{"id":16185,"date":"2016-06-14T05:30:05","date_gmt":"2016-06-14T10:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=16185"},"modified":"2016-06-14T05:30:05","modified_gmt":"2016-06-14T10:30:05","slug":"military-history-8-unbelievable-stories-from-the-second-battle-of-fallujah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/06\/14\/military-history-8-unbelievable-stories-from-the-second-battle-of-fallujah\/","title":{"rendered":"Military History: 8 Unbelievable Stories from the Second Battle of Fallujah"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Veterans from 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines share their incredible stories from the Second Battle of Fallujah.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This time of year marks the anniversary of one of the most storied battles in recent Marine Corps history: the Second Battle of Fallujah. The city became the scene of brutal urban combat when American, Iraqi, and British forces launched an all out assault on Nov. 8, 2004, to seize it from Iraqi insurgent hands.<\/p>\n

Some of the Marine Corps\u2019 greatest heroes and most recent legends emerged from the battle.<\/p>\n

After being severely injured by enemy gunfire, 1st Sgt. Bradley Kas<\/a>al<\/a>\u00a0rolled over to shield a wounded Marine from a grenade blast, absorbing the brunt of the explosion himself. After heroically leading his squad in an attack against a large enemy force inside of a building, Cpl. Dale Burger<\/a> was severely injured, but returned to his unit just three days later and again led his men back into combat before being killed in action on Nov. 14.<\/p>\n

The Marines of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment \u2014 to which both Kasal\u00a0and Burger belonged \u2014 were the operation\u2019s main effort. They were the tip of the spear.<\/p>\n

Over the course of battalion\u2019s\u00a0eight-month deployment, 33 gave their lives and more than 400 were injured, confirmed Col. Willard Buhl, 3\/1\u2019s commanding officer at the time.\u00a0Of that number, 23 were killed and 275 were wounded during 12 days of intense and unrelenting combat as the Marines fought to take Fallujah from enemy hands. Additionally, more than\u00a0250 awards for valor were awarded to the unit\u2019s Marines and sailors for their actions during the operation.<\/p>\n

The stories that emerged from that battle are the kind that legends are built on.\u00a0They\u2019re larger than life and in some cases seem unbelievable.<\/p>\n

But they\u2019re true.<\/p>\n

Task & Purpose spoke with six\u00a0Marines who served with 3\/1 during the battle and asked them to share the most unbelievable things they witnessed during the operation. Here are eight extraordinary moments from one of the most brutal battles of the Iraq War.<\/p>\n

Read the Remainder at Task and Purpose<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Veterans from 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines share their incredible stories from the Second Battle of Fallujah. This time of year marks the anniversary of one of the most storied battles in recent Marine Corps history: the Second Battle of Fallujah. The city became the scene of brutal urban combat when American, Iraqi, and British forces…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5773,475,3172,1898],"tags":[12205,3171,12206,763,3173,1582],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}