When death has a human face

Lieutenant Malcolm was a good chess player. He looked like any other young Marines officer: skinny, shaven-headed, and with a quite beaky nose. Anyway, you could always pick him out. He'd be the one with the chess board working out moves.

I got to know him a little bit, as his bunk was opposite mine. I'd watch as he gave chess tips to those of his men who hadn't completely given in to poker.

About five hours into the battle for Fallujah, Lieutenant Malcolm was killed.

He was the weapons officer in Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, the unit I'd joined as an "embed".

Just before dawn, Alpha Company blew a large hole in an outer wall, and entered the police station right in the heart of Fallujah.

As the sun rose the Marines found themselves surrounded and under attack from all sides.

Lieutenant Malcolm's squad went up on to the highest rooftop they could find - but not higher than two minarets on either side, with snipers. There was a wall about 38cm high for cover.

Everyone tried to get close to it while bullets skipped across the paving stones. When he heard his men were in trouble - the men he'd been giving chess tips to just the day before - Lieutenant Malcolm came to get them.

As he ran on to the roof, one of the sniper's bullets hit his helmet, bouncing off. He kept going, and didn't leave until he had shepherded all his men down.

He was killed by the second bullet. It got him in the back, just below the flak jacket, as he jumped down the stairwell. He must have thought he was home free.

I asked another young officer, Lieutenant Bahrns, about the huge amount of firepower the Marines would bring to bear on Fallujah.

He told me: "If there are civilians in there, they are non-combatants, then by no means do we want to hurt a woman or a child. We're here to protect them, we're here to keep them safe and we're here to turn over Fallujah back to them."

Lieutenant Bahrns was leading a squad responsible for clearing out the insurgents from the southern tip of Fallujah. It took more than a week into the battle, the longest continuous period of urban, house-to house fighting since the Vietnam War.

Alpha company were holed up in a house on the edge of the desert. You could see the insurgents had nowhere else to go. Every night, though, they would attack, waiting until just after dark.

Half an hour after sunset the first rocket-propelled grenades made yellow streaks across the sky and exploded just behind us. The Marine snipers would try to pick off the insurgents circling around the building.

The next morning we saw their bodies, splayed at odd angles, already starting to bloat, the flies thick on their faces.

Lieutenant Bahrns told me how he'd lost his machine-gunner. The gunner had been first into a house and been shot and killed by those inside. There was a long battle. For three hours they couldn't even get the dead marine's body out.

When the Marines finally stormed the house they found three other bodies inside, each holding weapons: two men, and a boy, "maybe 10 years old". You could tell that Bahrns was sickened, almost in anguish.

"They were shooting at my marines," he said, "what could we do?"

The Marines saw many dead bodies - often being gnawed at by dogs in the streets - but they were all of fighters, even if in this one case the fighter was a child.

- INDEPENDENT

The BBC's Middle East correspondent, Paul Wood, was embedded with the 1st battalion of the Eighth Marine regiment during the battle of Fallujah.