Zack Iscol is a Marine who served in one of the most intense battles of the Iraq War. He now serves as the Commissioner of the New York City Emergency Management. On Monday, he will be honored during the Veterans Day Parade.
After fighting on the battlefields, Iscol is now on a new mission.
"The second battle of Fallujah, it feels like it was a minute ago. It also feels like a lifetime" he said.
November 7, 2004, was the day Iscol, fellow Marines and other soldiers entered the city of Fallujah. It would turn out to be the bloodiest battle involving U.S. Marines since the Vietnam War.
"In some ways, it's like when you go over the Brooklyn Bridge and you walk over and you come down into the caverns of the city, that's kind of what it felt like. Except people are shooting at you," Iscol said.
The fighting lasted about two weeks.
"It was intense. You know, it was house to house, room to room. The enemy were building machine gun positions inside of houses," Iscol adds, "There was about 4 to 5000 fighters. And they were there to die. You know, they wanted to die. They wanted to take as many Marines with them as possible."
Iscol grew up in a military family and says he knew from an early age he wanted to serve.
"I grew up around World War II vets. That's all my grandparents, I grew up around survivors, Holocaust survivors as well. So I knew I wanted to serve," he says.
The second battle of Fallujah, Operation Phantom Fury, would be his second deployment in Iraq.
"I was young. I was a marine. It's what Marines do. You know, looking back on it, you're sort of like, what were you thinking? But Marines want to go where the fight is," says Iscol.
He says that as a New Yorker, he wanted to do his part after September 11.
At one point he faced the possibility he would not make it home and wrote a letter to his family that was never sent - he says it was in case he didn't make it.
After returning home, he and others struggled with the toll that combat took - not only on their bodies but their minds. At one point. His unit was losing more Marines to suicide than they did at war. He was struck by the lack of support for veterans dealing with those invisible scars.
In 2012, he and others started the Headstrong Project in New York City to build a much-needed mental health support network.
"If you have the courage, you get help and you get the right help, you can absolutely recover from these wounds and get back to the best version of yourself," Iscol says.
Iscol sees Veterans Day as a teachable moment, especially for younger generations.
"I think Veterans Day is a great moment to educate our young people about the value of service, about the meaning of service, about what we owe here to those who have sacrificed so much for this country," he says.
You can watch the Veterans Day Parade Monday on ABC7 at 12:30 p.m.
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