It was not the 29th birthday Staff Sgt. David Bellavia had been expecting.
Outside an abandoned house in the middle of war-torn Fallujah, Iraq, he knew something had to be done to neutralize a group of Sunni insurgents who had ambushed them and then taken refuge inside.
Bellavia, from Lyndonville, New York, and his squad of men from the U.S. Army’s Task Force 2-2 had the numbers and firepower, but the insurgents had a dug-in position and a high-caliber, Soviet PKM machine gun trained from below the staircase onto the entrance.
Already, the insurgents had proved remarkably resilient. Some were believed to have amphetamine-induced courage. They just refused to die. Bellavia knew that they would never be able to clear 2-2’s sector of the city unless these fighters were taken out. If they were left there, they would return to kill him and his men.
It was the evening of Nov. 10, 2004, and the second Battle of Fallujah, the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War, was in full swing. Task Force 2-2 had been fighting for days when they received an order: A group of insurgents was holed up in a block of houses the task force had just cordoned off, and the 3rd platoon was charged with taking them out.
By the time the soldiers pulled up on their objective, the city was already a dark husk of what it used to be. Almost all civilians had fled, and U.S. artillery had reduced many buildings to rubble.
Inside some of the buildings, the insurgents had created car bombs ready to be sent across Iraq. Rocket-propelled grenades were placed on rooftops, ready to be fired on soldiers as they entered the area. Mines littered the road. Bunkers had been built in the courtyards of houses and along major roadways. Tunnels were dug between the living rooms of various houses for easy access and stairways were cemented in, sealing them off.
Every structure had to be cleared of insurgents to prevent them from creeping back to the battle. Maj. Joaquin Meno, then a first lieutenant and Bellavia’s platoon leader, told the Washington Examiner, “Houses, alleyways, doorways, little shacks on the side of the road, stores, factories, buildings. Any structure that was in our sector, boots were walking through that. Clearing every single one.”
With nine houses down, the men of the 3rd platoon knew it was only a matter of time before they made contact with the enemy. As they entered the 10th house, they were sprayed with the PKM machine gun.
“So I kid you not, we went one house, by one house, to the next house, to the next house, and by the time we got to that, it was like, holy shit. It’s on,” said Meno.
The PKM fire sent bullet fragments and debris ricocheting across the room the soldiers had entered. Going further would be suicidal.
Bellavia would have to get his squad out, and to do that he would have to suppress the enemy. Bellavia exchanged his M16 rifle for an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, or SAW. Fitted with a 200 hundred-round drum, the machine gun was capable of firing a blistering 775 rounds per minute.
[Read: ‘Long past due’: David Bellavia and his 15-year journey from Fallujah to the Medal of Honor]
The staff sergeant positioned himself in front of the room’s doorway, placing himself in what is known as the “fatal funnel,” an area where the enemy would have a clear line of sight. Ignoring the rounds flying by him, he opened fire. It was dark in the room, but the muzzle flash from the SAW’s fire offered Bellavia a view of the enemy position.
“I put fire down, and I realize what I am looking at, and it’s a bunker,” said Bellavia, recounting the ordeal in an interview with the Army. “So I just started firing. I could see these guys, I could see the look on their face, I could see how confident they were.”
As the insurgents took cover from Bellavia’s barrage, Staff Sgt. Colin Fitts, another squad leader, took the opportunity to get his men out. Bellavia followed behind, dodging fire as he went.
“I thought that was my shot, and I had the enemy. I saw the enemy and I broke contact. And that was one of the lowest moments of my life,” Bellavia said.
As Fitts reorganized the platoon, a frustrated Bellavia searched for a new weapon. In his book, House to House: an Epic Memoir of War, he recalled his frustration. “Give me my f—ing rifle. Who has my f—ing rifle?” he yelled.
Spc. Steven Mathieu handed Bellavia his M4 carbine, but it had jammed during the fight. Another soldier handed him an M16 fitted with an M203 grenade launcher under the barrel. It wasn’t an ideal weapon for a close-quarters fight, but its laser sight combined with night vision would offer an advantage in the house’s dark, tight corridors.
“I should’ve assaulted that f-ggot by fire. I am a goddamned infantryman! We are not running away! Get me a Bradley up here now,” Bellavia barked.
The Bradley fighting vehicle arrived within moments. The crew confirmed they could see two rooms. “Juice ‘em,” Bellavia said. The Bradley’s gun let loose, pounding the walls with round after round, but it wasn’t clear they did the trick.
“There’s no way he’s got ‘em. Sgt. Bell, there’s no way,” said Michael Ware, an Australian journalist who was embedded with the platoon, referring to Bellavia by his nickname.
“While everyone else had taken up cover, I saw in the dark, one man pacing in the street. He was like a caged tiger, just walking in circle after circle muttering to himself,” Ware told the Washington Examiner.
Ware walked up to the man, and saw it was Bellavia. Ware crossed his arms, looking at Bellavia as he finished pacing. It was at that moment that Bellavia decided he would be going back into the house alone.
