there. They walked him into
the house, sat him down, and uh, you know, started
asking pretty pointy questions. And when the guy couldn't answer,
you know, he said to him, you know, I don't know,
means you're going to open grave? And uh, you know,
the guys spilled.

Speaker 4 (01:28:32):
A little bit of the beans and they figured out
who he was.

Speaker 3 (01:28:34):
Five minutes later, uh you know, the Blackjack guys came
picked him up and rolled him out.

Speaker 4 (01:28:40):
So it was like a lot of weird stuff. What's
going on? We were targeted. We had a one twenty
two streak right in.

Speaker 3 (01:28:48):
Uh yeah, chief offer itis about uh like shove me
through the doorway of the way station. As I came in,
I almost fell on top of me, uh you know,
and and I know she was trying to get it,
but she was trying to get me like that was her.
Uh you know, like the fucking you know, because you
heard it and then you know, and it was you know,

(01:29:10):
probably let's listen, uh you know, fifty seventy five meters
away where it impacted. It hit like a like a
like a big post next to this building next to us.
But that was our you know, kind of baptism by fire.
Was like you know, going in realizing that, you know,
if they want to touch us, they're gonna they're gonna try,

(01:29:30):
you know, the best they can because we we are
that target.

Speaker 1 (01:29:34):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:29:34):
And then you.

Speaker 3 (01:29:36):
Know, as we started to wind things down, started hitting
some of the different areas. There's a place Joelon Park
where they hit a torture house. Uh. And they knew
that because of the way that some of the remains
in there had been had been abused. And this I'm
pretty sure you probably still have one of these men.
But they got like one hundred of these books. And

(01:29:57):
this is basically I went into the Google app and
you can like translate it, uh, and it's basically how
to be a Jahad as one on one Like it's like,
you want to be a martyr, this is what martyrs do.
This is you know, it's fascinating reading because it mixes
like the religion with being a fighter and you know,
and it's also kind of counter to some of the things.

(01:30:18):
You know that the discussion of purity and all this
other stuff. But a lot of these guys were high.

Speaker 4 (01:30:23):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:30:23):
You know, they were doing all sorts of stuff in
the city.

Speaker 4 (01:30:27):
You know, when they when.

Speaker 3 (01:30:28):
They came to fight, you see these these types of
things and indicators. So uh, in our way station that
we are at. We found drugs that the fighters that
had previously lived at the factory had, you know, had
left behind. H.

Speaker 4 (01:30:44):
So you know, as as we we uh we started
to wind down, we were able to go to Campfalujah.

Speaker 3 (01:30:52):
I think we'll first talk about the Thanksgiving meal because
I think that that still was like one of the
best meals I've ever eaten. And I'll send a photo
of the of of it. Uh, you know, it's uh,
it was amazing. Came in fatcan from Camp Fallujah. Up
to that point, it was just Mr E's like three
times a day. I think we might have had coffee,
but I don't know if we had like a lot

(01:31:12):
of hot wets. I think it was just you know,
whatever's in that in that bag, it is where they're eating.

Speaker 4 (01:31:16):
So it was like having to get that meal. Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:31:19):
Then we ended up going back to Camp Fallujah and
uh and I remember the uh the chow hole workers,
so uh, you know, imagine just the worst smell that
you can ever imagine. And then it's just living in
your clothes like we haven't uh you know, really bathe,
we haven't washed clothing.

Speaker 4 (01:31:37):
You know, you came with like two pairs of canis
if you were lucky.

Speaker 6 (01:31:40):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:31:40):
Some of the guys weren't ready. It was pretty cold.
We were trying to get fleeces. We were getting black
fleeces pushed in from from Camp Fallujia.

Speaker 4 (01:31:47):
Uh. And one of the the.

Speaker 3 (01:31:50):
Things is we went back to the camp to to
the chow hall and uh, you know, it was like
there was like a chowhole. First sergeant or something and
was like whoa, like you guys, you guys stay, you
can't come in here.

Speaker 4 (01:32:01):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:32:02):
And I heard I heard somebody in the back of
the line click off safe on their weapon, and I
was like, I think we're gonna be eat in here, dude.
So we all came in and people just like like
just got the fuck away from.

Speaker 4 (01:32:13):
Us where we were saying that. You know, they just
were like, what is that?

Speaker 3 (01:32:17):
Like that the horrific smell? So uh, you know, that
was kind of our welcome back to to the uh
you know, to to the camp.

