School of War - Ep 253: Michael Pack on the Battle of Fallujah

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

Michael Pack, President and CEO of Palladium Pictures LLC and director of The Last 600 Meters: The Battles of Najaf and Fallujah, joins the show to discuss his remarkable documentary of the Iraq war and the Marines and battles that it portrays. ▪️ Times 01:59 The Journey of Creating 'The Last 600 Meters' 06:24 Censored 10:55 Combat and Valor  21:06 Political Decisions and Military Strategy  26:02 The Human Experience of War  36:29 The Hell House 40:24 Beyond the Battlefield 45:42 Full Metal Jacket 50:45 The Withdrawal from Afghanistan: A New Perspective Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find more content on our School of War Substack

In 2004, things were going from bad to worse in the Iraq war. And American soldiers and Marines found themselves in a series of savage fights, battling from house to house in places like Fallujah and Najaf. Today, we're going to talk about that difficult year and what was unusual about it, but also what it revealed about the unchanging nature of war for the kid at the business end. The rifleman, the Marine. Let's get into it.

for war. December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in it. A bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the great situation in France. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing ground. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender.

Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today. Michael Pack. He's the president and CEO of Palladium Pictures and Manifold Productions. He is also the director of the last 600 meters, the battles of Najaf and Fallujah, a film that you can stream on Amazon now, if I'm not mistaken. I watched it this morning, Michael, and I have to say it's a remarkable piece of work.

I commend you for it, and I'm glad you're here on the show to talk about it. Well, thank you, Aaron. It's a pleasure to be with you. Tell me how you came to make this film and tell us about the strange set of circumstances. that led you to make it, I believe, in something like 2007, or thereabouts. But here we are in 2025. This is not from the Volt. This is not graduate student, Aaron McLean, recording this in 2007.

We're sitting here in 2025 talking about this film that has just come out. So why did you make it and why the delay? Well, we were developing a film on the war in Iraq in around 2004-2005, while it was still going on, of course. And the original film was going to be about technology and warfare, because like most many, many Americans, we were very impressed by the role of technology in the initial war in Afghanistan. You know, special forces going in and with allying with horsemen from the Northern Alliance and closed air support and quickly toppling the Taliban. But as the war dragged on and I did some research, I could see that a lot of it did not have to do with technology only,

but the valor and grit of the people fighting. And I saw that these two huge battles, Najaf and Fallujah, were not being covered. So I re-geared the film to that. And we shot the interviews with the people in the film in 2007, so three years after the battle, when they were still young and they looked like they did in the footage. And we finished it in 2008 initially. And I have made over 15 films that have been nationally broadcast on PBS, PBS, PBS, my primary broadcaster.

And they put them all on in prime time, no problem. This one, for the first time ever, they refused to broadcast. And it was principally funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, so I thought it was going to be an easy sale. But they did not want to put it on the air. They felt it was too pro-military, whatever that means. I don't think that's a terrible thing. Don't think that's a terrible thing to say,

but I don't think it is pro-military. It's not like rah-rah war is good kind of film. So anyway, they declined and we pushed. My wife, Gina, is my business partner, and every few years we push PBS to try to do it, and they'd find one reason or another to decline. Eventually they would say, well, now there's been a lot of things in the Iraq War. And then Noah'sitched in the Iraq War, and on and on.

And then, you know, we need to make it more political. And it, you know, so went on and on. And then finally, just this past year, the president of PBS, Paula Kerger, I'd say courageously, reversed the 17 years of saying no to say yes. And it was broadcast nationally on PBS the day before Veterans Day, November 10th, which was also the 250th birthday of the Marine Corps. And these are mainly, but not exclusively marine battles. And it was on at 10 p.m. a great time slot. So in the end, it got its due. And it's now, as you just said, Aaron, streaming on Amazon.

You know, all you got to do is go to Amazon and search for the last 600 meters. I think it's $2.99 or something extremely inexpensive. So in the end, it got its due. You know, it's a mystery to me that it took so long. But look, the film has called the last 600 meters, as you know, from having just seen it, because a special forces sniper says, I don't make foreign policy, I deliver the last 600 meters of it,

meaning what he could see through a sniper scope. And we tried to stay true to that vision. We don't talk about the politics. Was the world good or bad? Were the weapons of mass destruction? You know, was it being run right? We tried to tell these stories as battle stories. They're the biggest battles America has fought since Vietnam,

and we thought people should know what happened. And so we told them as a story as if they were Gettysburg or Iwo Jima or any other famous battle from the point of view of the people who fought there, from corporals and sergeants up to sort of one-star generals that were actually in the field fighting. So it wasn't political, and we didn't soft sell the horrors and struggles of these people and the difficulties of the war. So I'm not positive, but I took 17 years a record to me. don't want to challenge a repeat. But I do think it got caught up in the politics of a moment in 2008-9. And I hope that now people can watch it and appreciate, for instance, the heroism and valor of the people fighting without being clouted by whatever they think about the Iraq war. So maybe its time is right. Well, we'll get to the history of Fallujah and Najaf here in a minute,

but I want to linger on this question of the production and the obstacles you faced. You know, it's fascinating to me that the objection was that it's true pro-military. Again, now, I don't have to tell you, we probably don't have to explain to most listeners. There's all kinds of tricks you can play with film and film editing and film production to thumb the scales one way or the other. But I know the underlying reality of the Marine Corps. I don't know. I didn't serve in Iraq. I did serve in Afghanistan just a few years later.

