Sgt. Robert Day, USMC, Iraq, Battle of Fallujah

who served during World War II. Day explains why he chose to serve as well, and despite that Army heritage, why he enlisted in the Marine Corps.

grunt anyway. I had read books growing up on World War Two and Vietnam service, and was just enamored with the stories of battles from Waye City, Vietnam, Battle of the Bulge, the Pacific Island Campaign that the Marines took part in, and that's something that I wanted to continue the tradition of and so that's why I joined. I joined because I wanted to shoot a belt fed machine gun in the company of other great men.

can to get us up. We started the day heavy with physical physical activity, exertion, drilling, digging our heels into a concrete deck, and learning anything and everything about how to be a recruiting in the Marines, it was moment to moment. There wasn't a single second during the day

that you had to yourself. You were always being taught book knowledge and learning about side to be a marine recruit, and and there was more physical physical exertion and push you up and pull up and mountain climbers and you name it. So we were we were constantly on the go, constantly being force fed information, physical activity, and food.

percent mental game that you need to overcome. And there's certain things in your mind that you can remember from

your past civilian life that comfort you. Whether it be a song that you liked, or a family activity or just being with friends, or something that you enjoyed doing that you can remember and play in your mind during those times that you're being stripped in the in boot camp and you're doing those those monotonous activities that you know you constantly learn and you know, you know in the short days ahead.

where we trained and formed up every day. And then we of course had barracks right next to that, so uh, it's it's a rather famous location for you know that that scores of men and women have trained at over the over the decades.

the fifty cal machine gun. But eventually when I got to my unit in August of two was when was when we started to do more urban training like mount training and eventually some SASSO training out in California just before you know, our much later deployment.

leader of a machine gun section. And I watched old videos of Vietnam shooting them sixty belt fed guns, and I was just captivated by the rate of fire, the bursts that they put out, how tight you can get your groups if you're really good, both conventionally and unconventionally, and just the amount of damage in the annihilation they do on the enemy is incredible. And I particularly was drawn to the medium machine gun, which is what we

were referred to it as. That's the seven point six y two by five to one millimeter gun, and it was the successor to the sixty that I believe was used up until about the early nineties and still some today.

went to Greece. We went to the island of Crete and there we had some liberty in the town and we got to get on our feet, walk around, get some food, and then we ended up at a hangar in Crete where my company posted up lived for I want to say a few days, maybe it was a week or two, and then we flew out to Mosuil, Iraq for the following two weeks in April of three.

We would go out and we would get on the amtraks and we would float into the beaches and land and do some land training. We went to the ranges a lot and shot the M two forties and the fifties and the Mark nineteens, and of course went to the rifle range with all the other Marines in our and our platoons and companies and spent plenty of time there. Uh. Starting in two thousand and four in the spring was when we started doing what General mattis Uh and his

and his colleagues would call sasso training. UH, and that was Uh. It was definitely some urban training, you know, house clearing, UH, some limited close quarters combat training within enclosed structures and UH and what they called winning hearts and minds of the locals in Iraq. And so it was a hybrid. It was a combination of both of those things. We used some simulation rounds in our mount training back at Camp La June, which was some paintball rounds,

and everything else was really ground fighting. We did quite a bit of that. They ramped up the Marine Mixed Martial Arts program. We learned all kinds of tactics within our belt systems, the Tan Belt, the Great Belt, the Green Belt, Brown Belt, you know, arm bard takedowns, all kinds of tactics like guillotines, and that was some of the most memorable and helpful hand to hand combat training that we did that.

can't get it taken care of. The Navy doesn't want to touch it, said Austin. That could change, though, thanks to Robert Kane. Cain is a Coast Guard veteran and now the Veteran Services Officer for Camden and Kuratuk County. He said, no better way to continue my second career after military retirement to serve the community and help vets deal with the VA. Today's sixty seconds of Service is

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tearing up Fallujah right now. And so I read an Atlantic Monthly article on it and showed some pictures of some grunts with their weapons in Fellujah on the outskirts, and they didn't they didn't go inside the city, but they had scraped the outside and taken some casualties and certainly certainly eliminated a lot of the enemy. I felt good, I felt motivated, I felt excited and just downright excited to be with, you know, all my comrades for that deployment. I knew it was going to be big.

