Clip 031 | Ambush of April 7th | 1st Recon Marines Rise to the Challenge

They basically hired fucking Ricon to take out the teams of mortarmen that were shooting and launching mortars into Camp Fallujah, the mech and into Epigrap. So we started to conducting missions out of Great Prison. We're haunting fucking mortar teams and we definitely got some as a unit. So it was It's a wild fucking time, isn't this around the time that you received your actions. You got awarded the Silver Star for your actions around this timeframe. Yeah, April seventh, you know, obviously remember the Dad clearly we were going to go.

There was an AMMA supply point west southwest Offflujah called the Rock. Asp Blackwater was there protecting this massive AMA supply point and we were going to conduct operations out of there. So we're gonna drive from the met camp to camp at the Rock AMMA supply point and we've been there before, but we're going to do like a week or two emissions out of there, and we got hit really hard on the way there. We got hit actually before the big tick that that day was famous for. It was remember driving over the Euphrates and taking mortars. Our unit, Bravo Company and second platoon taking fucking mortars animate mortars in the river like fucking Viennams out dude, like thirty foot plumes of fucking water like off the right flanks we're driving across, and I'm just like,

holy shit, man, salmone Taser started taking peak in YPK fire across on our basically are forty five to our eleven o'clock. They picked my own b to go drive down that road and engage those guys. So five of us, six of us to go engage this fucking machine gun nust and we got down there, right right there, and dudes didn't close with They fucking bounced. We didn't get any secondary engagement with those guys. So we turned back around week back up with the main body of our patrol of five vehicles.

You know, made it right. They made a left, and this is where it turns. I remember seeing like a gas station and there was like thirty to fifty males with all their backs up against the building, but all of them were kind of facing our direction of travel. They were looking at us, and not one of them looked our direction in that place.

Later, once you process all this shit, this is all happening in real time as we were like demeanor hit seeing these guys and not one of them were fucking looking at us. So right after that, our captain and platoon commander always get Barsak and ricon our verbiage with team leader, team chief, Pato and sold platoon leader confused because we changed at barsok, but our platoon commander, Captain Brent Morrell over the hooks like yo, this conduct five and twenty five, which for everyone listening, that's vehicle slows down, driver gunner stays in, dismounts get out and we're gonna basically get out, lamester him, just walk around and look for fucking IDs and just get out of the vehicle just in case something cooks off to where we can fucking fight. So

we're all down fucking sitting this stupid hot, fucking truck forever. So we got out walked a short time after then we walked one hundred two hundred meters fucking circle back up getting the vexed and push and very clear in my mind this moment, I was behind the driver's seat on the left side of the vehicle and dude on the fifty cal team leader that pieced up in the driver's seat calm, calm staffer to the right. It was a generation kill guy too. Most of us we're still from the generation killed Patwo In, minus a few new guys. And uh, I remember looking over the fucking right shoulder. Just happened to be looking forward. No. I had an M sixteen A four with an acock. I was like the DM and had it

sticking out the fucking window. But I looked straight ahead, and at that same moment itsin. We were like kind of herring, going left and right with dispersion and being offset. I got to see the first vehicle, you know, it's up four or five hundred meters, and at that moment, that exact second, I watched it get hit by I thought was an ID and it rocks completely to the left and black. It's not a fucking movie explosion of flames. It just rocked. This thing almost set of forty five in my mind, and just black and brown. Fucking dust blows out the right side. And we're right at the same time over the net contact right, contact right, and I remember like looking at the trees and like slow motion. Then I remember seeing all this dust being kicked up to our front

into our right behind a burn, and I'm like, this fight's not cooking off. I'm like, it's not that windy. This is happening in seconds. I remember like, looking around, is it that Wendy? And I look back again and I look to the right of where that dust. I'm seeing muzzle flashes from the burn, which at the same time was the fourth vehicle, the fifth vehicles our platoon. Sergeant Dan Griego, He's like, L shape right, last two vehicles to be right broadway on the peel right, and we just so happened to be right at the right moment at this fuckingh dirt entrance to this field. We make it right now. We're forming a fucking L shape like one of the best fucking maneuvers that you can be against a static enemy. And we train too. We're fucking blue in the