So I know what Marines are like. And I saw your film. and I'm here to attest that all you're doing is letting people speak their minds and showing footage that accurately conveys what it's like on the battlefield. It's extraordinary footage, by the way, and they're extraordinary interviews.

Like, it really is a good pick, but it's striking for, I'll just, people just have to take my word for it, I guess, unless they're in a position like I am where you can sort of attest to both the reality in the film. It's strikingly unadorned. It really is just these interviews where you let people speak at some length,

I think, by the standards. of this format and then the footage itself. And that's all there is. And the Bush administration, I would add, to the extent that politics tend to intrude, it's not your main theme, but it comes up a few times insofar as it relates to the combat. The Bush administration doesn't come off particularly well. Jerry Bremer in particular does not come off particularly well. And yet they told, what did they, did they actually say those words to pro-military?

I believe they did. Wow. Actually, I hope in this hour that we can show the trailer, maybe that would give your viewers some sense of the film. But yeah, they said it was too pro-military. At one point, they said that I had to use, like, you know, I was manipulative that these Marines look like they're from central casting, and I had somehow selected for young, attractive, articulate Marines,

and I ignored the ones that were ugly and unattractive or whatever they're thinking. But it describes to me more power and influence than I had. I mean, the way we made the film is we got the footage and stills from the battle, from which as you which I think you rightly say was extraordinary. I did not film it. It was three years before I started work. I think the people who did film it were both very talented and heroic. I mean, they're risking their lives to get that footage.

And then once we found the footage, we looked for the people in the footage. I just had to go with the people that were there. I didn't have a chance to manipulate it. And it just happens that they were young and articulate, you know, and attractive. So that was one thing they sort of claimed I did. I don't even understand it. So I'm not sure what was really on their mind. Mostly it's very hard to tell what's on people's mind

based only on this kind of comment. You know, they don't want to say too much. But I think it, even I agree with you that. So it's a film that when it was first around in 2008 or nine, people on all sides of the war in Iraq saw it and liked it. Richard Pearl, who is a strong advocate of the war, was a big fan of the film he had a showing at his home, and one of our executive producers is Steve Vanden,

then not so famous or not famous at all. And he said it turned him around on the war in Iraq. He was for it, and after working with me on the film, he was against it. So I don't think it advocated for and against the war, exactly. It does try to give you a sense of the realities on the ground and the political pressures those people were under, and the political pressures they're under as the political wind is shifted, which maybe we will get into a little more later.

So I don't really know what was on their mind. I do feel that the Paula Kerger, the president of PBS, looked at it afresh, and here in 2000, well, she looked it in 2004 maybe, it didn't look like, you know, she could see it for what it is, which is not, you know, which is a straightforward account of these battles without politics. So I'm not sure how we got there. We went through many different people in charge of programming at PBS, so we had conflicting and different takes on it

until Paula overruled them and put it on the air. Let's get to the substance of the film, and let's go back to the year 2004. You know, I tell this story. People will ask me, young people ask me why I joined the military, and I went to Officer Canada school in 2007, but I actually graduated school in 2003. And I'll joke that I was thinking about it

as a senior in college, which I was. But then in March of 2003, we invaded Iraq. And in April, we won the war. Saddam Statue came down. The Mission Accomplished banner went up. And I thought to my... This is actually true. I thought to myself, gosh, I mean, I missed it.

It's like, you know, the Gulf War happened when I was a little kid, and now this happened when I was in college, and timing was off, and I wasn't there. And I just missed it. I missed Iraq and Afghanistan. So be it. I'm not going to join the... peacetime military. That sounds really unpleasant, get up really early and get you all that and stuff

for no good reason. So I went on with my life. Obviously became apparent that I had missed nothing, but I'm going to ask you in a second how we realized going from 2003 to 2004 that we had not, in fact, won the war, and we still had some major problems to deal with. But first, let's play the trailer to your film. So here's the trailer to the last 600 meters. We were just waiting on the edge of a knife. When are we going to get to go? I wasn't worried about, you know, getting shattered. getting wounded. I was worried about the guys to my left and right. I told him that I wanted to go, and he looked at me and said, saw you're going to die. Foreign policy, I don't make it. I just deliver the last 600 meters of it. Michael? Well, I think, I hope the trailer for some viewers bears out

your comments that it's a straightforward ground truth approach to those battles. But yes, they were very kinetic. The far from being over, these were, as I said earlier, the biggest battles America fought since Vietnam. I mean, some people think we should have gotten out when Bush said, you know, a mission accomplished. But there were really, there was a very active insurgency. And, I mean, as you well recall, you know, Paul Bremer, head of the CPA, made the decision to disband the army. And there were all these loose army officers with nothing to do. And the debatification process left a lot of people free. And Fallujah, in particular, and Ambar in general, the Ambar province in general, was really the center of the Sunni insurgency.

I mean, there were a lot of them there. They were, you know, former military from Saddam, al-Qaeda in Iraq, run by Zarqawi at the time, and then Sunni foreign fighters, Sunni jihadists from other countries, and they were gathering there. And so in 2004, in the end of March, April of 2004, four blackwater contractors were driving through the town of Fallujah, escorting people. And they were hauled from their car, killed, burned, dragged through the streets of Fallujah, and two of their charred bodies were hung from the bridge of the Euphrates, while insurgents and children danced under their bodies, you know, and celebrated. So as we say in the film, the Marines thought that we should just catch the insurgents that did this. But it was such a national disgrace, according to Americans felt, that something more dramatic, the powers that be in Washington thought had to be done, and they decided to clear the city of insurgents.