Speaker 4 (01:32:27):
As as things started started winding down.

Speaker 6 (01:32:30):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:32:31):
I'd say from a from a psychological perspective, when we
got back to t Quh, the site team that that
I dealt with and most of the people, pretty much
everybody that we spoke with were really uh uh kind
of into the visceral, into the like they they were
more concerned, not concerned. They're more interested right in what

(01:32:53):
we had seen and you know and everything else than
than how we were actually doing. Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:32:59):
It was weird because they would just ask you all
these questions about bodies and you know, what did you
see and what was it like?

Speaker 4 (01:33:04):
You know, instead of you know the typical you know,
couch talk type stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:33:11):
You know that that that was you know, it was
like we we had each other those that that were there,
so we kind of could could you know, work together
to work through any of the things that were bothering us.
But as far as like the team support and it's
goat exponentially better through the years and my time and service,
you know, matured that there was a greater focus on it.

(01:33:34):
But again, uh, you know, trying to find site support
for two hundred Marins that have seen uh, you know,
kind of the the unspeakable things that man can do
each other. Uh, you know, it's a fellow man was
kind of you know in combat, but you know, it was.

Speaker 4 (01:33:48):
It was definitely different and they're you know, but but
I will say that you know, Chief farmstanders. She she
kept a lot of the war tourists away.

Speaker 3 (01:33:58):
She kept them, you know, at the only the only
time I could I could think of there there had
been somebodies interred and we had a visiting officer uh
come out, uh you know, decent, decently ranked and wanted
to see what a collection was like. And you know,
they were like, well, we're like we're done for the day, dude.
And there was like a call like, hey, there's a

(01:34:19):
cemetery up the road, and you know it's it's crazy
because it's in the log book, but they sent one
of my guys out and basically it's like a couple
of Iraqi soldiers are like, you know, smoking, They're like
he's over there, and you know, guys go over with
the shovels and they're like where And they basically exhumed
this guy and this officer was just standing there like
you know, like yes yet like you know, pulling it

(01:34:41):
in and it's like, dude, like that's not it's not
even our mission like to do that.

Speaker 5 (01:34:46):
But it was.

Speaker 4 (01:34:46):
A you know, just this weird, you.

Speaker 3 (01:34:50):
Know kind of thing that that we we got into
that people were always like what was it, Like, how
was it, you.

Speaker 4 (01:34:55):
Know, like, well, it's sucked. It was. It was bad.

Speaker 3 (01:34:58):
But we we had a massive collection of until we
had you know, we cleared the you know, the health
hazards to stop our marines from from getting sick. And
you know, we we helped the people of a city
not come home to like dead insurgent storage you know,
in in their in their living room.

Speaker 4 (01:35:14):
So it kind of worked out, uh that way.

Speaker 3 (01:35:17):
But but those are kind of the things that stick
with you and you know, being able to see, you know,
all the things that we saw. It's my dad, Vietnam
veteran radio operator right said to me once said, killing
a man doesn't make you doesn't change his mind, It
just makes you feel better.

Speaker 2 (01:35:34):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:35:35):
And I took that with me through all my deployments,
uh and never really held any hatred or anything, you know,
in my heart for these guys because they were misguided.

Speaker 4 (01:35:46):
In doing what they thought.

Speaker 6 (01:35:47):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:35:48):
They you know, they came to die, you know, legitimately.

Speaker 5 (01:35:51):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:35:51):
You know, even this book talks about it like hey,
being a martyr, like do what you gotta do. Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:35:56):
So I think in their.

Speaker 3 (01:35:57):
Minds, this was their great adventure, this was their uh,
their safari, their chance to you know, go out and
see glory and you know, ended up with all of
them uh in you know, neatly placed trenches north of
the city.

Speaker 1 (01:36:11):
Yeah, you know, Michael, how long were you in Iraq
after that mission was over?

Speaker 5 (01:36:18):
Well, I think we left in March or April.

Speaker 1 (01:36:20):
So you were there for a while afterwards.

Speaker 7 (01:36:22):
In Yeah, so like, uh, I think a two of
us went and did well, that's when I went out
to the e CPS and helped let the populace back
in to Uhljah.

Speaker 1 (01:36:33):
Was it weird like moving from that mission to do
other things or was it just like another day, here
we go, another mission.

Speaker 5 (01:36:42):
I mean it was definitely a nice break.

