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mid-fall the CPA was reluctantly reallocating money for additional security forces. Once the CPA agreed to Wolfowitz’s request, Abizaid directed the U.S. divisions in Iraq to use the money to recruit, train, and pay the new Iraqi National Guard (initially called the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps). Fallujah, though, was near the bottom of the list of cities to receive such a battalion. National Guard soldiers would not arrive there until February 2004.

 
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    “YOU WORK WITH THE AMERICANS, YOU DIE.”
    AS THE SUMMER OF 2003 ENDED, the Americans pulled their units into a large base two miles east of Fallujah, sending mounted patrols downtown daily.
    At the beginning of September, the 82nd Airborne Division returned. Fallujans were still angry about the tragic killings of April 28, but the JTF had no other division to send. The 1st Battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment became the fifth American battalion in five months to enter the city. The battalion, recently returned from Afghanistan, would remain there for seven months.
    Lieutenant Colonel Brian M. Drinkwine commanded the battalion. A West Point graduate, he was a quiet leader, comfortable in his command and impressed by the size of the task. The regimental commander, Colonel Jefforey Smith, had called together his six battalion commanders and laid out their missions. The 4,400 paratroopers under Smith’s command—spread out over sixteen hundred square kilometers containing one million Iraqis—were to accomplish five tasks: (1) fight and defeat the shadowy insurgents; (2) reestablish local governing councils; (3) defuse the hostility of the Sunni population; (4) aid the Iraqi police; and (5) assist in invigorating the economy. These tasks were similar to what American and British forces were undertaking throughout Iraq. The JTF in Baghdad, however, had provided no master blueprint for rebuilding a nation. Each battalion, Smith explained in his direct, soft-spoken way, was expected to adapt and determine its own priorities.
    Drinkwine concentrated on city government during the daytime, driving in town for meetings with administrators, sheikhs, and imams. Every night the rifle companies sent out anti-IED patrols. Six IEDs had gone off the first week the battalion arrived; over the course of the summer the insurgents had become more skilled.
    Prime hours for setting in the explosives were just after dark and just before dawn. Knowing the Americans had observation posts, insurgents would ride in two cars, drive toward each other, and stop with their rear bumpers touching, as if one were helping the other change a flat tire. The cars’ headlights blinded the American night-vision devices for the few minutes it took to drop the explosive into a pre-dug hole behind a guardrail. A few hours later a man would sneak up and insert a blasting cap, wires, or a radio frequency device. The next day someone hiding in the shrubs would detonate the explosive. As the paratroopers became adept at identifying likely hiding places for IEDs, the insurgents changed locations in a daily hide-and-seek contest.
    The battalion’s initial patrols were large-scale, with quick reaction forces standing by. Shortly before midnight on September 11, 2003, the 3rd Platoon from Alpha Company left its base at an abandoned amusement park and walked north to stake out a highway. The soldiers settled into an ambush about two hundred meters west of a field hospital that the Jordanian military had established to treat Iraqis.
    Around the same time inside the city, somebody in a black BMW fired shots at the mayor’s office and then raced out of town, pursued by a police car and two pickups manned by the mayor’s militia. With their lights on, the four vehicles raced at high speed down the highway. The American soldiers turned on their flashlights and waved at the cars to halt. When the BMW turned out its lights and sped past the Americans, shots rang out in a confused melee. One police pickup