rang my bell. Although none of us were hurt. We we just felt the fog of war immediately right there and thought, well, this is real, something's coming because everybody's talking. Lieutenant Malcolm, Lieutenant Barnes, they were, they were rolling down some talk that the heat was coming in the nearby city somewhere.

when a battle was going to happen. And I believe he told us that it was going to be as significant as the Battle of Waste City in Vietnam in nineteen sixty eight. And I remember, I remember him telling us that the first time he had killed somebody was in Vietnam, and I was just proud to be listening to him because we knew we were going to be going up against a terrible enemy that needed to be eliminated. And so that was also the part of the fog of war that was real.

quarter mile maybe half a mile or less. On the night of November ninth, we posted up outside outside of Fallujah on the north side at night, and our entire battalion was told that we were going to be going right through the center of the city north to south on foot meckt up with support from tanks and artillery in the rear and air assets and everything else that

accompanies marines on foot. So we spent the night prior to November tenth outside of that city literally watching over the buildings and the high rises about of what our artillery was doing. They were dropping rounds that exploded midair that had white phosphorus in them, and they would literally rain down molten chemicals to soften up the enemy and

kill them. We also watched line charges being detonated. A line charges is basically a long charge charge of explosives that is intended to make other IEDs improvise explosive devices blow up, you know, before we encounter them and they take us out. So, I mean, we just we watched incredibly large fireballs explode and that was meant to help

us out before we went in. And then we saw the BBC crews right in front of us outside of the city getting ready to accompany us, and all was quiet before we before D Day on November tenth.

is Sergeant Robert Day. He's a US Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War serving as a machine gunner with the first Battalion, eighth Marines. After all the preparation that Day and his fellow Marines did for the fight in Fallujah, it was finally time to do it. Day and the other Marines in his company were among those tasked with advancing two and securing the Mayor's Complex as the fight began.

Day now takes us moment by moment through the fighting and the mindset needed for a battle so relentlessly intense.

and waited, and time went by. We would stop and then go again until everybody pushed forward. And we finally got to where we got to that Mayor's complex and it was dark still. It was zero four when they

dropped the ramps or so. And I remember I was with I was in the same track as Bradley Faircloth and my team leader and a few others and probably ten or fifteen others in that track, and they dropped the ramp, and some guys that were in faircloths fireteam Smith and Meadows and and Matthews, they were all together. They dropped the ramp and Faircloth had been talking about how he wanted to wanted to get an ak as a souvenir. He wanted an ak forty seven you know,

the enemy's rifle and uh. And as the ramp dropped, they all were about, they were all running out of the back of the track and they all toppled over each other and fell on the ground, fell on the deck, and they stumbled out of there, and uh, and the sun came up, and you know, they were they were dead bodies strewn about from there that you know, the the bombs that had dropped, you know, from our air assets.

And uh, the sun came up a little bit and fair Claus found a found a dead body with an ak and he grabbed it and he goes, oh shit, it's bent up. The barrels bent. And then after that we we were right there at the Mayor's complex and we you know, we got on the rooftop and posted up and the sun came up and and it was on from there.

a rather exposed position. It was just flat. I mean, there was a lip on the outer edge of that complex rooftop we were on, but there was no cover. There was some cinder blocks you could have used to move around. I put I put my two forty belt fed gun on the edge and just kicked up the

bipods on it, and rounds started flying in. I mean they were coming from other higher that were directly ahead of us, that were probably five hundred yards away, I want to say, about five hundred meters, and then there were some minarets behind that that were more or less like mosque towers. There were some snipers in there, and there were bullets that were being I mean we could hear snaps and crackles and pops, like just whizzing right

past our heads. The whole city was just rubbled, especially where we are, you know, from bombs that were being dropped from us. And there was rebar sticking out of the roof. I remember, you know, maybe it went up about ten or fifteen twenty feet high and it was just bear and I remember bullets pinging off of it, like just bullets whizzing and pinging off of it. It

