I had led a Marine platoon in the Second Battle of Fallujah, in 2004, and had seen plenty of heroism-Marines dragging their wounded off machine-gun-swept streets, or fighting room to room to recover a comrade's body. But none of these compared to the cumulative heroism of the 19- and 20-year-old infantrymen who placed their bodies across that fatal funnel-a doorway with a potential enemy inside-every day. Clearing the enemy from the city, house by house, was a game of Russian roulette played on a grand scale. You never knew who might be waiting on the other side of the door. *I In the early days of the battle, we cleared houses by sending Marines through the front door and then proceeding room to room. Soon, however, we discovered this was too dangerous. Was any Marine's life worth a building? We modified our tactics, so that if we sent a Marine through the front door and he found an insurgent inside, we retreated and made no effort to clear the structure. Instead we brought up an armored bulldozer or tank and leveled it.
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