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A participant of the battle at An Nasiriyah takes issue with the battle portrayed by the authors of The March Up.
I have been a Marine now for over 25 years, and I have avidly read your publication and have submitted articles that you graciously saw fit to publish. I would like to express my views to you on the new book, The March Up, that was reviewed in the September 2003 issue of the Gazette. My comments are in reference to the chapter, titled "Ambush Alley," about the battle of An Nasiriyah, Iraq.
Frankly, I have real issues with this account of the battle as it is written since it is far from historically accurate. I have a special interest in this particular portion of the book because I was mere with the 1st Battalion, 2d Marines (1/2) as their battalion gunner. The book review said that it should be on every Marine's bookshelf and a part of the U.S. Marine Reading List. I strongly disagree with putting a book into that category that is so glaringly wrong from the perspective of those of us who fought the battle of An Nasiriyah. I don't know whom the authors got their facts from, but they are just wrong. I was personally involved with the fight from start to finish.
The authors do not talk about the initial engagement that we had south of the city. This was actually the start of the fieht of An Nasiriyah. We started receiving small arms and mortar fire outside of the city even before our lead elements found the U.S. Army personnel from the 507th Maintenance Battalion and rescued them. In fact, we didn't know there were any friendlies in front of us until we received the report from our attached company of tanks that was the lead element of the battalion at the time. The intense fight on 23 March 2003 to control the route through the eastern part of the city continued from this initial engagement until we consolidated as a battalion on the northern side of the Saddam Canal bridge. The first shots were fired just as the sun was coming up, and the last shots were fired just as the sun was going down....