"A Shadow Dance": A Marine Officer's Story of Fallujah, War, and Understanding the Enemy

Combat Story

Ryan Fugit

History

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 December 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of Combat Story, we sit down with Elliot Ackerman—former Marine infantry officer, CIA paramilitary operations officer, journalist, and bestselling author.

Elliot takes us inside some of the most intense moments of modern warfare, from the brutal urban combat of Fallujah in 2004 to special operations deployments in Afghanistan and later transitioning into the CIA. He walks us through a harrowing platoon-level fight where his unit was surrounded, badly wounded, and forced to blow their way out under fire—starting the day with 46 Marines and ending with just 21 combat effective.

But this conversation goes deeper than tactics and timelines.

Elliot reflects on leadership under pressure, the mental toll of combat, and how war shapes identity long after the fighting ends. He also shares a remarkable story of sitting down years later with a former al-Qaeda in Iraq fighter—two men who once hunted each other, now trying to understand the same war from opposite sides.

This is a powerful discussion about brotherhood, memory, storytelling, and why veterans become the custodians of history when wars end. If you're interested in Marine infantry combat, Fallujah 2004, special operations, the CIA, or the deeper human meaning of war—this is an episode you won't want to miss.

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Elliot Ackerman.
0:13.8	I served in the Marine Corps from 2003 to 2009, and then thereafter served at CIA as a paramilitary operations officer.
0:26.2	So I served as an infantry officer in 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment.
0:33.0	From 2004 or 2005, we were deployed in Al-Ambar province, Iraq.
0:39.9	We fought in the Fallujah battle in November 2004.
0:44.6	Then when I was at 1-8, we also deployed with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit.
0:51.7	And we were, when Israel invaded Lebanon, we were the group of Marines
0:55.7	that helped run the evacuation of all the American citizens out of Beirut. I then went over to
1:02.2	what was then Second Marine Special Operations Battalion at Marsock, which is now Second
1:06.7	Raider Battalion, and we deployed to Afghanistan to Western Afghanistan in 2008.
1:14.6	Left Marsok then went over the agency as a paramilitary officer and at which point just sort of deployed all over Afghanistan.
1:22.6	So today I am a writer. I've written eight books, six novels, two memoirs. My most recent memoir is a book called
1:36.2	The Fifth Act, America's End in Afghanistan, which chronicles sort of the long arc of the
1:42.3	war, but also the evacuation in the summer of 2021.
1:46.4	Novels I've written called Halcyon, and it is set in an alternate 2004 in deals with
1:54.1	controversy surrounding a Civil War Memorial. But I've also written military thrillers, like the
1:59.5	book 2034 that I co-author with retired
2:02.6	Admiral James DeVrides and then also novels about Afghanistan, green on blue, or the war in Syria,
2:10.6	dark at the crossing. And in addition to that, I'm a contributing writer at the Atlantic
2:15.0	where I also work as a journalist. I don't know what I would
2:18.1	have done if I hadn't gone into the military. I think I probably would have tried to become like a
2:23.4	professional skateboarder. I don't know, but I don't think I would have wound up as a writer. I think
	...

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