Headline Wednesday: The Second Battle of Fallujah, Iraq War takes listeners back into the most intense urban fighting of the early 2000s, as Marines, soldiers, Iraqi units, and insurgent fighters clash street by street for control of a city that has become the symbol and engine of a wider insurgency. From the eerie November night when assault columns form up on the edge of Fallujah to the first breaches through berms and walls, the story walks through the sights, sounds, and decisions that defined the return to a city many had already fought in once before. Headline Wednesday is the Wednesday feature of Dispatch: U.S. Military History Magazine, and the series is developed by Trackpads.com.

Across this episode, the narrative follows the lead up from the first battle and its uneasy end, into the planning for a full scale return, and then into the brutal, block by block fight that follows. Listeners hear how isolation, shaping fires, and small unit adaptation slowly turn the battle, even as the cost in shattered streets and human lives climbs higher with each day of contact. The episode closes by tracing the aftermath, including the short term disruption of a major stronghold and the longer term reality that a single hard won victory could not settle the war’s ultimate outcome. It is a detailed, human focused look at Fallujah that works as both a refresher for study and a way to think through the realities of modern urban combat.