“[H]e just looked up at me and stared straight into my eyes, and said, ‘F— it,’” Ware said. “And I looked straight back at him and said, ‘F— it.’”
The staff sergeant rounded up Pfc. Jim Metcalf, Spc. Lance Ohle, and Spc. Tristan Maxfield, all armed with SAWs to provide cover, and made his way back to the house with Staff Sgt. Scott Lawson.
Bellavia entered the pitch-black house with Lawson and could hear the insurgents whispering on the other side of the wall. He fired the M203 grenade launcher at their position, only to watch the 40mm round sail out a back window. After exchanging fire with the insurgents, Bellavia saw one of them loading a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. If the insurgent got a shot off, he knew it could decimate his platoon.
“It’s all about domination in a firefight. Any way I could dominate, I would do it. But there were a lot of times that I felt dominated in that room, in that building,” Bellavia told the Washington Examiner in an interview on Monday. “And it happened in other times in Iraq too, it just ebbs and flows, your confidence is super high, you get super insecure. And you just have to not quit, just keep going until you get a break. And luckily, I got a break.”
He entered the room, rifle at the ready. He caught the man with the RPG off guard, and after briefly making eye contact, shot him square in the chest and pelvis. Panicked by the death of his comrade, another insurgent tried to flee to a nearby kitchen. Bellavia popped off two quick shots, unsure if he hit him.
Bellavia, joined by Lawson, kept firing at the insurgent. Lawson eventually ran out of ammo and appeared injured, so Bellavia told him to leave and get him a SAW and shotgun. At that point, Bellavia realized he had made what could have been a fatal mistake: There was a room behind him he hadn’t cleared. As he moved toward it, another insurgent ran down the stairwell firing at him. He found cover and thought about what to do next.
Just then, the insurgent in the kitchen barged back into the hall and right into Bellavia’s sights. Bellavia shot him once. A blood spatter on the wall behind him confirmed the bullet passed right through the insurgent’s body. Bellavia followed up with four more rounds, toppling the insurgent’s corpse into the darkness of the kitchen. The insurgent on the stairs then started firing at Bellavia once again, but gave up his position as he turned, giving Bellavia the shot he needed to take him out.
As Bellavia made his way to the stairs, three more rounds zipped by his head. Someone else was in the first floor bedroom adjacent to the stairs.
The room was dark, but Bellavia could make out his surroundings. He moved toward the bedroom’s wardrobe, but just as he noticed two holes in its door, an insurgent jumped out and stumbled past him. He spun around with his AK-47, but tripped over some clothing, giving Bellavia just enough time to crouch behind the now tipped-over wardrobe as the insurgent sprayed his weapon.
Bellavia stood up, steadied his rifle, and shot the insurgent in the leg. The insurgent fired another wild burst as he ran up the stairs, screaming as he went.
The soldier gave chase, tossing a grenade into the second story room. The grenade hit the insurgent square in the head and bounced away from him. Just as Bellavia was about to finish the insurgent with his rifle, he smelled gas and saw the room was filled with propane tanks.
He realized firing a round could blow the whole house up and instead used his rifle to strike the downed insurgent. The man retaliated with his own weapon, slamming the barrel into Bellavia’s jaw. Just as Bellavia readied another swing, the man kicked him in the groin, causing him to drop his rifle. Bellavia pounced on the man and the two engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
As Bellavia continued to pummel his enemy with anything available, he remembered his Gerber knife was clipped to his belt. He retrieved the blade, opened it, and stabbed the man in the collar bone, covering himself in blood.
Exhausted, Bellavia walked outside to the second floor patio.
“I just needed a cigarette, which makes no sense whatsoever, but I was just really stressed out,” Bellavia recalled. “And I was thinking, I’m going to smoke a cigarette outside of this patio, my guys are going to come in and we’re going to take out this last guy as a unit.”
Bellavia’s respite was cut short when the last insurgent jumped from a third story roof onto the patio. He landed awkwardly, giving Bellavia just enough time to retrieve his M16 and empty the magazine into him, throwing the insurgent off the roof. It was finally over.
After the ordeal was finished, Fitts, Ware, and a squad of men linked up with Bellavia, who stood there, exhausted and soaked in blood.
“And at that time, David seemed to have been a different person,” Ware said. “It’s like he was outside of himself. I don’t think he could believe what had just happened and what he’d just done.”
“Sgt. Bellavia had balls of steel, man,” Meno said. “I don’t know anybody who would be willing to want to go into there and kind of run with that momentum.”
To this day, Maj. Meno said he still holds every soldier and unit under his command to the standards of Bellavia and Task Force 2-2.
For his actions that night, Bellavia was awarded the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award for bravery. It would be 15 years until the award was upgraded to the Medal of Honor, making him the only living Iraq War veteran to receive the foremost military honor for valor in action.
Staff Sgt. David Bellavia, 43, is to receive the Medal of Honor from President Trump at the White House on June 25, 2019.
