A fatal mistake: The truth behind a Marine Corps lie and broken promises
All these years later, the Marines who survived are still haunted by the blinding flash and the piercing screams.
"I knew who some of the guys were that got hit," Chris Covington remembers, "because I recognized their screams."
On the night of April 12, 2004, a deadly explosion rocked a schoolhouse in Fallujah, Iraq, where U.S. troops had set up a temporary base. Two Marines died and a dozen were wounded, some severely.
But as seared as the fatal explosion is in the men's memory, to the Pentagon it's as if it never happened.
An NPR investigation found that the explosion at the schoolhouse in Fallujah was a tragic accident — the worst Marine-on-Marine "friendly fire" of recent decades. Officers determined almost immediately that the explosion was caused by an errant 81 mm mortar fired by the victims' own comrades,
