St. Louis Reporters See Fierce Iraq Fight

By: Cheryl Wittenauer, Associated Press Writer (AP) The mutilation of four Americans in Fallujah, Iraq, last month so shook the nation that members of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine got e-mails from parents expressing relief that the unit wasn't there. But the troops -- and two St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalists embedded with them -- weren't exactly in a safe place.

The forlorn corner of western Iraq that the unit is trying to secure saw some of the conflict's fiercest fighting in weeks on Saturday. The Post-Dispatch embeds were the only ones there to cover it.

Five Marines, dozens of Iraqi insurgents, civilians and the police chief were killed in a 14-hour battle in Husaybah, which lies just 300 yards east of the Syrian border.

"The area's been very neglected," reporter Ron Harris said. "They've been taking fire and heat, and no one was there to report it."

Photographer Andrew Cutraro's image of a wounded Marine being carried to a medical evacuation helicopter ran on the front page of more than 20 newspapers.

Harris and Cutraro had traveled with the Marine unit in Baghdad and Karbala for several weeks in spring 2003 at the outset of the Iraq war.

This time, they met up with the Marines on March 22. They are scheduled to leave on Thursday, following a memorial service for the five Marines.

The unit had no losses during its first nine months in Iraq; it lost nine members in a month and a half in al-Qaim, the region where Saturday's deadly battle took place.

Harris, reached Tuesday by satellite phone, said he and Cutraro had wanted to embed with the same group of Marines they had come to know a year earlier.

Harris reported on the unit's accidental killing of British journalists and "nasty" interrogations of Iraqis by Marines still upset by heavy losses the day before.

"When they went (into Husaybah) Sunday, the day after the attack, they were kicking in doors, ordering everybody out of the house," Harris said. "They scared the hell out of a bunch of people."