Speaker 1 (01:36:45):
Oh yeah, I bet, but yeah, yeah it was.

Speaker 5 (01:36:48):
It was uh, it was you know, we were just
trying to complete the mission.

Speaker 7 (01:36:51):
Well, you know we did, We did the mortuary affairs
and then you know, we turned the city back over.

Speaker 5 (01:36:57):
To the the civilian populace.

Speaker 1 (01:37:00):
Yeah. How long was the ryl How long was the
potato factory open? I guess after the battle? I mean,
what was what was the last day that you were there?
And what was that?

Speaker 2 (01:37:11):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:37:12):
What was like a turnover?

Speaker 2 (01:37:13):
Like it was, well, the turnover was just a matter
of turning the keys back over to civil affairs, who
then turned them over to the guy who was going
to monitor it. So that was that was not a
big deal. We just cleaned up our area, left nothing
behind the calm. The truck company did a great job

(01:37:35):
of cleaning up their areas so that so that we
were leaving it the way Marines always leave an area
better than when you came in.

Speaker 6 (01:37:47):
But that part was easy.

Speaker 2 (01:37:49):
And then we operated out of Camp Fallujah for another
few few weeks, just as everything dwindled.

Speaker 6 (01:37:57):
Down and as they found more mains in the.

Speaker 2 (01:38:00):
City, then we would come out of the city, out
of Camp Fallujah, go to the city and recover those
remains and then take them over within a day or
two and put them in the cemetery that we had
already started. But that that operation lasted maybe another two
weeks after we closed down the potato factory, and then

(01:38:23):
it was then it was done, and then the Marines
went back to processing remains of US service members who
were dying and coalition who were dying in the during
conflict so or from accidents.

Speaker 1 (01:38:39):
Yeah, that's so crazy.

Speaker 6 (01:38:43):
It was crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:38:44):
When we took over the potato factory, they had about
six or eight people living there, and it turned out
that they were gathering intel of our convoys and relaying
that information off so that they could attack convoys they
were leaving the city and I'm leaving the area or

(01:39:04):
tramp traveling through. So by taking over the potato factory,
attacks on convoys went down for a while until they
figured out a new place to scout it out from,
So that was interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:39:19):
Brian. Brian had mentioned at the beginning that the potato
factory is no longer there, which I mean, I'm not surprised.
I can't imagine like using that building for anything after that,
you know what I'm saying, Like, that's just that's so
I don't know. It's so gnarly what that saw, I guess,
And it was.

Speaker 2 (01:39:39):
It was a potato processing area, so they had all
the potato seed but in there in a in a room,
and when we turned it over, the potato seed was
in a cool room and that was the only key
to the only area that we didn't have. After we
ensured that there wasn't anything in that area but potato seed,

(01:40:00):
we gave that key back to the Iraqi government because
they were going to need that to feed their people
and to plant crops. So it was still operating I
think for a few years as a as as a
potato factory and as a potato processing area afterwards, because.

Speaker 6 (01:40:19):
We only used two of the rooms. You throw enough
bleach on there, it.

Speaker 2 (01:40:23):
Works still and the buildings were all functioning when we left.

Speaker 6 (01:40:28):
So I think if.

Speaker 2 (01:40:30):
They've removed that area, they've just placed purchased a new
building or built a new construction and moved it.

Speaker 6 (01:40:39):
For that reason more than anything else.

Speaker 4 (01:40:43):
It looks like it's going to be a shopping mall now.

Speaker 3 (01:40:45):
Yeah, the the so I.

Speaker 2 (01:40:50):
Think in a more remote area, potato, a potato factory
and storage facility doesn't have to be at primaryalists day.
And I think the city's expanded and that's a more
built up area than before the Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:41:08):
I remember when we got there. Uh, those guys getting
locked up. Uh. It was like a guy and his uncle.
There was like a kid and an old guy.

Speaker 6 (01:41:15):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:41:15):
The only person that stayed was a man named Abu
dres Uh. He lived in a small building that like
was his Like you go in and it's like pictures
of him family, Like you know, he's got rugs on
the wall and all sorts of stuff, like he was
the official caretaker of the place. Uh, you know, and
he kind of opened up a bit once those guys
were in the back of a vic getting driven off.

Speaker 4 (01:41:36):
Uh to the dfact. He uh, you know, he he
got cool.

