This was a crazy night and a heck of a turn for the war in Iraq. A few months later we had the Blackwater Contractors killed. This town was a different sort of place, whats not reported in the people that where killed and wounded where shot with 7.62x39mm and not 5.56mm. I only seen my guys shoot 8 people, two people with a M249 on a moped.
This is a sad story in how over time the story becomes very different from what the truth is.
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The information for this story comes from three Army investigations, two independent (non-military investigations), a report from a Human Rights Watch field team who visited the scene in June 2003, and eight first-hand accounts
It began in anger and disorientation. It ended with wreckage that smelled of gunpowder, dust, and blood.
On the evening of Saddam Hussein’s 66th birthday, somewhere between 200 and 400 Iraqi residents - most of them school students and teachers - defied a US-mandated curfew and marched down the streets of Fallujah, past Red Falcon Paratroopers positioned in a former Ba’ath party headquarters, waging an anti-American protest. The residents claimed that our Paratroopers were spying on their women and took issue with the presence of our Paratroopers inside a local school (the al-Qa'id school).
Tension grew rapidly. Things became increasingly chaotic. Protestors began firing in the air. Paratroopers in positions on the roof of the school observed men with weapons on three houses across the street. The Paratroopers threw a smoke canister to disperse the crowd. It had no effect.
Next, our Paratroopers came under effective fire. Rounds were hitting the school, striking around our Paratroopers.
What is not clear is whether the source of the fire was an element with the group protesting or whether a separate group - a group of provocateurs attempting to spark an international incident - was firing on our Paratroopers from outside the group of protestors. Regardless, the Red Falcons were under attack.
Red Falcon Paratroopers escalated force appropriately. They applied the "seven S's": shout, shove, smoke, spray, show, strike and shoot.
Finally, the Paratroopers fired into the crowd, killing 17 and wounding more than 70 and setting off an international controversy. Our Paratroopers engaged seven shooters: five in the crowd and two in the roofs across the street.
In the immediate aftermath, the Iraqi citizens claimed they were unarmed and their protest remained peaceful.
Our Paratroopers suffered no casualties.
We'll have to go back a few days prior to the incident to identify what set this tragedy in motion. This was a confusing time in what was becoming a confusing war: the Hussein regime had collapsed and it was not entirely clear who our enemies were. Although the majority of Fallujah residents were Sunni and had supported Saddam, Fallujah lacked military presence just after his fall. There was little looting and the new mayor of the city supported US presence.
When the Red Falcon Paratroopers first entered the town on April 23rd, they positioned themselves at the vacated Ba’ath Party headquarters and the school. This erased some of the goodwill from the locals, who were hoping the Paratroopers would stay outside of the relatively calm city. A few days later, when the Red Falcons converted the school into a makeshift base of operations, the residents grew furious.
Major news outlets began reporting on the incident within hours, focusing on the civilian deaths. Local outrage ensued. The next day thousands of angry residents swept the streets of Fallujah, demanding the removal of all American Soldiers. An analyst on CNN referred to the 82nd Airborne Division as “trigger happy.” Two days after the incident, to ease local concerns, Multi-National Force-Iraq pulled the Red Falcons out of Fallujah and replaced our Paratroopers with 2nd Troop, 3rd ACR.
Within months, the base established at the Ba’ath Party headquarters was removed and all American forces were pushed outside the city. All of this contributed to the eruption of violence in Fallujah in March of 2004 and the first and second battles in that city.
A few things about the event are clear:
1. In the days preceding the shooting, similar protesters threw stones at Red Falcon Paratroopers. A thrown grenade injured two Paratroopers three days before the shooting.
2. By April 28, 2003, Colonel Arnold Gordon-Bray, commander of Falcon Brigade, decided to withdraw Paratroopers from the al-Qa'id school; a move was already planned in the coming days to allow classes to continue.
3. Human Right Watch, as stated in their June 16, 2003 report, found no evidence that Paratroopers were spying on local women or in any way intentionally mistreating residents.
4. US Army Central Command, following an investigation of the incident, released a statement which read, in part: "U.S. Army paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division were fired upon during the night of April 28 by approximately twenty-five armed civilians who were interspersed among and on rooftops above approximately 200 protesters. The paratroopers received hostile gunfire from elements mixed within the crowd and positioned atop neighboring buildings."
5. The Army investigations determined that the Red Falcon Paratroopers responded with an appropriate volume of fire to defeat the threat from the crowd.
6. Two days after the shooting, the Baltimore Sun, in a rebuke of the official Army statement, reported that there were no bullet holes in the school's facade. The paper did not report that windows had been shout out from the outside of the school. The paper never corrected the story when Human Rights Watch found bullet holes in the school's facade.
