The Battle of Fallujah: 5 years on

“There's a kid right now kicking down the door and he has no idea what's on the other side,” Bellavia said. “That is valor.”



It’s Freedom Week here at Beers with Demo and we continue to honor the sacrifices made by the brave members of our armed forces.

Yesterday marked the 5-year anniversary of the assault to re-take the city of Fallujah in Iraq. In March of 2004, the city exploded in violence after 4 Blackwater security contractors were killed in an ambush and insurgents dragged their dead bodies through the streets of the city. Days later the Marines were ordered back in to restore order in the city which they did only to see the Bush administration hand Fallujah back over to the ill-equipped and ill-trained Iraqi security forces and which led to the insurgency regrouping to effectively regain control of the city.

In November of 2004, U.S. forces were ordered back into Fallujah once again to retake the city for good. For about a month, soldiers and Marines fought house to house combat on a scale not seen by American forces since Hue, South Vietnam, some four decades ago. We forgot where we heard it but the war-fighting skills required for the battle of Fallujah ultimately required our regular infantry troops to adopt and execute urban warfare techniques which had previously been the exclusive domain of special forces.

Read more about Fallujah and Lakeside native, Shane Krutchen, who was maimed by a booby-trapped door there in Fallujah and his battle back from those sustained injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder, here.