And so then they went into Fallujah, and the insurgents used the same techniques they do throughout the film and do today, behind civilians, sheltering in hospitals, and trying to make the Marine response look as violent as they could. And they had galvanized public opinion as to how violent it was. And that again forced the people in Washington to decide, well, now we have to stop and negotiate with the insurgents. So they halted in the middle of Fallujah, and they started negotiations. and as one of the Marines says, you know, then we're sitting ducks. They said it was a peacefire, but we're standing in one place. The thing you're not supposed to do, and they're getting picked off and picking people off all day.

And then finally, the decision was to leave back off from Flusia and handed over to the so-called Fallujah Brigade, which turned out to just be the insurgents, really. And they had it to run as they wished for six months. And it gradually got worse and worse. I mean, it was an arms depot. It was a place for insurgents to stop and rest on their way to other parts of Iraq or elsewhere. And finally, there were a series of torture chambers built and a series of beheadings. And it was the final beheadings was the last straw.

And then in the fall, the decision was made to then clear the city again. And in the middle is the Battle of Najaf. But we'll go to second, Fallujah. So then they clear the city. and because they got some negative publicity the first time, they say all civilians should leave. And then like 80% of the city, a huge mass exodus left and mostly went to nearby Ramadi, still at Anbar.

But as people point out in the film, so did the leadership of the insurgency. They all went to Ramadi too. So the people left behind in Fallujah were some civilians and jihadi insurgent foot soldiers who wanted to kill as many Marines as they could before they were killed. So they were all hopped up on.

Enphetamines, I mean, they were just ready to die. So it was a particularly brutal fight, and they finally cleared the entire city. But they did that, as it said in the film, they didn't push on to Ramadi. They declared it a victory, and the insurgency lived on. So they did clear Fallujah.

It was a victory, but it was that kind of a victory. You know, it was a kind of plus and minus that you get in an insurgency. And there was a similar experience in Najaf, in the south, against Shia militia, against the Madi army, run by Muktaudar al-Sahar, who had taken over the town of Najaf, which is a holy city for Shiites. contains the Grand Ali Shrine, Mosque, one of their holiest sites. And they were, their violence in Najaf, again, forced Marines to go in there and try to deal with it. And they start off fighting in this cemetery, a very surreal place with a huge, you know, vast area with many layers above ground and many layers below ground. and Marines finally push the Madi Army into the center of the city,

and then they finally all shelter in the mosque, knowing that the Americans cannot bomb it. And the plan was to train a whole bunch of Iraqi special forces who could go into the mosque. But just at the last moment, another Shiite leader, Imam Sistani, comes. He makes a deal with solder, men and the solder people leave to fight another day. So in a way, they saw. sort of clear Najaf, in a way, the Madi Army remained a problem forever. I mean,

L'Ossada around today. So these are these kind of battles. They're heroic. They're challenging. They're very kinetic. But, you know, in a counter-insurgency, there are rarely clear victories, and these were exactly that kind. One of the things that's striking to me about this portion of the history that you're focused on for the documentary is this first moment of, let's just say bad, bad political decision making or bad political decision making insofar as the use of military forces concerned, which is the decision to over the objections of General Mattis. I think this is Bing West's account, as an interviewee, of Mattis's decision making. I presume Mattis has been on the record on this, but I've never, I haven't seen it.

He is on the record. Okay. So, you know, you have General Mattis, these Blackwater guys are murdered. You have Mattis, not just killed, but dismembered and horribly displayed and everything else. You have Mattis saying, look, we've got all the guys on tape who did this. We're going to go in and get him. That's my plan. And he's overruled.

He's overruled by his chain of command all the way back to Washington. And this is actually the, I don't know, this is opposite to the conventional way in which I think people think that military political interference tends to work. Often it's the military complaining about restraint. And indeed, there are numerous examples of that in the arrest of the account you just gave. Where we wanted to go further. We wanted to do more. We wanted to follow up. We wanted to finish things. And for political reasons, the judgment was, no, no, no, we're not, for a variety of reasons, we're not going to finish things here.

But actually, the story you tell is one of more of a rope-a-dope or a back-and-forth, where it begins with the military action that the local, relevant military commanders do not want to undertake. And then a couple weeks into it, for the very reasons that presumably General Mattis didn't want to undertake it, having started the thing, then we stop at mid-course, only to have to go back and do it, to capture the same. same streets again i mean it is it is a it's a tragic it's a tragic tale of of of of political military interaction where you know you're portraying these characters these marines who are generally speaking pretty good at their jobs and come off because again i can attest they actually know some of your interviewees personally they are they are good people and they are good marines and they are trying to do their job as best they can and all they kind of ask of the political chain of command is that it it do politics well yeah and that doesn't

nothing seemed like the politics is being done very well, Michael. Well, I agree with that. I mean, yes, in retrospect, it looks like General Mattis was right. I will say, in defense of these Washington policymakers who are hard to defend, that it's challenging to fight these kind of wars. I mean, they can't, you know, so the decision to halt the first battle flusia was a lot of pressure from the Iraqi government, you know. So the question is, you know, are we standing up in Iraqi government that we can trust if we overrule them?

You know, what's going on here? I mean, we can't undercut their authority. You know, it's a complicated political question. The military questions, I have to say, even on School of War podcast, are simpler than these diplomatic political questions. I mean, I don't think we did a great job working it all out. But I see the, I see the chance. challenge, really. I mean, we picked the wrong political people to support in Iraq, for one thing. We propped up the wrong people, as we so often do. You know, as we, you know, but, you know, your choice is always about among corrupt, imperfect people. So whoever you pick ends up problematic. You know, so it's very tough to make those choices. Yeah, General Mattis, I think that it's, my sense is, as a general rule, as I think, you know, the people like, General Mattis, you know, they don't want it to send the Marines into, you know, into meek grinder combat for no reason.