sounded like a bell, you know. And that happened throughout the day on November tenth, on that D Day, and I have myself and my teamly Healy with me, and UH I would send around. I would send bursts of fire, UH support support by fire over across into a high rise into windows where we saw muscle flashes coming out of and UH the enemy was was hiding mainly, you know, they were taking covering concealment and shooting at us. I remember mortars falling and exploding all around the Mayor's Complex

roof we were on about mid morning. I remember second Platoon, Alpha Company, positioning themselves on a rooftop just forward of our position. So they were on a rooftop in the Mayor's Complex also, but they were closer to the enemy and they were taking fire, and they were they were firing eighty four rocket launchers into windows because they were closer and they were hitting. They were hitting the enemy and blowing and you know, making explosions and killing them.

And so I would provide support by fire over their heads, and they were pretty frightened about that. I think. I want to say, my my bursts of fire were probably I don't know, twenty thirty feet above their head, just to give you a picture of what the scene was like. At one point, I want to say, one of our one of our aircraft was intending to drop a five hundred pound bomb on the enemy, and it actually landed pretty close to us, and it missed the enemy and

it exploded. I mean, it landed on the street right by the building we were on. It was it was it was really bizarre the bar. I mean you could see the bomb hit the ground and then it sunk into the concrete of the street. It landed on the street, and then there was this delay of maybe five seconds,

and then it was like slow motion. I looked over after I squeezed off a burst of fire, and the massive portions of street and concrete would would go up into the air and some guys in second Platoon were wounded from that, and uh so it was just it was just part of the heart, the horrific you know, the horrific outcomes of combat and things that happened. It was hell. I could feel it coming on. Some of our guys in third Platoon had had killed some of

the enemy in the street right around the complex. I mean some of the enemy were would be seen walking around with aks, sneaking around the side of buildings and they would just slight them up and kill them right there. And so it was a long day. It was the beginning of our finest hour, and it was on.

were about to push. I could feel it coming. We were minutes away, and I pulled out a can of dip out of my pocket and I told my I told one of my superiors, I said, hey, I'm gonna go I'm gonna go into this office room next door and just have a dip and get about five minutes to myself. So I went in there and just said some prayers and had some had had a moment alone, and then I rejoined the rest of the rest of the Marines I was with. And I want to say it was about four or five o'clock by then, and

it was winter days, so the days were shorter. Night was coming, but we still had still had probably two hours of daylight. And then at that point we pushed across Route fran We bounded, you know, one man after the other, and I mean bullets were flying everywhere. It was loud machine gun fire, enemy machine gun fire, pkms ak's mortars were landing, a lot of yelling, a lot of screaming, a lot of orders being or being dealt, and and men were moving fast and and that's when it kicked off.

hundred round belts. So I was I was well supported. But I stayed. I stayed on the rooftops and in the alleys, and I kept watch around the houses where where our three eleven riflemen were going in and clearing rooms and hallways. And uh, there was there was resistance outside of the house as they were clearing rooms. I mean I got I got my first taste of what it was like to kill and kill an enemy combatant

uh on. On the very first rooftop after the Mayor's Complex that I got on top of after we crossed that main route on D Day that afternoon. Really I provided more security after that, but that first rooftop was significant. Uh. We referred to it as Hadgi Alley and Hajji Alley was where a lot of our resistance was met right in the very beginning of the battle.

So it was it was an efforts to shake them up before they went in immediately and and have some type of advantage. I mean it was. It was a gorilla tactic for use on our behalf too, just as they used on us. So it was. It was an unconventional battle in that sense. And my communication with my with my fire teams was was good, although you know, we had a lot of we made a lot of mistakes too that cost us.