face with the same scenario with fucking rocks. A little army man like we've gone through this thing a billion fucking times and here it is. He calls it like a fucking coach and a football team. Dude, love the dude for this moment he fucking arose to this occasion. Make it right, just bount he's actually recording he was at an open back comb and he had a fucking fifty cow Barrett on the c He was fucking plugging dudes with this fucking fifty cow man and he I've listened to the audio, you hear me running up to him, let us go, Gunny. I like wanted to charge all these motherfuckers. So what I saw leading up to this point was there was another like creek canal in a burn. We'd like crawled up there to

get eyes on, and we could see all these machine gun positions for like a kilometer, dude, and they were like five five guys at each hyper focused on the X, not one of them covering fucking tailoring Charlie, all of them being on train fox forget it with RPKs. They had fucking serviced, they had missile launchers, I say seven's they had fucking they were fucking loaded to the teeth, dude. They were waiting for an American conboy to come by, and I'm like screaming at Ganny to let us go, and He's like, stay here for a bit, and I wanted to get some just like stay here, get on the berm again and fucking start start engaging.

So with my sixteen eighty four and some dudes next to me, I think Stafford was next to me. I started plugging dudes in the fucking back at like maybe one hundred and fifty two hundred meters. He's got wind, you know, there's enemy behind him. Someone started running ninety degrees to the right, and it was you know, Kentucky ban It pointing to managers and time to adjust. So I'm seeing grounds impact in this field. I just fucking aim, you know, lead them. So smoked quite a few fucking people there. We all did. At that point. County is like, move up, getting your vehicle, your vehicle, move up and move forward.

So we move forward, I think past the first group of fucking guys. There was another entrance to break in the burm. So we got back on the MSR, make a right and flip a bitch, basically point the gun back at the heavy gun, back towards the fucking road kind of the north, and Stafford and I go south back to where we were initially words, we're going back the way we came. And then Batista uh went solo fucking by himself this way, left two guys on the fucking on the vehicle and went with Stafford dude and fucking cleared a bunch of dudes up close and personal. Just the two of us had a grenade. Poled one of the guys that I shot. H never forget this. It was like the second or third dude I shot was on his left side. Stafford was up on

the burn, and I had this screen, giant open field on my left and I was so petrified. I'll never forget how I felt this moment. I just I wasn't enough. I was just by myself. I wish I had eighty guns and eighty eighty eyes. This field was massive. I knew I saw a lot of guys run into that fucking field. I know there's dudes in this fucking field laying down, bleeding out to celibate case. So luckily not I'm shot, but this dude I thought was dead. I get up to him. Stafford's a little bit further. He's basically at the feet.

I'm kind of my toes are touching this guy's back. He's saying on his left side, and I'm like still looking at his eyes. His fucking eyes are closed, you know, I'm like looking at the right side of his face, right on top of him. I'm looking at this field and then at the same time, I hear Stafford to my right yell, he's got a grenade. He's got a grenade. Right when I said that, dude wasn't dead, dude pulled this rush and pineapple grenade and fucking dropped it.

And I was just like, what the fuck? And it was like such a surreal time stopped, and I just like I've been I've watched every fucking movie there is. I'm like, this shit's happening. So like I fucking turn around and start running. I just start laughing because I'd sex so surreal. And so there's this giant fight going on. I'm like laughing because I'm like, this can't be happening. And this fucking thing goes off, dude, and we turned back around. We make it, you know, maybe ten feet and it went off. He was a work of all of it, blooming. Half his feet were blown back up the burn. He's like zombie, fucking crawling, like his intestines hanging out. Dude, He's still alive. He's still alive. I don't have a fuck. He lived

through that blast alone, concussion of it. But he's we like we learned. We learned later that a lot of them were like on a cot slash like like fucking meth like fucking upper, which which makes sense in this scenario because I just couldn't imagine someone living through that in half like a zombie dude.