I think they are cautious about that in a good way. It was the younger Marines, really, that really wanted to push forward in my film. I think that in retrospect, he was right, you know, what to say about the big picture. It's a complicated thing to do. As I said, that was not the subject of our film. We really portrayed what it was like for the people on the ground that had the... to deal with these changing, changing decisions. I was very struck by one of these Marines, McCoy, who said, one day we're fighting them,

then we're negotiating with them. But what's a few RPGs between France? A very bitter comment by a very tough Marine. You know, you can see how galling it is to then be dealing with them like that. I mean, so we empathize with them how to solve the political problem. We don't deal with it. It's so much beyond my pay grade. I'm glad I don't have to come up with a solution.

But you are right. In this case, it seems General Mattis had the right point. And as he said, when stalled in Fallujah, I'm not sure if this is in the film or not. He quoted the Napoleon adage, you know, if you're going to take Vienna, take Vienna. Don't just camp outside Vienna and threaten it. Either go in and take it or leave. And Napoleon, you know, that was a very much. the Napoleonic way and he you know as that chain will mattis did quote that so we've been going for almost

half an hour now and we still really haven't gotten to what your film is about so we've been talking politics and production and everything else but what your film is really about if you'll if you'll permit me to offer a line about it is combat and young men young marines in particular you have a couple soldiers sprinkled in there in combat and you found a strikingly for for all the ridiculous comments of your masters back in the day i thought you found a strikingly diverse group of Marines in the sense of varying levels of seniority, mostly ground combat guys, mostly infantry guys. But beyond that, you had everyone from general officers and battalion commanders down to young guys, young NCOs who are in charge of squads. You know, one of the

most affecting moments of any number of affecting moments in the show to me was, and I forgive me, I don't have his name right in front of me here, but you have a young Marine enlisted Marine who takes over his squad after his squad leader is wounded. And he says something that I think is very true and I think anybody who's been to combat has to sort of learn for themselves. It's a two-parter because he's describing taking over the squad on this awful day when his boss is hurt and a lot of other Marines are killed. And he says, you know, the tone of everything changed. It went, these are not his exact words, but basically what he means is.

And a lot of, you know, we've all experienced this, those of us who have been there is the dirty secret about combat and war is that so long as you're okay and your friends are okay and Nobody's getting badly hurt or killed. It's kind of fun. It's kind of fun. And then somebody gets hurt or somebody gets killed. And it flips on a dime from being kind of the most awesome game of Cowboys and Indians you've ever played to this completely different human experience characterized mostly by anger and fear. And he's very raw emotions.

And he's basically, I'm putting this in my own words, but he's giving his own version of this point. And he's breaking up emotionally as he's conveying this. And I don't know how old he was when you were interviewing him. He was not out of his early 20s, which means he was even a little younger when he was, he was probably a teenager when he was doing this. I think so, 1819. Garrett Slawitki, that is. Yeah, he said, then it was personal. Then it was personal.

Then it was personal, yeah. And, yeah, I mean, I think I mentioned you before the broadcast. We had a screening here in Washington where we invited a lot of the veterans, including Garrett. Now they're not teenagers, so it was amazing to see them 17 years later, but a lot of them still have the same spirit they actually had 17 years ago. It was encouraging to see. But yeah, I think that's right. I wanted to capture what it's like. I mean, if we're going to send these people into this kind of combat, we should see and appreciate what it feels like on the ground.

And I believe that there'll be this kind of combat again. You know, people prefer combat like World War I or even Gulf War I, not this. But in human history, counterinsurgencies are, I think, the most common kind of warfare. And we see one going on with Hamas and Gaza right now. And it's not that dissimilar, you know, not America, of course. But I think that will happen and we should sort of understand it, putting them under a lot of pressure. I mean, there's that kind of combat pressure. and that squad was breaking down doors throughout the city of Fallujah, going from north to south,

and you break down a door and how do you know it's on the other end? Is it a civilian that you're going to be court-martialed if you shoot, or is it an insurgent that if you don't shoot him, he's going to shoot you? And you've got to decide that quickly. And as you just said, Aaron, you're like just out of high school. You're 18, 19 years old. I don't know what you were like at 18 or 19, but I wasn't, I was kind of an idiot. So, you know, it's very hard.

I mean, it's asking a lot out of them. So it's a tough, I wanted to give that sense. That is what the film is about. Some of these young officers that you've interviewed, these are the guys that I know, and I know them because they were my instructors. So not long after you made this film, I went through Quantico in this generation of officers

who had served as platoon commanders or in a couple of cases company commanders in Fallujah and then, later Ramadi and I guess Najaf as well they were all in Quantico in 2007 2008 in fact I didn't ask you this but I wouldn't be surprised if you did your interviews there Scott Cuomo who is still in was one of my instructors Kobe Moran who is still in was one of my instructors I haven't talked to either man in years in fact I don't think I've seen then major Moran since since he was my instructor in Quantico was actually kind of jarring to he also

looks the same because you're filming it from from around when he was my teachers it was very jarring. It was like a ghost from my, a slightly scary ghost from my past, suddenly appearing on the screen. And we, we looked at, we students, student officers, looked at these guys like they were gods, like they were gods, because these guys had been, many of them had been both in the invasion, that many of them had done two combat deployments. So then around the time of the invasion, if not the invasion itself, and then the sort of Fallujah Ramadi period. And there they were teaching all of us, as it turns out after the fact, to go fight in Afghanistan. And we actually didn't know it at the time. We were all still sort of preparing to go to Iraq at that period in time.