Speaker 3 (01:41:40):
And just was like, hey, just stay in here, don't
you know, don't do anything for you know, crazy, If
you need food, we'll bring you food.

Speaker 4 (01:41:45):
Like he wasn't a hostage.

Speaker 3 (01:41:46):
He was happy to be safe in there.

Speaker 4 (01:41:49):
Uh and you know he just the f TV a
satellite TV up.

Speaker 3 (01:41:53):
You know, he was he was happy, so uh, you know,
he wasn't going into the building, soe I'm sure he
was happy about that.

Speaker 1 (01:42:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:42:00):
Well yeah, over and checking equipment, making sure that it
was functioning, that the potatoes were staying at the right temperature,
the seeds were there. But he was the only person
that we allowed to stay in the area because he
needed to maintain that facility and keep it operational.

Speaker 1 (01:42:18):
Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you guys coming on today.
I mean, like I said at the beginning, I think
this is a part of that battle that doesn't really
get discussed a lot. And I hope maybe I don't
know if you guys have ever planned one. But it'd
be nice if you guys were able to get some
kind of reunion together where everyone that was involved in
that kind of michig and get together and swap stories

(01:42:39):
or whatever. I'd like to give you guys each an
opportunity if you have anything left to say, I guess
we'll start lowest ranking first. Michael. You know, if you
got anything you want to shout out, or if you
want to put out your social media for anyone or
anybody like that, go ahead.

Speaker 5 (01:42:54):
Uh No, I'm good.

Speaker 7 (01:42:55):
I just appreciate you guys coming on and be on
to hear their perspective was nice, So appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:02):
Yeah, Brian.

Speaker 3 (01:43:05):
So the one thing I do want to touch on
is the you know, the the Marines that were a
part of this mission. H from everything I'm tracking, were
all they were submitted. It was for for a blanket car.
It's going to be a blanket combat action ribbon. Uh,
it was submitted. I don't know what the politics were
behind it, and I don't know if that's a surprise

(01:43:26):
you mean. But before before I left MLG. So I
retired out of the MEF last year and about two
and a half years ago, I was up at MLG
and I spoke with my g one because I could
see you know the award it was in eye apps,
uh and it was zz so it was denied. I
think that what they were looking for at the time
was kind of a individual write ups advice blanket because

(01:43:51):
in two thousand and three blanket cars to go for
blanket cars, and even like Navy ships, rocket goes over them.
They can submit for a blanket for the entire ship.
But you know, if you when when you look at
the criteria, uh, you know, can't engage an enemy while
under fire, you know, doing.

Speaker 4 (01:44:06):
Your you know, doing your.

Speaker 3 (01:44:07):
Job Marines, you know, navigating in and out of kill
kill zones, returning fire on insurgents. Uh. You know that
it was to me, it was kind of just a
shame that, uh, it wasn't recognized at that level and
it wasn't seen at that level as a bona fide
combat experience.

Speaker 4 (01:44:25):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:44:26):
You know, for the for those Marines, the Marines of
the Debt, because.

Speaker 4 (01:44:29):
Day in and day out, they were going out, they
were under fire. Uh. We relied heavily on.

Speaker 3 (01:44:34):
The infantry men who were awesome at providing that security,
but sometimes they needed a uh you know, extra extra
set of guns up on a target, and and the
Marines of the of the Debt were We're able to
provide that when when needed. But that was something that
you know, if there's a right that could be wronged, uh,

(01:44:55):
you know, to go back into that award and just
you know, all the rosters, everything's there.

Speaker 4 (01:45:01):
It's just you know, hit send.

Speaker 1 (01:45:03):
Yeah, Michael, you received a combat action for that deployment,
did you.

Speaker 5 (01:45:08):
Yes, I got mine from the E C. P.

Speaker 3 (01:45:13):
Oh, Okay, it was a different yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:45:16):
A different mission. So I wrote up a couple of.

Speaker 2 (01:45:20):
My marines for cars, and they they received them. I
had to have very strong justification, and I had to
have dates and times and reported actions where they returned
fire and when I was there. They said in the

(01:45:42):
area unless you it was organized and you returned organized fire,
they would not provide and give you a car. So
most of us did not receive it. I never received
one because I never returned fire. I had a pistol
most of the time, so that if they got that
close to me, we were in a lot more trouble

(01:46:04):
than I thought.

Speaker 6 (01:46:05):
So, yeah, but I I that was the first.

