In Fallujah, We Destroyed Parts of Ourselves

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

News

4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s been 20 years since the Battle of Fallujah, a bloody campaign in a destructive Iraq War that we now know was based on a lie.

But back then, in the wake of 9/11, the battlefield was filled with troops who believed in serving and defending the country against terrorism.

“Going to Fallujah was the most horrific experience of our lives,” said Mike Ergo, a team leader for the US Marines Alpha Company, 1st Battalion. “And it was also, for myself, the most alive I've ever felt.”

This week on Reveal, we’re partnering with the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse to join Ergo’s unit as they reunite and try to make sense of what they did and what was done to them. Together, they remember Bradley Faircloth, the 20-year-old lance corporal from their unit who lost his life, and unpack the mental and emotional battles that continue for them today.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal.
0:07.0	I'm Al Ledzen.
0:09.0	Kathleen Faircloth became a mom unexpectedly.
0:13.0	I was 19 when I found out that I was pregnant.
0:17.0	19 and uneducated and poor was not a recipe for success.
0:21.6	She was in and out of relationships.
0:24.6	I was. I married a lot.
0:26.6	And her son Bradley became her life.
0:29.6	He was the reason I lived. I had no, I, why do you go to work?
0:33.6	Take care of you. Period. You don't stay at home sick.
0:36.6	It's nobody else's responsibility.
0:38.3	She raised Bradley in Mobile, Alabama, working first as a secretary and then in heating and air conditioning.
0:47.3	She crawled in and out of attics and under houses, and she also crawled up the opportunity ladder, trying to improve her life
0:56.0	and create new opportunities for his.
0:59.2	Made him listen to all my motivational tapes 24-7 in my car, which I think probably got into
1:06.0	his head because he did believe there was nothing he couldn't do.
1:10.0	Kathleen, in her own way, believed that too.
1:13.3	She was dead set on him going to college
1:15.6	and achieving more than she ever thought was possible for her own life.
1:20.1	But on September 11, 2001, Bradley spent the day watching TV with his high school classmates.
1:29.1	The Twin Towers falling.
1:31.3	The Pentagon burning.
	...

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