And they, you know, they come off as impressive in your film because they are impressive. Indeed. They are impressive. It's an impressive group of people, the people who command infantry company. I mean, there's some big organization. There's always a quality spread. But on the whole, like the Marine Corps has the reputation it has for a reason. And you show it in the film. Exactly. They are impressive. And, you know, Scott Cuomo was at this. screening, for instance. You know, he looks kind of the same. You know, he's a very marine, you know, the shave, you know. Yeah, you got that. He's a marine-looking Marine, you know, that's right. PBS has a point. He's a sort of central casting Marine. But, yeah, you know, I think that what

I think this group of officers and soldiers and Marines from that battle, you know, like a little like Vietnam, they're caught up in people's negative feelings about the war, and they're usually asked on documentaries and on TV about PTSD and coming home and struggles and all that's pretty real, and they're less articulate about that than we ask them about what they did. It's hard to talk about that, and people don't like talking about that, whereas they understood the battle and what they did, and they're particularly articulate about that. I will say, I was also impressed by all the Special Forces people that we interviewed. They're great, too.

A different culture, but a great culture. And I've heard from a lot of them, you know, since the film is out, because their stories are even more rarely told for obvious reasons. So, yeah, and, you know, so it was a privilege to meet these people at the time. It changed my own life and life of my children. And, you know, and it's an honor to tell their story, actually. And I think it's important for people to know their story, especially people, even beyond the kind of people that would watch the School of War, but people who don't know anything about the military. I mean, we designed, I was really happy it was on PBS, attempted to take it elsewhere.

But I wanted people who maybe were not connected to the military and unsympathetic to it to see the film and understand. It's striking that this all began as a project about technology, which there's plenty. Your film depicts plenty of battlefield technology. You have a lot of aviation going on, but it's, of course, not what your film ended up being about. And the things, I mean, you actually, there's a haunting image, you know, and I've seen plenty of things for myself, and you actually succeeded in jarring even me

with the dog and the leg, which, you know, there's this homeric quality to some of the footage and indeed some of the accounts given in the interviews by the Marines. Your film ends up setting, aside technology, but also setting aside the unique complexity of counterinsurgency, which is its own special topic and worthy of great attention and study. I think your film is really about the things about war that just never change, at least for the infantrymen.

Well, that's true. There's a lot of that. I mean, from the point of view of the NCOs, it looks the same. It's about their buddies to the left and the right. It's about the horror of war. you know, we have a tanker talking about the smells and the smell of death in Fallujah. I think by the time they get to the end of the Second Battle of Fallujah, it's really in a surreal space. You know, it's really bombed out and they've gone through all this stuff, you know, all this killing and death and seeing their friends killed. And we have this very dramatic firefight at Hellhouse. I mean, they've gone through all this. And it's this bombed out landscape.

I mean, and with the feral dogs and cats. And, you know, it's not, it's a very, you know, both their own psychological space and the physical landscape are surreal and strange and one that the rest of us have, you know, can't experience or can't fully understand, I think. Let's talk a bit about the Hell House, because I think it would be, as an, it's a famous episode within the Marine Corps. And it's possible even non-marines have heard about it

if they've spent any time looking at the Battle of, Fallujah, but I think it's an episode that illustrates just what was so challenging about, I mean, in some ways, literally about the terrain of Fallujah, just the way which the fighting went, not only went house to house, but the way the houses were built and the way the insurgents were operating, it all kind of is summed up in this story of what comes to be known as the Hell House. What actually happened there, Michael? I think it should be famous. It is famous in the Marine Corps, but I think most people have never heard of it, the average person. And the The Ambitricians never even heard that there was a battle in Najaf or heard the city.

I mean, it's amazing. You don't have to go far from people who know something about the military to get to a wall of near total ignorance, as you probably know better than most. But the Hell House here said they're clearing Fallujah. They get to the end. And the further they get in Fallujah, the more violent the insurgency is because they're pinned by the walls of Marines at the end of the south end where they're pushing to. and these people know they're going to die, and it gets more and more vicious. So towards the end of Fulia,

there's this bunch of Marines get trapped in this house. And as you say, they're very solidly built. You know, there's a lot of concrete, a lot of rebarbed, very well described by the Marines, and they've got these Marines trapped, wounded, but not killed. And the insurgents are above on the second floor shooting down. Obviously, ideal position to be in.

and they've got these people pinned, and they know that Marines have to go in and pull them out. So more Marines go in, they try to pull them out, and they get wounded. I mean, it's a very old-fashioned, if I might say, kind of technique, but it works all the time. It works without fail. And more and more of them go in. They're trapped in this place.

They can't, you know, they can't bomb the whole house because they have trapped Marines. They can't, you know, so Jesse Grapes. who, you know, then a lieutenant, I don't know what he retired as, but he tells the story, I think, brilliantly. You know, they're all trapped. He and a colleague, in order to get in through a different entrance, where there are bars on the window, have to pull the bars apart, take their Kevlar off, and then go into this, you know, into this kill zone without any armor. I mean, it's scary enough anyway. and they and their people with them managed to pull these people out, crossing the kill zone, he says, four times.

