Haditha on film
I joined the US Marine Corp when I was 17 years old, and six months into my service I was sent to Iraq – I was the youngest soldier in my division. I didn't exactly always want to be a marine, but I thought becoming one was a quick way to get out of Philadelphia, and my father was a marine and had always told me stories when I was young, so I thought I might as well do it.
I didn't feel particularly strongly about the Iraq war before I went, I was just going because they said we had to. I was like: "What, Iraq?" I didn't even know where it was on the map. If anyone was talking about Iraq when I joined the marines I didn't know about it, because I didn't pay attention to the news.
When we first arrived it was horrible. It was different than it is now: there was no Green Zone, nowhere we could go and rest; everywhere around us was dangerous. It was still the beginning of the war – there were still weapons of mass destruction out there.
On April 14, 2003, the Iraqis captured seven "prisoners of war" and we were sent to rescue them. That was the day I got injured. An Iraqi ran my checkpoint and almost ripped off my leg. He was driving down the street towards us and I saw that he wasn't going to stop, so I opened fire on the car. It lost control and the tyres got tangled up in the checkpoint's barbed wire; the wire snapped and caught my legs, and when the car drove past it yanked my leg and dragged me down the street. I was awarded the Purple Heart for that.
I was flown to Spain and had emergency surgery on my leg. They told me I would never walk again – not without a cane. Basically, they were just telling me the worst. But I had just turned 18 and thought: "I'm walking. I'm telling you, I'm running again." I didn't want to be told I wasn't going to run again; nobody wants to hear that. I did everything the doctors told me not to do and recently I've started to be able to jog and run around.
I was aware of the shootings in Haditha before I got involved in the movie – everybody was. It was all people in the military talked about, and it actually changed a lot of the way things are run in Iraq. The reporters who wrote about it could never understand what it was like to be there – they hadn't fought in Iraq. It was easy for them to write about "massacres" and paint the marines as killers. They don't know about the amount of stress and emotion the soldiers go through.
After that soldier was killed in an attack on the US convoy, we felt bad for the marines who were with him because they had lost a friend. But at the same time we're trained not to act like they did. Those marines let their emotions drive them and that's something we can't do. If it is true that it was a massacre, the way they say it was, then they've got to serve time for that. You can't blame the soldiers for losing their composure considering the position they were put in but, if they did it, they were still wrong. If they did it, they let their emotions get the better of them and that led to the death of innocent people.
A lot of us marines don't talk about what we've been through. After all, how can we try to explain what we've seen to people who will never understand, who can't relate? That's why it was good to work on the film, and good to be in the Middle East with my co-stars, all these guys who had been through the war, and just be able to open up and release it. It was a good feeling; you don't get to do that every day.
We had the opportunity to work with Iraqis during the filming, people who had experienced the conflict from the other side, which was great. When I first went to Iraq, it was like being thrown into a strange country: I didn't know anything about the people or the language. With the film, I finally got to go there and meet these people, and to experience their culture and their food. I count it as my first time in an Arab country. In Iraq, I just went in and didn't talk to anyone; but when we filmed I was really living with them – Iraqis, Jordanians and Egyptians. After serving in Iraq I would never have thought I'd be able to do that with an Arab person.
During the filming I lived with an Iraqi kid. He had been an interpreter for the US marines. The Iraqis had bombed the building that the marines were in and it collapsed on this kid, burning 70% of his body. He was totally burned up. He was the sweetest kid you could ever meet. You could have said: "There's going to be a massive earthquake!" and he'd smile and reply: "Okay, whatever." Nothing bothered him; he was never angry. It just made me think to myself: "Man, I don't understand how I can complain about anything I've been through when this kid has been through 10 times more."
Nick Broomfield was great to work with. On set, it wasn't about him being the director, directing something he didn't really know about. He never said: "This is how I think it was." Instead, he'd say: "Look, this is the scene. Now how would marines do it?" He was all about stepping back and letting us do what we did, and I think that helped to bring authenticity to the film.
I don't think we should be in Iraq. I say support the troops but to hell with the war. A lot of people get that mixed up. They're against the war and so they're also against the troops, but they don't understand that we don't choose to go out there, it's a job. I know the film probably won't convince the US government to pull troops out of Iraq, but it would be great if it went some way towards that.
Elliot Ruiz was interviewed by Anna Bruce-Lockhart.