Reversals in hard-won Iraqi city vex veterans

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In this Wednesday, March 31, 2004 file photo, people chant anti-American slogans as charred bodies hang from a bridge over the Euphrates River in Fallujah, Iraq, west of Baghdad.(AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)






"I do not see this as the culmination of the failure of all of our efforts - yet," agrees Earl J. Catagnus Jr., who was wounded by an improvised explosive device in Fallujah and now teaches at a military college. "This is just one battlefield, one city in a host of battles that has been happening since 2003. It's just for us as Americans, because we've elevated that battle to such high standards ... that it becomes turned into the `lost cause,' the Vietnam War syndrome."


The fighting there began in April 2004 after four security contractors from Blackwater USA were killed and the desecrated bodies of two were hung from a bridge. The so-called second battle of Fallujah - code-named Operation Phantom Fury - came seven months later.


"These young Marines - 19 years old - went in every building and every room of Fallujah," says Lowry, author of the book "New Dawn: The Battles for Fallujah." "They entered darkened rooms, kicking down doors, never knowing if they would find an Iraqi family hunkered down in fear or an Islamist terrorist waiting to shoot them and kill them. And they did that over and over and over again."

Around 100 Americans died and another 1,000 were wounded during the major fighting there, Lowry says, adding that it is difficult to overstate Fallujah's importance in the Iraq war.

"Up until that time, the nation was spiraling into anarchy, totally out of control," says Lowry, a Vietnam-era submarine veteran. "The United States Marine Corps - with help from the Army and from the Iraqis - went into Fallujah and cleared the entire city and brought security to Anbar Province, allowing the Iraqis to hold their first successful election."

Lowry says Fallujah was "the turning point in the war in Iraq for America." And that is why the al-Qaida takeover is such a bitter disappointment for many.




Catagnus and others say the situation is more nuanced than that.



"If you watch `NCIS' or anything that has a Marine ... they always say, `Oh, I was in Fallujah,'" says the Purple Heart recipient, who left the military as a staff sergeant in 2006 and is now studying for a doctorate in military history. "For the new generation, it's because everybody keeps mentioning it. And that is the battle that really made a warrior a warrior."

And while he concedes that the battle changed doctrine for urban warfare, he thinks Fallujah has become politicized - especially here at home. "There's a lot of fiery language around it," he says.



"To me, it was just a matter of time for it to happen again and for al-Qaida to go back in there," said the 53-year-old veteran of Moorpark, Calif., who retired as a sergeant major. "It'll be a constant thing." Still, Franco - whose son was also wounded in Iraq - says it was worth it.

So does Nick Popaditch.




"I fear that Fallujah may be the tip of the iceberg," he says. "It may be the start of a number of things that will cause these vets to wonder, `What was the point?' They may start asking questions like, `Why did my friends have to die? Why am I the way I am? Why did I have to participate in something when the outcome is not what we see in the movies with the signing of an armistice like in WWII?'"

Some who lost loved ones have similar feelings.

"I'm starting to feel that his death was in vain," says Shirley Parrello of West Milford, N.J., whose youngest son, Lance Cpl. Brian P. Parrello, 19, died in an explosion there on Jan. 1, 2005. "I'm hoping that I'm wrong. But things aren't looking good over there right now."

For his part, Shupp, the former colonel, is not convinced that many of those holding sway in Fallujah aren't simply "armed thugs, criminal elements, out there pursuing their own self interests." Even before the U.S.-led invasion, many Iraqis considered the city a "crossroads of criminal activity," and his troops were never meant to be "an army of occupation."




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