Stafford fucking lights him up. He pushed the vehicle at this point of fucking Cobra. He's like hovering over the fucking road like damn here, could touch at skids and like launching tow missiles into this fucking building that all these dudes squirt into. I mean, this is like a fucking movie, bro. And I'm like looking at the pilots and they're like, it's like fucking launching launching tows. I ended up fast forward. Two minutes later. I ended up tripping over the same so wire land right next to it. Den Iraqi wearing a combatant wearing American US Army BDU's with an American fucking M four two or three with an ame point. Oh wow, Baptista, like I said, moved up through here and smoked a bunch of dudes by himself,

and that was one of them, And I landed an edge from this dude's face. The fucking teeth were exposed. He was dead, but he had a catastrophic malfunction with the M four. I didn't know how to clear it, and that's when Batista dropped him. So b being me, grabbed the M four and in a quick second, Mad I need to find out who this is, ripped off the fucking name tape real quick with a knife because it was a beltrow back down on the army anyway, maybe it was a vel girl, I thought. I cut it off whatever, and grabbed the gun, sling it on my back and kept pushing and smoke some more guys.

There's bodies everywhere. Links back up to the vehicle. Pull fast forward to the end of this dude. Support platoon comes a q RF and we get escorted back to the base. And the weirdest thing ever, I don't understand why we did this, but I'll be very blunt about it. I mean, in this moment, we're fucking vikings. I mean, this isn't you know. I'm not here to fucking shake hands and kiss babies like it's I'm going to end everyone in anyone to get the fuck home, and they're going to do the same so they can get home. Like, dude, it's it's the ultimate chess game. So Gunny makes us pick up all these dead bodies and throw these bodies on the hoods of our trucks like they're deer.

Don't understand. So we took like fifteen twenty bodies back through the X back to the metcamp and holding a dead human beings hands, especially the enemy. It was such a surreal moment, man, Like we're like, like you throw your sister or a cousin on a bed, Yeah, we're doing We're doing this with these bodies and we put them on the fucking hood and drive back through it. All the same people that we're like giving us a stare, we're like, fucking just staring us even harder now with these enemies that they knew were there, and they've been laying there for fucking god knows how long that we we fucking want this, this moment, we fucking want.

That's intense, dude, rolling back through town with bodies stacked up on the fucking hood Jesus, basically a big fuck you to everyone in that area. That's intense for sure. Well, the worst part it was is from my recollection, the I was gonna be a graphic about it again. You know, war and fighting is the ultimate failure of fucking communication, you know, like exhaust that communication until you have to go connectic and hopefully we don't.

Like I'm almost like a fucking pastist now, yeah, but looking back, looking back then, I'm gonna fucking club fight, bite, scratch my the fuck way out of it to get home. And so were they. So I got these bodies on the hood and then the blood out like has not coagulated yet, and their noses are fucking smashing on this hoot over fucking thirty kilometers. Blood is all over the fucking window. The fucking wind show vipers don't work. So I'm driving. I got the fucking fuck the window down, dude, and fucking blood is like all over my fucking face, like super fucked up. Man, I probably got hep fucking Z. That's what I was just thinking, like, dude, not cool. What was it like? What was it like when you cruise back into base? What

were everybody else thinking? Like even the Americans are probably like, what the fuck my friend that I've not yet met in person? You asked the right question. So we make a ride off a route mobile or Michigan, and I like fucking confused. It was mobile at that time. I always get confused a bad dad and all my deployments. Uh, we make a right and it's the last straight away to the met camp and it's split on left and right side of two different fops. There's a bunch of Marines in the prone in this burn facing basically Pelusia, which is off in the distance, and they're in a tick. They're in a fight. Like fucking no idea.

So we drive through that shit. We got these hoods covered in blood and bodies of obvious combatants and this I never forget. This fucking marine dude on the saw and he like looks back this fucking helmet. It's just like he stands up and he's like fuck yeah, Like they're getting it, but like three or four of them, we're like, America, this is metal as fuck, dude. It was. It was hard man, you know.