And, you know, there is within the Marines, a famous image of one of them being carried out with still holding his pistol. Or Sergeant Castle. Castle. Famous picture, Brad Castle. And I do have to say that the photos of that, which came from this guy, Lucian Reed, are brilliant. And Lucian Reed is there. He's being shot at, too, and he's thinking about the composition. I mean, the photos are beautiful.

They're beautiful. And, you know, and it's, you know, they finally, they get everybody out, they level the house. And you can see them in recovery from Hell House. Their faces after the battle, as he said, you know, as Jesse Grape says, you know, I can't believe I experience that. I can't believe I'm still alive. You know, there's that feeling, you know, how come I'm alive? You know, how did that happen? And it went on for a long time.

It's very hard. I think it's another thing for those of us in combat to appreciate it. You know, you can get your adrenaline going for a short burst. But to do it for a long time, you're sort of wasted after you've done that. I mean, you're scared about your death and the death of your friends for a long time. And then when it's over, you know, you're totally drained. You can see it in their faces. So it's a story of tremendous courage.

and, you know, as well as, you know, just grit and valor in clearing that hellhouse. It ought to be, you know, it should be like pickets charge or something. You know, it should be remembered. I'm glad it's remembered among the Marines, but, and I hope now more broadly. I remember being fascinated by my dad, who was a 30-year veteran of the Army, explaining to me when I was a kid, that war really wasn't like the movies, for lots of reasons, but the one he was focused on was it's not fast. Like you watch these movies and you think, you know, if you watch Saving Private Ryan, you think they get off of Omaha each in about 20 minutes, you know?

And I actually got to see that in the theater with my dad, which was a real treat. But, you know, his point was, look, these things go on hours all day, through the night, you know, you're eating, you're going to the bathroom, you know, like as the shootings going on. And as with this Hellhouse episode, you know, this is not a 10-minute episode. This is a, I mean, at one point, there's sledge-hammering the bars on this window. I mean, this stuff takes time. And, yeah, I can only imagine the profound exhaustion that those guys in particular must have felt. We focus, too, on the stuff they're doing between the battles, you know, so that we try to give that sense. And as our tanker friend says in the film, you know, and then you never really think about this.

But the Marine tanks have no air conditioning, unlike Army tanks, I'm told. I've never been in a tank in my life, but on behalf of the Marine Corps tankers allow me to say, who needs it? Yeah, who needs it? But they're in Iraq. You know, it's hot. They can't open the hatch too easily. You know, they're in urban combat. So he was saying, you know, they have to, as he says, do their business in the tank,

and then wait for a moment where they can finally throw it out of the tank. And then they're there and they're sweating and there's all the grease and everything else. In this tank, that's hot. You know, it's just this sort of inconvenience of it. And it goes on a long time, as your father says. You know, they're in there a long time. Anyone could put up with that for, I don't know, 30 seconds, I guess. But, you know, all day long, you know.

So that's right. There's a lot of that in warfare that you don't really think about. Just to extend your tribute to the photographers out there, I had a Washington Post photographer with me when I was the platoon commander in Afghanistan, Andrea Bruce. And they had wisely assigned me a photographer because I had gotten in trouble just a couple weeks earlier with a reporter for the AFP. who really screwed me over, if I do say so myself, but I should have also known better.

I was old enough to know better. I had been with my Marines in a pretty nasty fight where we had lost two Marines, Zach Smith and Dan Angus. And this reporter was asking me after the fact, like, how do your Marines feel about the rules of engagement, you know, given everything that's happening? Because it's sort of peak Stan McChrystal rules of engagement period in Afghanistan. So we were very, we were actually very limited in the kinds of supporting arms and aviation we could use. And I gave what I thought was a nuanced professional answer to the question.

And it was, frankly, like if you read the whole paragraph of my remarks, it was, in fact, a nuanced, professional, balanced answer to the effect of, you know, you can't shoot anything that moves. That's what the Russians did. Like, that's not how warlock here in this kind of place works, et cetera, et cetera. But I am somewhere in there, I had included the clause, look, of course my Marines want revenge, comma, you know, and then continue to go. So the front page headline out of this AFP story was Marine Lieutenant, We Want Revenge. So anyway, they gave me this reporter, sorry, this photographer, Andre Bruce, and I have this vivid memory of just before we went into Marja for the big battle there,

taking her aside in full, you know, Marine Lieutenant condescension mode, which we're about the same age, I think, both in our 20s, and saying to her, look, you know, you're going to want to stay in the truck. You know, everything's got IDs, you know, just sort of speaking to her in this. fashion, I'll never forget, who's just looking to me with this kind of cold stare as I talked and then saying, Lieutenant, I was in Fallujah, were you? Mm-hmm. These guys, you know, a lot of them, I have friends who are combat journalists who have seen more

combat honestly than most Marines. They're a very impressive group, and I'm happy to thank them. And I think, in addition to those independent photographers, we had, we used a lot of the footage of combat cameramen. combat correspondents, especially Jan Bender. And his footage is great, too. Most of the footage of combat correspondents and cameraman are not great, because they're just there documenting it.

They're not, it's not like the independent photographers. It's not supposed to be art. But Jan's was extremely well shot, which is a rarity. But yeah, it's, it's, it's, but there's people like Lucian Reed, they have real courage, you know, and I want to, you know, did not take courage for me to interview these people in Washington, D.C. So they're the ones that are entitled to that. You tell one story that also reminded me of an experience that I had in Afghanistan where these Marines are coming back from combat in Fallujah, and they start singing the Mickey Mountain as a tribute to full metal

jacket. Say a bit about that. How did that come about? Yeah, at the end, very end of the second battle of Fallujah, they're leaving Fallujah, and they're reminded of that scene and full metal jacket where they're leaving Way City, which is often been compared to Fallujah. It's, in fact, the last big battle of that sort. And in the full metal jacket, they're singing the Mickey Mouse song, and they sing it too, leaving Fallujah.

