Sgt. Mike Ergo, USMC, Iraq, Battle of Fallujah

friends during the course of the battle. But we begin at the beginning of his story out west.

and the idea of service really stuck with me. And my senior year of high school, I realized I didn't want to go to college like all of my peers. I came from a pretty affluent city and everyone was going to Ivy League or University of California schools or top schools. Didn't have that same drive to continue my education. And I realized that I could join the military. And for me, it wasn't even about joining just the military, it was specifically the Marine Corps and I did that. Initially.

I joined to be the Marine Corps band, and you know, made quite the career change, you know, very early on, but it's how I started. I auditioned with my saxophone and passed, and you know, entered the Marine Corps planning to be a musician.

do something different, that I didn't feel comfortable myself. I didn't feel comfortable playing the saxophone stateside while Marines were going to be deployed overseas, and eventually, while I was in the school of Music in Little Creek, Virginia at the base there, I asked if I could be disenrolled from the school and transferred to the Infantry, and they were happy to meet my needs there.

you're the designated guy. And I asked what that meant, and they said, well, if we get a gas attack and we're not sure if it's all clear, then you know you're going to hand off your rifle and we're gonna take your gas mask off and just observe you. Okay, so you're gonna watch me to make sure you know if I if I die or not. And they're like, yeah, you're not important to the mission. You're the newest guy. And I just I said okay, and then it's it's sunk in. And that night I went out in town.

I got a tattoo that says expendable across my back. Just I had to laugh about it because you know, it was either laugh or cry, and I chose to laugh.

first deployment. And I remember when we came back just talking to friends and you know who were in my platoon and saying, man, we missed Iraq, we missed Afghanistan. Both these wars are over now, and how do we miss out on two wars? And we obviously didn't know what was to come?

more on urban combat. But I think in the back of our minds, we are being told we probably wouldn't use it, and so we were planning on just going to Iraq and you know, shaking hands at people and.

guys down. I didn't want to be a liability, and I didn't want to have anyone else get hurt because of me, And so that was the first first.

my unit, I was one of two guys. Everybody had formed their friends, and so I was the lowest of the low and I really nobody wanted to be around me. I was. I was the guy that even the boots, the young guys you know, looked to do the working parties and you know, give the most flock too. So I felt like I really earned the friendships I had and proved myself and really enjoyed being around the guys.

So by the time we were ready for the second deployment, I felt good about everybody around me, and I felt good about the you know, the Marines that were under my care too, and the guys. We spent a lot of time together I remember part of our training in the garrison too was you know, sometimes we'd go to lunch together and that was that was we were ordered to do that so we'd get to know our guys better.

And at the time I didn't appreciate it, but you know, looking back, it helped me get a lot closer to these guys. And I was never a fan of getting hazed, and I was never a fan of you know, a lot of the I felt like a necessary punishments and stuff. So I held my guys to a strict standard. But I leveled them and talk with them just you know, man and man, marine and marine, and see what I could do to be a good leader for them. And I felt like my team was as close as any that we had in platoon.

and beyond. Five American Legion and two VFW posts in the county held an open discussion with several nonprofit military service connected organizations so that they may all start working together as they move into the future.

So three guys under me. And so, you know, especially in urban combat, it meant that we'd have a very unique experience because a lot of the battle was fought squad at the squad level, you know, thirteen guys at a time, and so it was my responsibility ability to make sure that they had different fields of fire covered, you know, you know, if they were hurt, of course, you know, make sure they get care, but you know, placing them where they needed to go in the stack,

and we're kicking open doors and sometimes clearing buildings just with four guys, and so I had to coordinate all that movement.

fight a battle there again. And so it felt like forever that we were, you know, sitting around or not sitting around, patrolling around the desert looking for these phantoms that shoot mortars and disappear, and it didn't feel like maybe until a couple months in that we really started there was starting me in a buzz that we might be going to Flujah whispers here and there, and you know, we spent part of July down there, but never going

inside the city. So a lot of the deployment experience was we think something big is going to happen, and maybe we would show up to a city and patrol it and nothing would happen, and so build ups and let downs and boredom. And so I think it was even when you heard we might be going in Fallujah, the myself and others were skeptical.

something's going to happen. More to come, We're going to do a lot of training, and so we kind of read between the lines that we're probably going to assault the city of Fellujah, especially in October when we were you know, at Camp Fallojia doing drills and practicing things and doing you know urban combat, you know training.