really work. You know, we could throw frags in the windows, we threw frags through the doorways, down chimneys. We called in tanks. We sent some tank crowns in that would basically just obliterate the house and cause a shock to all the bodies inside. We'd fire Mark nineteen fully automatic grenade launchers at them at the houses through the windows. We'd run D nine bulldozers right over the house at

one point and just crush everybody inside. I mean, at one point we were we were yelling at him from outside of the house and they would respond a lotac bar and you know, we knew they were inside, and it was a trap, you know they had They had all kinds of booby traps inside that we weren't about

to waste human assets on. So when we knew they were inside, I mean a lot of times we would kill them with point target weapons and grenades, and other times we would just send a tank round in or a javelin missile.

and the Second Battle of Fallujah. In just a moment, Day articulates the pain of losing a beloved member of his platoon and the bomb that still exists inside that platoon twenty years later. But first, Sergeant Day explains how the Marines and their enemies adjusted their tactics as the battle for Fallujah unfolded.

they were tricky. They'd come out at night. Sometimes we didn't recount a lot of resistance at all at night time, but we killed them when we saw him.

first house in Hajji Alley. We I remember, I remember running through that first house and looking in the side of the little entryway to the door, and there were some RPG warheads at the enemy used in a backpack that was that was leaning up against the wall, So we knew there were some people inside, but there actually weren't.

I mean, we cleared it. We immediately ran upstairs to the elevated rooftop, and on this particular rooftop there was there was a wall maybe like four or five feet high, probably about three or about four four feet high that everybody propped their weapons up on. I propped my two forty up on it, and and we had a lot of snipe up there too. Some guys from Stay were up there with us. Ergo was up there with us, and my team leader, Healey, and I mean, we immediately

just started taking fire right we could. I could see straight down a street. We were directly above a street that I could see straight down, and there were guys shooting at us from that street, out in the middle of the street, just shooting at us with aks. There was another street that was perpendicular to the street that I was looking down that we were looking down, and I remember seeing I remember seeing this large, this really

big fat guy running down the street. He was an enemy combatant and he had RPG warheads in his backpack and he was running from something. He was running from an Army Bradley tank that was firing a Bushmaster machine gun at him, a big twenty five millimeter fully automatic gun that slow rate of fire. And he was running. I could see the tracers following him, and he could they weren't hitting him. And I aimed right in at him and I shot him, and I crumbled him and

he fell. He didn't get back up. And then I looked closer into the street and there was it was filled with smoke down below. I mean, that guy was at about one hundred and twenty five hundred and fifty yards and then closer to us in the street. Right after that incident was multiple enemy in the middle of the street, hiding behind walls and standing in the middle of the street firing at us. I could see muscle flashes. Martinez, we called him Marty, he was also next to us.

He directed my fire into a window and then I looked back down on that street and I hit somebody that one of our one of our stay guys, had just shot, and he looked over. That stay guy looked over at me and goes, I got him, and uh, and then I shot him again as he was moving around on the ground. And then Lee, another guy from our platoon looked at me and he goes, you got him. So there was that, There was that come, There was that communication and that bravado about what we were actually doing.

What we were actually there to do was was annihilate the enemy. And that's what we did right there on Hanjie Alley and I remember feeling like getting popped in the face by little bitty pieces of concrete from enemy bullets coming in and hitting the walls, and it felt so it felt so real that we were, that we were in it. I mean, I felt like I had been training my whole life for that moment, and I knew that any moment, I could just get zipped, I

could get killed. And it was frightening and surreal and exciting, and I just remembered so.

getting wounded and being sent out. So we moved, we stayed. It was a mix of everything, but the push was on and we didn't stop till we got to the southern part, which was Queen's Queens District in Fallujah.

everywhere they were hidden. And I remember seeing bullets spinning on the deck of that roof, enemy bullets that had landed, and they were just spinning out of control right in front of your face. I remember the same bits of concrete hitting my face as I did in Halji Alley. I remember seeing our artillery rounds in the distance on the street and on the ground land and not explode,

and just bizarre things like that. I remember at one point talking to Lieutenant Barnes, and he had his rto Duran with him and I was right in front of him in the middle of the rooftop, and I remember picking up a bullet and enemy bullet and showing it to him. I said, that's a dragon off Rouncer. And and then right after that, I believe it was when that RPG came in and wounded three of ours, Fox, Martinez and Leo. I remember going down to UH. I grabbed Ergo and he and I went down to the

balcony below. So that was the second roof, the second roof.

