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This is on point. I'm Magna Chakrabardi.

Thomas Brennan is with us today. He's founder and executive director of The War Horse, an award-winning non-profit newsroom dedicated to military service men and women, veterans, and their families.

Thomas, it's good to have you back.

Thank you for having me.

So take us back to November 2004. 20 years ago. How old were you?

I was a 19-year-old Marine that had just enlisted out of Randolph, Massachusetts. Just enlisted. Okay. And in November 2004 at 19 years old, where were you? So I was on the outskirts of Fallujah at that point, living in holes in the ground

with a few thousand other Marines just waiting for the battle to start.

So the day began with us digging fighting holes, eating chow, cracking jokes, hanging out with each other.

A few of us got interviewed by the BBC journalist that was there.

And come nighttime, that's when it all began.

And it was just artillery and bombs being dropped and white phosphorus just melting out of the sky down onto the city.

And it was, we called it shock and awe.

And it was just this awe-inspiring demonstration of munitions and explosions. And it was really, really hard to process at all during the moment, because none of us had ever seen anything like that ever before.

What you're talking about is the beginning of the second battle of Fallujah, right, in Iraq, which was, I think it was

the bloody, it was definitely the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War.

And I think the largest ground scale incursion or battle that U.S. forces had undertaken since

at least Vietnam.

But I want to slow down actually quite a lot, Thomas, if we could.

And just go back first a little bit.

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