♪ ♪ 1ST LT.

MOULTON: The terrain was just unbelievable.

It was- it was unlike anything that I ever would have anticipated.

I mean the tombs were all above ground and below ground, but they were big structures.

It's not like an American cemetery where you just have a- a wide-open flat space with- with gravestones, no, these are, these are very elaborately constructed tombs.

And they were practically all built on top of each other.

(gunfire) ♪ CAPT.

MORAN: It's just a huge cemetery.

I think it's 15 square kilometers, and people describe it as a- as a New Orleans-style cemetery on- on steroids.

(gunfire and explosions) ♪ (gunfire and explosions) ♪ (gunfire and explosions) ♪ 1ST LT.

MOULTON: It also provided an incredible defensive position for the militia because they could hide anywhere.

I mean they could hide underground; they could hide above us in these little minarets, in these mini-mosques and, they could pop out from behind these tombs, you know, a mere five or ten feet in front of us without our knowing that they were there beforehand.

♪ MAST.

SGT.

ERICKSON: As soon as I got there, told their commander, "Sir, we're- we want to start, we want to start- "we want to start "conducting sniper operations tonight.

We want to infill as soon as the sun goes down."

And, I told him that I wanted to go all the way up to within about 400 meters of the Old City.

I told him I wanted to go down the other end of the gravesite- graveyard basically and he looked at me and said, "Sergeant, you're going to die."

And I said, "Sir, what are you talking about?"

And he got this thousand- yard stare and he told me about how an M1 Abrams tank with a Bradley behind it had gone down one of these small, funeral roads that runs north to south.

Very narrow road, no room for vehicles to maneuver.

And as it drove down a Mahdi Militia man had jumped from behind a grave onto the top of the tank, had shot the commander and the loader, the two Americans on the top of the tank, and had jumped off the other side of the tank before the Bradley fighting vehicle behind it could engage them and had disappeared.

And, because of that it was almost as though there was a boogeyman out there.

They knew during the day watching them with unmanned aerial vehicles that there were small groups of bad guys out in the city, but they knew that there were more at night.

They were hiding down in the catacombs.

(gunfire)