to go. You guys are ready. So it didn't feel like maybe but a week or two before, as I remember it, that it really became real, like we're going now, it's going to happen. But yeah, it was. It was such a big build up.

gonna be as it is now. After and there was there was some concern about dying, but like the first deployment, I was more focused on, Okay, now I have, you know, a small but significant leadership position as a team leader, and I was just very concerned that I make sure my guys get out safely and that I'm a good leader for them. Failing them was the biggest fear. Failing the guys I had my charge, the biggest fear I had, more than death or getting hurt.

them hurt or killed? And I think the fear that I might fail my guys really helped me to step up and face those those moments as we're going in, because what I knew without being communicated explicitly, is that the bearing that I had and my ability to remain as calm as possible with these guys would help them remain calm in order for them to do their job.

And so where if it had been just me there, you know, I might have freaked out a little bit more, you know, but I had to maintain appearances so my guys could say as calm as possible and be ready.

is Mike Ergo. He's a US Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War, including the Battle of Falluja in November and December two thousand and four. In a moment, you'll hear Ergo describe house to house fighting to clear out enemy insurgents. But we now continue with his story of the Battle of Fallujah as he explains how the fight started. For him.

let us out. The ramp drops. I'm the first one to get out of our vehicle and I run down the ramp and immediately I get a step and a half and I trip and fallow my face and before I can even be embarrassed about, you know, like this is my grand entrance in a combat and I fall on my face. I'm like, you know what I trip over, you know, felt like a you know, a sack of grain or something. I look and it's a dead insurgent.

I tripped over lying there with you know, one arm shot off, and it's like, very very quickly a step and half into combat, a Mario faced, you know, with death right there right in my face. Literally, I get up and you know, brush myself off, make sure my weapon's still there, and you know, get everyone else off. It didn't really skip a beat, you know, it's like you follow you get up, I mean, following a lot of times and training, you got to get up and

continue the mission. So make sure my guys were okay, and then we started patrolling out.

kill the Americans. They're here, and it's your duty, you know, for jihad. And so we're hearing this coming out of these mosses of very intense speeches, and you know, we're getting fire from different directions. You know. I'm I'm on the ground watching, you know, RPGs go over my head and explode into buildings and trees. I'm seeing people blocks away running across the street back and forth closer to us,

you know, bounding. I think the most poignant moment of that early morning was a group of women and some kids walking towards us, and they have these white flags are waving, and I was telling them, you know, to come come over here to us, you know, because our protocol was civilians in the battle area, get them behind us and get them to safety and get them out of the crossfire. And the look on these women's faces, they were terrified. So I said, good, we'll get them

out of the battle space right here. Get them in the middle of the marriage complex. You know, there's a lot of walls around. We can get them food, water, everything else. Get in place to sit down. And there was these men behind them, directing them almost with their hands, with their hands on their backs, telling them where to go. And they were using these poor women to maneuver around the city. And I thought, okay, well, if you use

the white flag, you have to come towards us. And so in my mind I thought, well, technically we can start shooting. I wasn't about to start shooting women, not even close. And we watched helplessly and as these people were moved from one building to the next, and these guys behind him with these just crazed look is the best way I can describe it. To have them under control and just trying to weigh the consequences, you know, Okay,

I didn't murder women and children. Good check. Also, what are these guys going to do now they have the drop on us from somewhere else. We allowed them to maneuver, and so that was when the battle space became less black and white and more of a gray shade of like, Okay, sometimes there's not a right or wrong decision we can make. It feels like it's not very clear. And so that was the first first step into that kind of gray zone of like, well, do the best we can.

this never ending loop in my head. As long as we had a downtime of okay, Lieutenant Malcolm, who used to be our platoon commander before Lieutenant Barnes, a man who I knew as well as and listened, guy, I could know, you know, an officer there was shot and killed. And did I fail them? Right there? Did what I do fail them? And not be able to find a clear answer, and then also having to set that aside

because you're getting briefed. Hey, next morning, we're moving out, we're crossing Route fran into deeper into the city, push south, and so having to have it wasn't the first person we lost, you know, earlier in the deployment, we'd lost my best friend Todd Godwin, who killed by an ID in July twentieth, two thousand and four. And so having to compartmentalize grief and then walk back into you know,

being a leader and leading men into operations. You know, being able to compart my compartmentalize my feelings and go back into combat wasn't new, but it was. It was like, well, I guess the whole thing about this later, and but we we have to move on with there's more stuff to do.

the way down the rest of the city there. So we knew, okay, yeah, we had our initial entry into the Maris complex and you know we did that. But this is where the real urban combat of like clearing houses starts, and this is where you know, the casualties might start piling up because you know we're gonna have to kick open doors where people are waiting for us.

