Marines from 3rd Platoon with the vehicle that would carry them into Fallujah.Courtesy Robert Day
It’s been just over 20 years since the Battle of Fallujah, a bloody campaign in a destructive Iraq War that we now know was based on a lie. There were no weapons of mass destruction.
But back then, in the wake of 9/11, the battlefield was filled with young men and women who bought the like, and believed in serving and defending the country against terrorism. At first, for Marines trained to fight, their deployment during the “hearts and minds” portion of the US campaign was simply “boring.”
But then they received marching orders for a fight that would prove long and intense. “Going to Fallujah was the most horrific experience of our lives,” recalls Mike Ergo, a team leader for the US Marines Alpha Company, 1st Battalion. Yet paradoxically, “it was also, for myself, the most alive I’ve ever felt.”
This week on Reveal, we’ve partnered with the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse to join Ergo’s unit as they reunite and try to make sense of what they did and what was done to them. Together, they remember Bradley Faircloth, the 20-year-old lance corporal from their unit who lost his life, and unpack the mental and emotional battles that continue for them today.
In this intimate portrayal, we learn about Faircloth’s upbringing and character, and hear from his comrades about what it was like to be barely adults, yet tasked with clearing insurgents from a city, building to building, in the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War. A situation where you could be shot at from virtually any angle, and it was hard to know who, exactly, was trying to kill you.
The episode also takes us back home, exploring the travails the Marines faced upon returning to the United States, the knowledge they were recruited on false premises, and the complex feelings they still carry today, 20 years later.
This episode originally aired in January 2025.
