..."I swear I don't mean to sound like I'm selling something," Sergeant Stephen Deboard said when I first arrived in the city. "But what the Marines are doing out there in the city is amazing. They are so integrated in the community. The first time I stayed at one of the stations I awoke to the sound of an Iraqi baby crying and the smell of the neighbor's eggs cooking. They're living right there with the Iraqis."

"I never thought I'd walk around a place like Fallujah and see people I know," Sergeant Clarence Foster said and laughed...