Two American soldiers climbed out of a hatch

Two American soldiers climbed out of a hatch, the first with his pant leg on fire, and the other

completely in flames. The first rolled over to help the other man, but when they touched, the first man

also burst into flames. Insurgent gunfire began to pop.

Several blocks away, Lance Cpl. Jeffrey Rosener, 20, from Minneapolis, watched the two men die from a

lookout post at a Marine encampment. His heart reached out to them, but he could not. In Ramadi, Iraq’

s most violent city, two blocks may as well be 10 miles.

“I couldn’t do anything,” he said of the incident, which he saw on Oct. 10. He spoke quietly,

sitting in the post and looking straight ahead. “It’s bad down there. You hear all the rumors. We

didn’t know it was going to be like this.”

Here in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, Sunni Arab insurgents are waging their fiercest war

against American troops, attacking with relative impunity just blocks from Marine-controlled territory.

Every day, the Americans fight to hold their turf in a war against an enemy who seems to be everywhere

but is not often seen.