We'd stack up on the door and as quickly as possible, I would take turns with my point man of going in first, and I just I didn't feel right about always having my point man going first, and I wanted to show my guys I was invested in this too. And so by the by a squad or by team, we'd stack up on a door, you know, on one of the sides of it, someone from the rear would kind of we'd call it bumping, you know, you bump the person in front of us, and then they know

to kick the door open. And then we'd enter the room in the space inside the house, trying to scan all the different corners up and down, left to right to make sure that people weren't hiding waiting to shoot us. And so we'd trained on this day in, day out, so we didn't have to figure out more than what the variables of how big the room was, you know, in terms of everyone knew where they were going based on where they were on that stack. Especially at the team level of just the four of us.

the cover. And what was really eerie is I would see some of these guys, you know, take fire themselves as we were shooting back at them, and they get hit a few times, and some would continue to run like almost they were like they were hopped up in some kind of drug where they could withstand that and keep going. And so it spooked us out a little because we're like, we're hitting them and they're not falling,

And that started getting our heads a little bit. But I remember feeling a mix of emotions towards these men we were fighting against. One is, I was fundamentally against what they stood for, and I was still angry one that, you know, people on their side had killed my best friend, Todd Godwin. They'd taken Lieutenant Malcolm away from us, and you know, and what they stood for was against my belief system, and so I was. I was angry about that.

But at the same time, you know, I had to admit that I had some respects for their willingness to fight. You know, just like a you know, maybe a boxer or UFC would kind of respect their opponents and touch gloves at the beginning. It's like, Okay, we're fighting. We're we're both fighting here. These are our roles, and so I respect the level of commitment they had in that way. It's I couldn't describe that at the time as a

young twenty one year old. You know, this only reflections of a guy who's had twenty years to think about it.

from the south. From from it felt like we're taking fire from everywhere, you know. I think what was happening was we were, you know, trying to figure out where we were and how to best hit us, and you know, all hell breaks loose eventually. What I remember two big moments for me. There were scanning across the street looking to my west, and a brick exploding under my hand. I thought for sure, you know, I supporting my rifle in my left hand, and I thought for sure I

lost a finger or something. But miraculously nothing was there. Just this brick was no longer there, and I had no bullet in me, And I said, you know what, that was a single shot, well aimed, just missed me. I'm going to take a break so I sat down. I had a cigarette and kind of had to, you know, breathe out that, you know, adrenaline rush of almost getting

shot right there. So I have one one cigarette and then I get back up my friend Nate Fox, who's sitting right beside me there, Hey, you want another cigarette? And for whatever reason, I mean, I was a chainsmoker back then, I said no, thank you. You know, I'm good. I got back up on the wall. Next thing I know, there's a woosh, bricks explode and I'm and then it all goes black and putting the pieces together later, I mean, we'd just been hit by an RPG and I was

knocked and conscious by it. And the best way I can describe it, it was very similar to the beach scene and Saving Private Ryan, where Tom Hanks's character, you know, there's a blast and he can't hear anything, and then slowly it starts to come in and you can hear them saying we got to get out of here, you know, we got to move. And you know, I couldn't make up or down or left or right, and I just knew I was looking up and I had no idea what had happened. And then all of a sudden, you know,

my vision starts to expand. It's no longer tunnel vision. I started to be able to hear sounds, and all of a sudden, it's a full fledged gunfight, and I'm hearing Sergeant Leo, Sergeant Billy Leo yelling he just got hit. I don't know how bad, but he's grabbing his leg. Nate Fox is right there grabbing his shoulder. And I was looking around, so I see Leo. Yeah, I drag him off the roof, get him so we can get a meta backed. And I was doing that before I

really knew what I was doing. It was almost like I was watching my body move and drag him off the roof. And you know, it was just the training set in, and so it was very confusing, to say the least way to wake back up. You know, my belt was wrung, I was concussed. It was very confusing, you know. I remember bits and pieces of it. This building we started we called the Alamo that day because it felt like we're making, you know, our last stand,

like Davy krocking and everybody just getting blasted. I was in a room downstairs, probably on the second or third floor, facing the West, and it seemed like just non stop. Every every few minutes, another RPG hitting the side of the building there, and I remember just getting my belt rung again and again. It's just concussion, concussion, concussion, the air tasting almost like if he chew up an aspirin

as the residue from an RPG. And I just remember that being a distinct century experience, and not being able to hear, and just being you know, agitated, angry, you know, because we're just getting blasted and there's nothing we can do.

