Battle for Fallujah hots up

Battle for Fallujah hots up

By our man in the line of fire, Derek Tree

Hard on the heels of our recent scoop on the pivotal role Britain's Black Watch are playing in the critical assault on the beleaguered city of Fallujah, our man on the ground sent us this exclusive report from his heavily fortified hotel bedroom in Baghdad, from where he is keeping his telescope closely trained on the momentous events unfolding in war-torn Iraq

We began by asking how the assault was going.
"Not too bad," replied the veteran journalist, his voice slurred by his constant battle to stay awake — or possibly by the brandy he is forced to clean his teeth with since the water ran out.
"Last nights push appears to have triggered a wave of resistance in the hotel receptionist who is holding out for eight pairs of tights and a second-hand X-box."
"Sorry?" we asked.
"Bugger!" exclaimed the embattled newshound. "I thought you meant Shumilla. I've been trying to get my leg over that saucy Kuwaiti sexpot for three weeks. Ah — the assault, er, well, um, militants in Tikrit attacked two American marines with rolled up copies of Playboy last night and a suicide bomber blew his hat off outside a topless lap dancing club in Baghdad in protest over the reduction of Happy Hour to ten minutes."

"I think our readers are more interested in the situation in Fallujah." we prompted.
"Ah, right you are. Well, huge, ah, positively massive US forces are battling against fierce opposition from an old bloke and his one-legged nephew who've barricaded the main bridge into the city with two pushchairs, a Coca-Cola dispenser and five oil drums. Frankly it doesn't look good from where I'm sitting."
"Why's that?" we asked.
"I've just seen Shumilla getting into a 4x4 with that arse from NBC and the fat bastard had his hand in her knickers!"
"We meant the bridge into Fallujah."

"Ah - sorry, well that doesn't look much better. An AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter gunship has just hoved into view and is raking the bridge with machine-gun fire, while two tanks are manouevering into position to shell it from the northwest. At least I think they're tanks, they could be armoured trucks delivering wholewheat baps to the local McDonalds for all I know. Did you know that a detachment of US marines seized a halal sandwich bar this morning?"
"Er, no," we replied. "What did they do?"
"Confiscated several copies of Fahrenheit 9/11, shot a few old men begging for food and hauled five teenage girls away for questioning."
"Did the girls resist?"
"Only until the price went above $10. Those sluts in Fallujah would blow a camel for ten bucks, a can of coke and a packet of Marlboro lights, or so Shumilla says."

"Can we skip your sexual frustration and get back to the war? What's it like inside the city?"
"Fucking awful. Masked carpet salesmen roam the empty streets with assault fly whisks and hand-propelled oranges clutched in their hands while US warplanes bomb the sandcastles their children have built on the edge of the city. Grown men weep as they bury tins of Heinz soup, some of it still not past it's sell-by date. This morning the Americans were using inflatable dolls looted from a sex shop to try to cross the river but came under heavy fire from children hurling rotten fruit at them."
"Has there been a lot of shelling?"
"Not, not really, the peas ran out last week. Oh — you mean bombs? Well, the main market square drew some of the heaviest fire as the crushing air and artillery bombardment rose to a climax, with US jets dropping bombs around the clock and big guns pounding the fruit and vegetable stalls with high-explosive shells. This afternoon two blokes in a Volkswagen were—Fuck! Now Shumilla's stuffing a roll of ten dollar bills into her blouse!" At that moment our satellite uplink suddenly un-uplinked itself and we were cut off from our correspondent.

Utterpants will bring you further reports just as soon as we re-establish contact with Baghdad.

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