What Was Black Sunday? | The Long Road Home

yeah the the Intel brief we got about 30
days before we left said you’re going to
the safest place in Iraq in April 2004
one year after the fall of Saddam
Hussein Iraq was controlled by a us-led
transitional government this period
marked a relative low in violence in the
war the soldiers stationed at Camp War
Eagle expected an uneventful deployment
we deployed you know we knew that there
had been a lot of enemy activity in Sadr
City up to that point you know that I
think there’s general knowledge that you
know there had been a shot fired in over
six months the division was tasked with
peacekeeping and supporting local
rebuilding efforts in a part of Baghdad
known as Sadr City initially what we
thought we were going to do is go over
there and provide security to
contractors who are going to come in and
repair damaged sewage system and repair
the damaged freshwater system prepare
the electrical systems all of the things
that have deteriorated since the first
Gulf War because the bombing that we did
there
and because neglect by some of the same
government before we find the topic
that was the mission that we thought we
were going to do
Sadr City was increasingly controlled by
muqtada al-sadr an influential religious
activists and vocal opponent of foreign
occupation in Iraq on March 28th u.s.
coalition forces ordered the closure of
el satyrs newspaper which escalated the
tensions that would lead to violence
when the ambush started we were actually
headed back in we had been out escorting
the sewage trucks throughout the day as
we moved in moved down that road you
know a couple rounds fired and we
stopped to look for merit was and that’s
when it within a few minutes we knew
exactly what was going on we were
involved in a closed ambush
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