And I'm not a callous person, dude, especially, I've gotten like I understand the importance of human life, but in this moment is a fucking warrior. It is exactly what the fuck it is. And if you guys don't understand it, well, I mean It's not like it's not like these were just regular Joe's out there that you just smoked. These were combatants, you know. It's like it's gonna be hard to feel bad for combatants that were trying to kill you, you know, you know, but there's the utmost respect form too at the same time, truly like they they're ponying up to fucking fight for their land, their motherland, against this invader. Like I've had ample time to think about this, I do not hate. Honestly, I don't think I've hated any one of them. You know, you're

not the first. You're not the first Iraq veteran that said that to me before. Actually they said that they understand why they fought us. You know, yeah, I do, because I was. If I would have been born and raised there, I would have been fucking throwing rocks sticks at us too. One hundred percent. I'd have been a fucking freedom fighting some a bitch. It's time and fucking place. I didn't choose that, it just happened. So I respect them, honestly more than a lot of fucks in our own country. I'd much of the break bread and hang out with them in a peaceful setting. Then a lot of fuckers in our own country is a they rogered up, dude, they pontyed the fuck up to a fight.

Let's talk about something very very important. Uh so the glory of the fighting life lost, you know. Let's circle back to We make it back to Bay, back to base from that big fight. I knew the first vehicle got hit. Didn't know E four corporal was not an ATL Team lead was not on the net hearing major coms going on. It was team internal and no idea what the fuck happened? I know there was helos all over the fucking plaace cobras, I think of forty six or Chinook. I don't know, shit, dude. We get back to base, fucking KBR Filipino chicks, fucking that service food comes out of the fucking porta John and sees all these bodies all over the fucking hood instantly starts projectile vomiting everywhere. Uh

And we're driving through like fob atland now, dude, a lot of these people and then we leave this fucking wire and we're bringing it to their fucking doorstep, and I'm sure it haunts them to this day. Man, It's pretty catastrophic thing to see. So we dump I don't We dump all these fucking bodies about nipple high and about ten feet wide of fucking flesh in front of the bas the aide station, and I walk inside covered in blood.

They're like, what's wrong with you? And I'm like, oh, I'm good man, Like my gun he told me to give you this. And then there was two Air Force checks nurses and they came out and started puking. They saw all these bodies instantly started puking and they're just like what the fuck. So they go get their mother. We had a medical officer and he's like, get these fucking things out of here. What the fuck.

I'm like, dude, Gunny told me to do it. I don't know, so corporal don't know. So we grab all these bodies, put them back in this trailer and drive them back to our base across the street, literally across the street, put them in a new pile. We're eating chow on the hood with there's blood everywhere. I got a hot plate. We're just fucking eating. I didn't washed he we're eating right there. There's a picture of which just fucking mind bott them. So old command. Everyone's out there, you know, and then we get into it basically a school circle from our company commander I forgot his name, no fucking stand Neil sit and our commander says, gives us a four to one long on what actually happened at a high level. So did not know that my captain commander was shot

in the chest and he died in flight on the way out. Had no idea that our captain was shot killed. Eddie Wright took an RPG that rpguh he had the had half doors. They had a nine saw parasaw like soft style sashware barrel schwartz stock. He was getting it on the tripod on the fucking scissor mount, fucking laid waste and he took a direct hit to the gun from the RPG. Damn Rey blew the job. Damn there fucking bled out of the fucking is egg, blew his arms off instantly. Everyone in the vehicle gets sucked up from that RPG. So that whole time we were fighting, I had no idea. Dudes were fighting for their fucking life on that X because they were four vehicles up with three vehicles had me like one hundreds of meters, a different fight, different war mine was going on back

here. I had no fucking idea a few hundred meters away that my boys were fucking I mean, who hindsight, I'd have been fucking running on foot and fucking capping all these dudes in the back of the head. It's crazy how it's that much different, only a few hundred meters ahead of you, you know. Yeah, and no idea happened the whole way home feeling fucking good. It was like shooting fish in a barrel and that was fucking easy, Like bring it, bitches that no idea. Dudes were fighting for their fucking life and lost their life.

Clip 031 | Ambush of April 7th | 1st Recon Marines Rise to the Challenge | Jason Lilley

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