Losing Fallujah: The man who photographed the first bloody battle

The black flags raised by Al-Qaeda-linked militants over the city of Fallujah last week signaled to the world that the war did not end when the last U.S. troops left Iraq in 2011, as President Obama proclaimed. Dropped overnight from the daily newscasts and headlines, the war had raged on, out of sight.

Iraq has now reached a level of violence that's on a par with the war’s darkest days. Now, the seizing of Fallujah by Al-Qaeda-linked forces has rekindled decade-old memories of the battle for that city, where U.S. troops endured their heaviest losses of the entire eight-year war.

That is particularly true for those who were there, such as Hayne Palmour IV, the only American photographer on the ground the first few weeks.

At the time, Palmour was a photographer for San Diego’s North County Times newspaper, and embedded with Camp Pendleton’s 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment -- the first to arrive in Fallujah. It was meant to be a hearts and mind campaign, meaning U.S. forces would make emotional or intellectual appeals to help win support in the region. Palmour did not expect to chronicle a defining point in the war, and transmit images to the world that testified to the real strength of the insurgency. 

As part of the campaign, the battalion brought probably thousands of posters to put up, Palmour remembers. 

"I don’t think one poster ever went up," he said. "It was not what it was built up to be.” 

When they arrived, the marines’ first task was to meet city leaders at the mayor’s compound, Palmour recalled. Once they got there, U.S. troops were met with a mortar attack, which left 17 marines injured.

“That right there told us that the insurgency was pretty serious,” Palmour said.

The marines suddenly needed to improvise an entirely new strategy, and Palmour had to document a very different kind of encounter.

“The marines were planning an operation literally as their armies rolling out, to go into the eastern part of the city, “ he explained. “Basically to say, ‘We’re here, we’re different and we’re tough.’”  

A few days later, news came out that four American contractors had been ambushed, burned and dragged through the streets, with their mutilated corpses hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River. After that, Camp Pendleton’s 2nd Battalion was no longer left alone to win Fallujah.

Multiple battalions encircled the city, and from a railroad on Fallujah’s northwest edge, the marines began guiding in airstrikes. Palmour’s camera was now capturing the impact of hundreds of laser-guided bombs.

Palmour said that, at the time, fighting had spread to Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, where Fallujah also resides.

“We knew the whole country was burning,” Palmour said.

The fighting went on for weeks, down to hand-to-hand combat, and the siege continued for months. After a second all-out assault that November, the battle for Fallujah was finally won, with 96 marines losing their lives in the effort.

The city's violent chapter was far from closed. The reports of the fighting in Fallujah this week parallel, Palmour says, what he witnessed in 2004, such as the encircling of the city and use of airstrikes. Only this time it’s the U.S.-trained Iraqi army doing the bloody work.

“It’s so similar, it blew my mind. It’s a replay of the American siege,” he said.

Even today, 10 years later, Palmour, now a photographer at the Union-Tribune San Diego, said the battle returns vividly to him when he simply sees Fallujah in a headline. 

“You’re still involved in that story,” he said. “You never leave it.”

A correction was posted on Jan. 15: An earlier version of this story stated that Palmour published "A Thousand Miles to Baghdad" with his writing partner Darrin Mortenson after returning from Fallujah. They actually put together the book after they got back from the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003.