The Few and the Proud: Marines in the Battle of Fallujah

By Sgt. Jason Arellano

Growing up in New Mexico, I watched as my older cousins joined the United States Marine Corps, even seeing one of them graduate from MCRD in San Diego. I remember looking up to them quite a bit, and thinking to myself just how awesome the Marine Corps was. I began to see myself as eventually being a part of the Corps. I remember watching the television during Operation Desert Storm, seeing the pictures of combat, and turning to my mom to say, “I will be there one day!” She said if that is what I wanted to do, she would support me 100 percent.

Little did I know at the time that I would eventually be in the same theater just over a dozen years later. I did not join the Marine Corps the way I wanted to, straight out of high school. I was in the delayed entry program, and because I failed to graduate on time, I was initially given an administrative separation from the Corps. That crushed my dreams for a few years, but I was able to bounce back, joining just before I turned 22 in October 2000.

Maybe it was because I was older than a lot of the other men, but the drill instructors immediately seemed to put me into a leadership position. Wanting to be a leader is what led me to join the Marine Corps.

On September 11, 2001, we were out in the field doing some training for our scheduled upcoming deployment. I was standing at a waterhole filling my canteen when a HUMVEE rolled up. A few of the officers starting talking, and I heard one mention the words, “World Trade Center.” I didn’t think much of it at the time, but shortly after, they had the entire company gather around and asked if anybody had relatives that worked in the World Trade Center.

A Navy corpsman raised his hand, and they kind of pulled him aside. There was a buzz going around the company, with everybody wondering what was going on. After a bit one of the officers asked, “Who is familiar with the World Trade Center?” The whole company raised their hands. “Well,” he said, “the towers no longer exist.”

We were shocked. We were still scheduled to be in the field training for a few weeks, and it was in our minds the entire time. When we finally got back to camp, several of us walked right into the room and turned on the television – we didn’t even drop off our packs. They were still replaying the plane hitting the first building – we could not believe what we were seeing. Us infantrymen knew this meant a few things. We knew that somebody was definitely going to pay for this, and that it was just a matter of time.

Our first deployment was to Southeast Asia. Shortly after we went to Okinawa, then on to Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. As a Marine, something I will always remember is our trip to Iwo Jima, where we were able to walk up to the top of Mt. Suribachi.

We were preparing to go back to Okinawa when they had us rerouted to Singapore to support Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Shortly later, however, they shipped us back to Okinawa to finish our tour, then sent us back to the States.

The next time we left the States, it was February, 2003 – this time, it was for Kuwait. The next month, we were one of the first divisions to make the push into Iraq. One of our first objectives was the Ramallah oil fields, where we expected to meet some pretty heavy resistance. Instead, the Iraqis surrendered en masse – almost 100 of them gave themselves over to us.