Hell’s Bells: The Second Battle of Fallujah (Iraq 2004)

(Extracts of Prologue from Dexter Filkins’s “The Forever War” published in 2008.)





Fallujah, Iraq, November 2004: THE MARINES were pressed flat on a
rooftop when the dialogue began to unfold. It was 2 a.m. The minarets were
flashing by the light of airstrikes and rockets were sailing on trails of
sparks.


First came the voices from the mosques, rising above the thundery guns.
“The