This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is US Marine Corps veteran Mike Ergo, who is sharing his story of service in the second Battle of Fallujah during the Iraq War in late two thousand and four. In a moment, Ergo describes the of losing another close friend and the impact that had on his platoon. But first he explains how they finally got away from the Alamo and moved on to the next objective.

like what does that even mean? And my slight taste just slight, nothing compared to those guys, But of getting hit with RPG after RPG after RPG that day, I understood what shell shock meant, of a taste of it. And so as soon as we stepped out of that building, I'm like, we're just going to get shot. We're going to get shot. And I remember feeling very afraid and my mood was very low, just feeling dark, like hopeless.

Nothing happened. We didn't have to move that far to the next building, where we ended up sleeping the next night and setting up on that day. But we weren't ready. I wasn't ready. I wasn't mentally prepared after that, you know, I was. I felt like I was.

the fence and leaving. You know, we shot out a mist eventually got him. Learning that Faircloth was hit and then he was killed. Hard to comprehend because Faircloth, Brad, he was a Marines marine. You know, I feel lucky that I was able to give him. The nickname we called him was the Barbarian, because we had a company wide dodgeball tournament. Me and a couple of friends started

this right before he deployed. No one had cars anymore, so we just had a bunch of guys with nothing to do with a lot of pre war aggression, and we needed something to get that out of our system. So we played dodgeball. A ran on the PX, got a bunch of dodgeballs, and he played up front, was pegging dudes in the face all day long, dodging these and we're like, you're a barbarian, and that nickname stuck. And so even Lieutenant Barnes is like, hey, Barbarian, you good.

You know, like that was his name, and he was a Marine's marine, you know, he was. He was always out front. He was as brave as they come. And for him to be killed, it was it was hard to comprehend, you know, the shock of anyone, you know, dying, but especially for him to be killed, you know, it felt like something in the Platun died in us that day because you know, between him and Billy Leo, I mean, he was he was the spirit of that platoon too,

you know, we everyone respected him. What happens after a big fight, a lot of downtime, a lot of downtime, and thinking, okay, if he can get killed, I mean, who's next, And just also knowing that, like, Okay, I'm gonna have to put this away right now. You know, someone that I care about, that I love as a brother has been shot and killed. I'm gonna have to bury this deep in my soul and maybe someday touch it, but right now it's not the time, because the mission

just kept rolling on. We had to keep going, you know, so just knowing that that one hurt, that one really hurt, you know, and and you know a lot of people were dying, so it was not Eventually with my psyche, it started to become like, okay, if he can die, how many times can I kick open a door and expect to live with someone waiting to shoot me? So we're the odds. And at that time though I'd made

my peace with death. Fortunately because of what happened to me a few days earlier, you know, having my own pretty intense gun battle with my squad and my team. But the important thing out of that was that I was no longer afraid of dying. I come to peace. I was like, I'm not gonna make it out of the city, so I'm going to do the best job I can to make sure my guys make it out, you know, and it just but losing Brad after that, I was like, this is there's nothing fun about this.

I mean, there's nothing fun about being here, you know. I have the pre Fallujah experience of wanting to be in a big gun fight, being a war, and then after the reality it was like, yeah, people you know will get hurt and killed and they'll be dead and there's nothing you can do about it. You'll never see him again. I just know that I'll be just a big void.

of years, I carried the survivor's guilt, you know. Even getting back out of the city of Fallujah and back into the camp, I went out to my friend Robbie Landars and Hey, where's Dave, our friend Dave Hawk, you know, because the three of us went through infantry school together and he was in Brava company. I want to see how he did. He's like, got shot in the face. Man, he's dead. And so that was, you know, like even when I was out of the city, there's another just

kicking the gut of oh, okay, who else then? You know, like I went through a lot of dark years too, just trying to basically not actively kill myself, but passively riding my motorcycle, blacked out, getting drunk a lot, trying to process what I'd seen, not believe in it, but fresh out of that battle there.

