Remembering Fallujah, Memorial Day 2025

“It is because they come out of the American heart. They are the best of America.”

For over twenty years, I’ve written about American heroes each Memorial Day, constantly amazed by the stories of the fallen, their sacrifices to the nation, and their devotion to their brothers in arms. I’m always left humbled beyond words, never satisfied that I, nor any of us, can adequately honor them.

Fallujah, Iraq, is a predominantly Sunni town of 300,000, 40 miles west of Baghdad on the east bank of the Euphrates River in the infamous Sunni triangle. Nearly twenty-one years ago, it was the stage for the most intense urban warfare battle for the US Marines (along with Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and British and Iraqi forces) since the battle for Hue City, Vietnam, in 1968.

Before the Second Battle for Fallujah, there was widespread speculation promoted in the media that American troops were so dependent on their superior weapons systems that they could no longer fight and win house-to-house battles against insurgents. The horrific fighting in Fallujah, including hand-to-hand combat, proved the critics wrong.

The First Battle for Fallujah began in April 2004 to rout insurgents operating in the city and to capture the Muslim extremists who had murdered four American military contractors and put their mutilated bodies on public display. By May, US forces withdrew from the city, leaving it mainly under the control of insurgent resistance fighters and foreign extremists. The attempt to secure Fallujah was crippled by bad intelligence and exposed the lack of proper equipment engaged in an urban environment, as well as the internal weakness of the Iraqi forces. As is too often the case, political decisions drove the effort instead of tactical realities.

By November 2004, some 4000 insurgents had massed in Fallujah, made up of both Sunni and Shia fighters, foreign Muslim extremists, and former members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist brigades. They were heavily armed with personal weapons, machine guns, explosives, and rocket-propelled grenades and had built trenches and hidden hiding holes and tunnels, many booby-trapped with explosives. Abandoned houses and other buildings had also been rigged with explosives or set up with kill zones with machine guns. 

It would be a grueling, brutal house-to-house battle.

In preparation to retake Fallujah, coalition forces had encircled the city with checkpoints in an attempt to keep the insurgent fighters inside while over 200,000 civilians fled. Intense air strikes and shelling began on November 7. On November 8, US Marines entered Fallujah with a coalition force of 12,000.  

The 46-day battle left 95 American troops dead and 560 wounded. Coalition forces lost 12 men and 53 wounded. Over 2,000 insurgents were killed, and 1,500 were taken prisoner.

Regardless of your political position or opinion of the War on Terror after 9-11, the US Military’s men and women, often shackled by political stupidity in Washington and internal battles and dramas inside the Pentagon itself, are, and remain, the finest fighting force in the world. It is not because of presidents, generals, and technocrats. It isn’t because the individual service member has no choice. It isn’t because they seek some extraordinary fame.

It is because they come out of the American heart. They are the best of America.

Here are just a few of the 95 stories we honor.  

On his first deployment to Iraq, Marine Rifleman Sean Andrew Stokes was his unit’s point man after entering the city on November 9. He led a four-man element in a building and was immediately engaged by enemy automatic weapons fire. Corporal Stokes advanced on the insurgent and killed him before he could fire on the rest of the team. Then, on November 17, while clearing a house, a grenade exploded underneath him. Severely wounded, he still provided gunfire to cover the other Marines while they took cover, reorganized, and cleared the house of insurgents.

During his second deployment to Iraq in 2017, Corporal Stokes was killed by an IED. He was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for his selfless bravery and heroism at Fallujah.

Pfc. Christopher Adlesperger entered a house full of insurgents on November 10 after the point man was killed and two other Marines were wounded. Wounded in the face by grenade fragments himself, Pfc. Adlespeger, on his own, cleared a stairway and rooftop of insurgent fighters while taking intense fire, using both grenades and his rifle.

In a written statement, platoon corpsman Alonso Rogero stated that “[he] was killing insurgents so they couldn’t make it up the roof. The insurgents tried to run up the ladder well, but PFC Adlesperger kept shooting them and throwing grenades on top of them.”

Pfc. Adlesperger didn’t rejoin his platoon until an assault vehicle broke through a wall on the main floor. Even then, he asked to take the point for the final attack on the entrenched machine gun. He rushed the courtyard and eliminated the final enemy at close range. He was credited with killing at least 11 insurgents.

He was killed a month later and was posthumously promoted to lance corporal and recommended for the Medal of Honor for his actions on November 10 in Fallujah. He was awarded the Navy Cross, the nation’s second-highest award.

On November 15, Sergeant Rafael Peralta led his team, clearing out three houses, and then charged a fourth house in Fallujah. Finding two empty rooms on the first floor, he opened a third room door and took immediate fire and was hit multiple times, severely wounding him. He managed to move, allowing his fellow marines into the entrance to return fire at the insurgents. With two Marines firing next to him, the insurgents managed to throw a grenade into the doorway. Sergeant Peralta, still conscious, pulled the grenade under his body to take the blast, saving his fellow Marines.

Sergeant Peralta was awarded the Navy Cross posthumously.

Every generation has looked on in awe for over two hundred and fifty years and asked, “Where do such heroes come from?”