And it is eerily similar. And it was an amazing moment. You know, it was surreal in the Stanley Kubrick film, and it's surreal in my own film. I mean, I'm always been surprised at the deep affection that Marines have for that. film, which doesn't really, I don't think, present the Marine Corps in a completely, in a, in very flattering light, and especially, you know, the parasit and training of Marines. But it does

takes, you know, it does depict the combat in a pretty realistic way. And he did capture that sense, you know, you're out there, you know, you need, you know, you're, it's over, you need to do something. You need to let off steam. You need to, you know, the same, they need to do something else. and I think it was a great moment in the film and actually in our screening the guy Sawatiki who talked about it in the film talked about the screening again he was struck seeing himself do that

17 years earlier so yeah it's an interesting thing and there are other things they do I was shocked that I think in the middle of the battle in the Jaff they got to rouse the troops one sergeant major type person gives a pep talk based on the Agincourt speech at Henry V.

You know, and he gets it pretty right, I think, and they're all appreciated. So it's amazing, really, to have these quotes, literary quotes. Since you taught literature at West Point, I guess you did a good job. At the Naval Academy, I have to interject at the Naval Academy. Oh, at the Naval Academy.

So maybe you did teach these Marines, but the officers at least. So anyway, they had a good sense of history. All you need to know about Marines, Michael, is, you know, keep in mind in the 21st century, virtually everyone who joins the Marines has seen full metal jacket. So I don't know how many Marines we have right now, you know, pushing up on 200, somewhere in the 100 plus thousand range. Virtually all of them have seen full metal jacket. And every single one of them, by definition, said, yeah, I want to do that. And that's all you need to know.

That tells you that tells you everything. That tells you everything. It does tell you everything. It tells you everything. It really does. The experience I had that it reminded me of what, you know, it's funny, it's like this Kubrick portrayal of them singing, you know, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck is meant to have a kind of nihilistic, you know, edge. It's with the meaninglessness of it all, American consumerist culture, et cetera, et cetera. And then, you know, Marines doing it in Iraq, it's not quite the same thing. It's like, it's a tribute to the movie. It's a tribute to the way in which Kubrickism forms Marines, you know, pop culture of the 20th century and filmmaking forms Marines self-image. And then what I saw, which is not uncommon, by the way, you see Marines coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, they'll make these little movies for themselves and you can find them on YouTube. And they'll often be set to 60s or 70s music because it's like that they wanted, you know, they're not, it's not an aesthetic choice.

I mean, well, it is an aesthetic choice, but it's not, it's not so much a considered one, I think typically as like that's the kind of music that goes with this kind of footage. Like that makes it look cool. And so we're going to pick music like that, along with a lot of metal. You get a lot of metal music as well. But the experience I had in Afghanistan was I had an awkward situation where a squad of mine, led by my best squad leader, they got into a pretty tough fight and did a good job. But I think they were wheat fields. The fields they were in got lit on fire. Either they or the other guys or just, you know, it's an unintended side effect of the firefight lights the fields on fire.

And these fields belong to, you know, families in our area that we were working with. And so I had to ask them for my, you know, comfy position hundreds of meters away. to put out the fire after they were done, you know, fighting for their lives in the field. And I had mixed feelings about doing that as I did it, but I did it and they did it because they're Marines. And they do, you know, stupid stuff like that when somebody felt them to do it. And then as they were finishing up and they were walking back, they sang loud enough for us to hear it at the outpost, at the Marine Corps him. Wow. Which had an ironic edge. Let me tell you.

Sure. It was not an unironic tribute to their beloved corps, but it was an amazing kind of moment. Amazing moment. You're making a film about Afghanistan, right? That's right. In addition to these longer films that we've done through manifold productions, we have started a new company, Palladium Pictures, also doing new longer form pieces, but also shorter pieces with the Wall Street Journal opinion section. We've done two already. They're free on the Wall Street Journal site at WSJ.com slash Opinion Docs. We're findable through Palladium Pictures.

And one of the upcoming ones is on the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And so these are designed to be 30 or 40 minutes, unlike the last 600 meters, which was 90. And it's about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the other end maybe of the global war on terror. And, of course, it ends with a scene. Very similar to the one you just described, where the Marines are asked to clean up the airfield before the Taliban take over. I mean, it's that same thing that you describe, but way worse. Yeah. I mean, cleaning it up for their enemy of 20 years to come so that they don't have to clean it up.

I mean, I think they really felt, as you say, they're Marines. They do what they're told, but they were unhappy. If they could think to seeing the Marine Corps, him in an ironic way, I think they would have, but that didn't occur to them. But it's an amazing story, too. I'll just say that one thing I feel strongly about is that they, veterans of the end there, the H-Kaya veterans, do not get their due, even more so than the ones from Fallujah and Najat, because those are big battles, everyone knows it, and in the Marine Corps, even if not generally, they are celebrated. But I think the young Marines that had to

stand at the gates, not just the ones that were killed in the suicide bombing, but the ones that had to stand to the gate and do horrible things, like decide who would live and who would die, really, you know, we Americans as a whole, we in this country, owe them a great debt. And you can't get a medal for standing at the gate. You don't get a combat medal. It's not exactly combat. But it's harder, worse than combat. And I don't think they get their due.