We were on second story, and then we went down to a balcony below that and there was the same you know wall, maybe two or three feet high, and Ergo got down into the Indian style position and he had a two oh three grenade launcher on his M sixteen, and he was lobbing rounds into the nearby area a couple of hundred meters away, and I was I was spot and for him, and I was standing up in a doorway and I remember hearing a loud snap pop, and I looked right next to me, and you know,

there was a round that impacted right next to my groin on the doorframe that I was standing in, and I immediately hit the deck and it was pretty frightening. And then we returned fireing after that we were exposed. We were sitting ducks at the Alamo, and we stayed there for most of the day and eventually moved.

the way. He would he would tackle you to get get you out of the way so he could get get up there. I mean, there were so many skirmishes between Hadji Ali and the Alamo and South Queens that that I can recount fighting the enemy alongside faircloth and in him displaying his courage.

elevated positions. And they entered the house and immediately he was he was the front man in the stack, and and he kicked down a door and he immediately all I heard was a long burst of machine gun enemy machine gun fire. And uh, that's when I knew something was bad was going on. And they stayed in the

house and fought the enemy for a short period. And I later came to find out that the two or three two or three enemy combats had jumped out the window in the back of the house and fled and they were cut down and killed by some of our marines from our platoon up on that rooftop, and then doctor Ponti and Meadows and Matthews and Smith. They drug him out, drug faircloth out of that house, one arm at a time. One was on one arm, one was

on the other, dragging him out. And I immediately got up and ran around to the front of that courtyard entrance and saw him come out, and his whole face was just was bleach white and lifeless. In his head was bobbing, and it was just I knew he was dead. There was no blood though, I mean, he had his flat jacket on, and I think that enemy machine gun was pointed right at his chest, and that flat jacket had held in, you know, it more or less plugged

up blood flow. And it was just it was bizarre the way I saw him, because he had been so full of life and so full of courage in the days before, and vigor and tenacity to slaughter the enemy, and he wasn't anymore. And that hurt real bad because he was from my hometown. You know, I saw future there, but that was it. He zipped him up in a body bag and took him off and we pressed on.

in my neighborhood as we were growing up. I never actually knew him, but I knew the kid that lived across the street from me that he would stay with and play backyard football with and all that, And I just I wanted to be friends with him even after the core and you know, have a beer with him in a bar and talk about talk about hilarious times and hard times and combat and how do I press on? I mean I befriended his mom, Kathleen, after that deployment.

We met her at the service at the memorial service on Campbell June and about February five, And I mean, from then on, it's been a it's been a wonderful relationship. My mom and her and her have been good friends in town in Alabama, and we have annual dinners together during the holidays, and she's just a wonderful person and we love her.

twenty sixth, I believe. And then after that, come early December, we pulled out of that fob and we went back to Camp Falloosia for a short stint, and it wasn't long after that till we went back to Ala Sade, which is the bigger base, stayed there, and then we flew out to Cherry Point, North Carolina on that commercial flight and that was it. I'll tell you one thing, the flight back wasn't nearly as fun as the flight over.

The commercial flight to Kuwait City for that deployment, it was just exciting, and the one back was pretty somber and as as not as exciting.

the phone via text, and I've kept up with with a lot of them, you know, in the early years, like Mike Rgo. You know, I've done some done some backpacking trips with him out west in California, and we've just done some adventurous things that you know, we're sort of a spin off of all our physical training in the Marine Corps together and uh, just more adventurous, fun type stuff that that that are challenging. And so I

mean that's there's been camaraderie with that. I've had some marines out to Colorado where I currently live, to climb mountains, and so it's just it's been it's been exciting, and we've carried on that tradition.

best leader. I wanted to be a gunner, particularly, and that billet was pretty much where I stopped right before the Battle of Flujah and of course in the months and year after it until I got out. So I was happy with that. And I'm just proud that I became a machine gunner and was really proficient at it, and I was a good shooter, and I was a good marine two other Marines, and I got out what I put in.

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