up together and she knew me. We're friends and started dating while I was in the Marine Corps, and eventually she said, look, I know that there's a good person inside of you right now, but what you're doing to yourself, I can't be part of it. Anymore, and we've been married for about four years. At that point, she said, you either have to stop drinking and using drugs or I can't be here anymore. And so it was a

July eleventh of twenty twelve. I made a decision no more drugs and alcohol and then began this humongous journey of processing what felt like a tsunami of feelings that would hit me, you know, guilt him, I a piece of garbage for surviving when when people I thought we were better marines than I was, did not, panic attacks, memories of death and killing, feelings of abject terror, like walking down the stairs, and then all of a sudden having this full body memory of walking down the stairs

and getting shot at and at my house in Wallut Creek, California, going paralyzed like like on my stairs, just lying there and trying to breathe. So I faced all of that. Luckily, I had a good marine friend who was part of the sober community who helped bring me to some recovery groups and meetings. And you know, I've been meeting with a therapist too, and I just remember telling me this is why I was still using and drinking, you know, like what do you want to do with your life now?

You know you talk about purpose and I said, well, I don't know. I don't know what can compare it to being in urban combat. There's nothing. It felt like my life was anti climatic at that point, but yet she'd helped me in such a way that I felt this tremendous hope. Now, no, I wasn't suicidal anymore. I'd stopped harming, you know, myself through drinks, dragging and drinking. And she said, well, what about doing this kind of work?

And it was it was an epiphany right there. I said, yeah, I mean, if I can have this kind of hope, maybe I want to pass this on to other people. It was like I needed permission to be happy, and permission to be alive, and permission to continue on with my life. And it's almost like in that moment she had given me that permission. And I realized how many of us, you know, my brothers and sisters who fought

been overseas in combat, feeling that same way. And I was like, Okay, this is something I can do that has to me that same amount of purpose and passion I can put behind this effort to help people on the other side of combat now, and so I've been doing that since since twenty twelve. I'm a director of a VA Vet center and we see veterans every day from you know, all walks of life and all conflicts, and so yeah, I've been able to be someone who's gotten help from a VET center and now someone who's

worked at a VET center. I saw I'm both a provider and a veteran, and that combination can be a tough line to walk sometimes because I've had my own experiences and I got to worry about transference and got to worry about, you know, realizing that I'm the one helping people, but I'm not invincible to feeling the same kind of feelings they have. So it's been a nice

balancing act. But it's been something I've been doing through a lot of physical activity and a lot of meditation, clean living and in terms of you know, absence from drugs and alcohol. And for me, I'm someone who's always needed a big reason to do something. I need to have my passion involved or I just can't put up the effort, you know. For instance, I participate in triathlons, and like Ironman trathlons and I can't be bothered to work out unless I have a race or some big

event coming up. And so just the what I do with the Vet Center gives me that purpose to get up every day and to love my family and to you know, take care of my vets.

exists between many of you guys and Bradley Fairclough's mom. Yeah, Kathleen, So talk a little bit about that and how that endures.

it's hugs. It's like not missing a beat, you know, catching up with each other. You know, sometimes we we only know what each other's up to through seeing pictures on Facebook or social media. But the closeness that bond just as strong as it would have been if we had seen each other yesterday, as ugly as the death and the killing in wartime can be. The message I take away is that the bond of love and connection is so much stronger that it trendscends all of that.

That's why we're here together this weekend, you know, spending time with each other think, you know, talk about things that for a lot of us are difficult to talk about. I've talked about this a few times with people and shared my experience and process that and therapy, and I know some of these guys haven't had the chance to do that, and so for them it's a little more raw.

But they're willing, just like I am, to come here because that bond is that much stronger, and so that's what I took away from my experience in the Marine Corps and combat is that when you're with people in adverse situations and you form those bonds, you can't nothing can break that, and not even death.

He's just because that was important to me. I didn't want to fail these guys, and we went through hell together and for someone to say that I did anything positive, that I helped them, just knowing the tremendous responsibility I had of trying to take care of these guys, for them to have some positive words to say about me, it means the world.

at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube channel for full oral histories and special features, and of course, please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listen, and please join us next time for Veterans Chronicles.