Marine Cpl. Michael D. Anderson Jr.,

Oct. 18, 2004

Hey dad, yesterday we had a 6 hour firefight in Fallujah. The best day of my life. I watched buildings disappear, shot ass loads of rounds, threw grenades. Well the day started we were stopping cars and searching them after about an hour of that we were heading back to camp baharia which is where I live, and there were a bunch of marines lying down on the side of the road and the other side of the road is Fallujah. The road has a bridge and train tracks heading into the city. So we stop to see what’s up and we hear fire coming from the city and the HMV’s up on the road are shooting the crap out of the city so everybody was like yeah let’s get some. So me and Baker, Vandorn and Hannah sneak under the bridge across the train tracks … and we see muzzle flashes and impacts on the bridge so we open up on them. 240s and 40mm grenades and of course M16s and SAWS. Well that goes on for a while finally we pin a few in one house we are about 100 to 150 meters away and they call for close air support. So an F16 and 18 drops a 500 pound bomb on this building, I felt the heat and concussion, it was the coolest thing I have ever experienced. When the smoke cleared there was nothing left. So we back out and are getting ready to leave when mortars are landing all around us and think they are coming from a couple nearby cement factories. So once again close air comes in. We drive over about 200 meters away on the left side and again they drop another 500 pound bomb and about 30 seconds after it hits they open the back door on the Amtrak and we come running out and assault the objectiv … the other cement factory is about 300 meters south of where we are so we load up and move in. We start closing in. We are about 75 to 80 meters away and next to the house is a red car. The F16 or 18 swoops in and lights this thing up, we drop to the ground. The tracers hit right in front of us and ricochet over us. So we move up to the house and I tell them to shoot through the windows so they light this place up. I hear screaming and yelling so I look down the line to see if it was a marine hit and no one was hit so I called a cease fire and the yelling was coming from the house so I grab two marines to come with me and we move to the front door and yell for them to come out. The first guy hobbles out is bleeding out of his head and leg and the other 4 are ok just really scared with their hands on their head. Our corpsman bandages up the guy that is bleeding all over the place. We search the house and find one AK47. We bent the crap out of it and left it. We call in objective secure and move back to the bridge. We went back to camp baharia. My ears were ringing so bad from shooting under the bridge cause it echoed under there. Yesterday was one of the best days of my life. Last week we were driving down the same road when we took a heavy volume of fire so we punched through. There was one guy pushing his car as it was getting shot. Talk about a bad day, his car broke down and having to push it and getting shot at. I am being put up for combat action cause if that’s not combat I don’t know what is. I shot so much ammo yesterday I don’t know if I shot anybody but I know for sure they didn’t live through the bomb that was dropped on ’em. It was like living in a war movie. I didn’t’ get tired, my ears didn’t hurt during but after they did. Like I said it was like living a movie or a real life video game. I had the time of my life I wish every day was like yesterday. It is hard to put in words how it felt cause it felt so good my adrenaline was pumping. I always thought that fire fights were tiring, when it was over I was like, that’s it? Six hours went by like 6 seconds. Well I gotta go I got some good missions coming up in the next few days so if anything happens I’ll write about it and send it to you.

Love, Mike Jr.

Anderson, 21, of Modesto, Calif., died Dec. 14, 2004.

Link to the original Newsweek article.

Link to screen capture of the original Newsweek article.