And I hope my documentary, when it comes out, helps in that process. Yeah. Yeah, I agree completely. We had a great conversation earlier this year with a veteran of that episode, Jeff Ball. Oh, yeah. It was right there. And, you know, his Marines and all the troops who were there, many of the Marines, you know, I think the main issue that they face is, first of all, it's not a set piece battle like Fallujah. Like, you know, the Marine Corps, as evidence in your film, the Ring Corps is not thrilled with the political context and decision making that put them there.

But they're proud of the battle. They're proud of getting the job done in the end. No one's really, you know, at the sort of mid to higher levels, no one's really proud of what happened in H. Kaya, maybe a couple of delusional former Biden administration official. But the whole episode is a bit shameful, but none of that shame accrues to or is the result of the young Marines, soldiers, etc., standing post and taking the risk, and some of them dying there. And I agree with you completely. I mean, it is as an episode in what the United States military is capable of just as impressive as plenty of other things that happen in the war on terror, and it does not get its due. Yeah, I think it,

you put it very well, Aaron, for all those reasons that, you know, as Jeff Ball talks about this, you know, moral injury issue, which is obviously a term very familiar to your viewers and listeners, but I don't think to the general public where you're asked to do something or witness something that runs counter to your values. It's different than, you know, than suffering PTSD from normal combat, you know, and so they talk about, you know, that following the directions of the State Department, they have to take, people try to get into the gates, they review their papers, and they're ushering some cases women and children out of the gates to be killed by the gentleman. You know, you're an 18-year-old, 19-year-old young Marine.

As you said, you want to be in the Marines because you think it's a great thing. You want to defend America, and you probably think of yourself as a defender of women and children. I mean, in the best possible way. And now you're taking it. taken them out of the gate is to be killed. You know, you know they're going to be killed. I mean, it's a horrible thing to ask young men and women to do. And yeah, it's not combat and they're not really being shot at. And it's not a set piece battle. And it's in middle of one of America's greatest defeats, right? So people want to forget about it. But I think that for all those reasons, you know, but it doesn't take away from the fact that they did this thing for us,

us Americans, the classic military thing. They're doing the things we don't want to do. This has to be done. I mean, and I think they need to be celebrated in some way, and especially by the military. I mean, I think, you know, I believe the military should, like, invent some kind of metal for them because they can't get the normal sort of medals for this. But I think they do need to be celebrated. Maybe it's a little like PBS in my 17 years.

Maybe after enough years go by, it'll be easier to see it. without clouded by all everyone's mixed feelings about the withdrawal in general. I hope that's right. I hope so, too. I mean, people celebrate and talk about the 13 people who died in the bomb blast, but I'm thinking of the ones that didn't die. The problem, I mean, I agree. I hope that's right.

I think it probably will be the case, just the way these things tend to go. But the problem is so much damage is already done. One of the battalion commanders you interviewed in your film, your Iraq film, I think it was Colonel Buell, but I can't remember, you'll tell me which one, talks about how it's so important to tell Marines who are wounded that they did a good job and he has this great sort of riff where he says, you do it before the medication takes home because they won't remember after the medication takes hold. But if you get it, get to them and you tell them they did their duty and they did a good job before the medication sets in, they'll remember that for life. And it's a really, it's like a quirky point, but a deeply powerful one. And so true. And it, you know, there's another, there's another, I mean, there's so many amazing episodes in your Iraq film, but this, this, this, this, this, this, this.

The squad leader who we were making reference to earlier, who's shot in the helmet and badly hurt, and so this other squad leader has to take over for him. As that squad leader's being hauled off, he tells you in the film that he, you know, he feels terribly feels like he's failed. He feels like he failed because he allowed himself to get shot, which is a crazy thing for, I think, most civilians to reflect on. But, you know, deeply it speaks to the kind of psychology that these young men have. And letting them know after they've been through something bad or stressful or even horrible that they did. their duty and that it meant something is so, so important. And my pet theory about why everything seems to be PTSD in recent decades compared to

earlier generations of American war fighters. Of course, it's not that there was no PTSD before. I mean, all you have to do is watch that movie, the best years of our lives about World War II veterans, plenty of combat stress coming out of World War II. But you also, by and large, and for the most part, had a generation of war fighters who, you know, many of them, I hope, thought they did a good job because a lot of people. lot of them did and almost all of them i think could rightly tell themselves it meant something it meant something we won it was important if we had lost it would have been really bad and we won

and so i did my duty and it was important and i think you know for the vietnam generation or now sadly iraq and afghanistan you know perhaps especially afghanistan with the way things ended there it's harder to construct that account and that's not the fault of any of the of the troops And it's a major problem. That is very true. And it is Willie Buell, who says that. Very good memory, Aaron. It a great moment.

He's great. Yeah, I think that's right. The damage is done to a lot of these young men. And even the officers like Jeff Ball, actually. Yeah, you know, but the fact is they did do their duty, and it did mean something. I mean, it meant that at least 130,000 people got out of there. I mean, at least it meant that. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I don't know.

I mean, it's challenging for all the reasons that you said. And, you know, maybe it is hard to construct the narrative now, but we'll see. Well, anybody who wants to see what Marines did in Iraq should go see your film. It's called The Last 600 Meters, the Battles of Najaf in Fallujah. It really, really is well done, Michael. Thank you for doing. Thank you for sticking with it for all those years. where you weren't getting any love because you, God forbid, you tell the truth about what it's

like to be with these young people in combat. And thank you for coming on School of War. I really appreciate it. Well, thank you. It's a pleasure talking to you, Aaron.