The Kill Zone: Moving Wounded in Fallujah

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The Kill Zone: Moving Wounded in Fallujah
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/04/2...
posted by David Martinez
(repost) on Wednesday April 21 2004 @ 08:34AM PDT


The first thing you notice is the silence. An unnerving, horrible quiet without the sound of voices, car engines, children playing, or televisions. Even the birds are wise enough to have gone elsewhere. And yet we are in a small city in the middle of the day. We passed the last mujaheedin patrol two blocks ago, and they waved us through when our escort told them what we were there for. To evacuate wounded, and to collect the dead.

We drop out of the truck and start walking, our passports held high in our otherwise empty hands. We leave our Iraqi driver and guide and enter the crushing quiet of the Kill Zone, the no man's land between the rebels and the American forces, somewhere inside the town of Fallujah. The team is made up of myself, a British woman, and an Iraqi woman. On the way in, I grab the Brit's hand and squeeze it. "For luck," I say, and I think I will remember the wink she gives me for the rest of my life.

No one, and I mean no one, is on the empty streets. We advance cautiously for about fifty yards, and then someone opens the door of a house, gesturing frantically around a corner with wild eyes. We can see what he is pointing at: a man lies in the street, covered in blood, a Kalashnikov still slung around his body. To retrieve him, however, will mean walking into American sniper fire.

If we carefully look through cracks in the brick wall that leads to the street, we can see them. Three soldiers in shooting positions, aiming straight down the way toward the victim. The situation is further complicated by a car that stands abandoned behind the prone man, all four doors hanging open as if the occupants have suddenly fled. Around it are scattered several RPG's and rockets. So if we attempt to do anything, the Americans will assume we are enemy fighters.

snip.... This is a riveting first-hand report

http://vitw.us/weblog/archives/000679.html


Source: http://vitw.us/weblog/archives/000679.html