Speaker 2 (01:46:10):
Time I've heard about a blanket car for for those Marines,
I will agree that we were often in harm's way,
but we didn't have an organized return of fire.

Speaker 6 (01:46:24):
Most of the time.

Speaker 1 (01:46:28):
Admin nerds not in combat deciding who was in combat.
You know, no offense to the admin nerds out there, you.

Speaker 6 (01:46:36):
Know, that's okay.

Speaker 2 (01:46:38):
So so my first deployment, UH, if you're in a
combat zone.

Speaker 6 (01:46:47):
And you you have have.

Speaker 2 (01:46:49):
A write up that is sufficient for an ms M,
you're not supposed to be able to get an ms
M in a combat zone.

Speaker 6 (01:46:57):
You're supposed to get a bronze star.

Speaker 2 (01:47:00):
And for my first rotation over there, even though I
was shot at, did battlefield recovery of remains, and uh,
I did a lot of other things, I was given
an MSM.

Speaker 6 (01:47:19):
My male counterparts were all given bronze stars.

Speaker 1 (01:47:23):
Oh that's crazy, the.

Speaker 2 (01:47:24):
Exact same right up. But I wear it with pride.
The second on your rotation, I.

Speaker 6 (01:47:31):
Did get up.

Speaker 2 (01:47:34):
Those options. So at least one of my three three
rotations I.

Speaker 6 (01:47:40):
Got an award.

Speaker 1 (01:47:41):
So awards was always it was, it was always with awards, right.

Speaker 6 (01:47:47):
Yeah, I'm not I'm not an awards kind of person.

Speaker 2 (01:47:51):
I don't really care about too much, but I thought
it was more of a funny story than anything else.
Getting an MSM in a combat zone is not supposed
to be done. In fact, when I came back and
my g one goes, what do you mean you got
an m s M. What what's this crap about getting
an m s M. You can't give an ms M
and and a combat zone, And he said, fill out

(01:48:15):
this paperwork and we'll get it changed. I left an
MSM because that's what the general gave me, So it
was funny.

Speaker 1 (01:48:24):
Well, all right, is there any organizations or charities or
anything like that that anybody wants to throw out there?
So I'm all right, yeah for me.

Speaker 3 (01:48:36):
Uh so I'm retired, retired now and uh, but I
do volunteer and donate a bit.

Speaker 4 (01:48:42):
San Diego Umane Society. It's awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:48:45):
If you know any any local humane society wherever, wherever
you live, if you have time, I'm sure they're always
looking for people to to help, even if it's just
cleaning kettles, walking dogs, doing dishes. Uh, there's there's always
a need. I do tend to like animals more than
I like people, so especially dogs.

Speaker 4 (01:49:04):
Yeah, So that's that's uh, that would be the the
shout out.

Speaker 3 (01:49:08):
I got my my massive German shepherd behind me on
this gouch being lazy. He's only a year old, but
he's already an on working dog.

Speaker 4 (01:49:14):
So yeah, that's that's it, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:49:18):
Yeah, I've been actually perusing the dogs on the San
Diego Humane Society site thinking about getting another one. Oh yeah, yeah,
Well again, I really appreciate you guys coming on and
and telling your stories and stuff like that. I think
people will enjoy this perspective. Again, it's an uncovered, you know,
not covered enough aspect of that, of that battle and

(01:49:41):
just the wars in general. You know, like we talked about,
the mortuary affairs doesn't really get talked about. It's kind
of a taboo thing. So it's nice for people to
get that perspective and maybe understand a little bit more.
And yeah, I guess that's really it. We'll wrap up here,
and you know, like I always say, if anybody wants
to check out my website, it's Jake Gramographics dot com.
My instagram is Former Action Guys and Former Action News

(01:50:04):
and that's it. I really appreciate you guys coming on today.

Speaker 2 (01:50:08):
If anybody does, like I want to charity, I recommend
the Fisher House. It goes to the families of the
fallen donations there and I always think that that's a
great organization, as well as TAPS which does a lot
for the family of the fallen where they have camps

(01:50:32):
for the younger students and provide counseling and guidance as well.
So both of those are great organizations.

Speaker 1 (01:50:39):
I agree, I agree, thank you to thank you, and
that's it.

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Ep. 221 | Fallujah Bodies | Hanthorne, Moran, Ites

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 221 | Fallujah Bodies | Hanthorne, Moran, Ites