Marines take advantage of peace to make friends near Fallujah

Not a shot has been fired at a Marine in five days.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
SECHER, Iraq -- For Marines here Saturday, it was the way it was supposed to be.
Accompanied by Navy medical corpsmen and a Navy chaplain, the Marines spent much of the day handing out toys, candy, crackers, backpacks and soccer balls to eager children in this farming village adjacent to Fallujah.
For adults, the Americans had bags of planting seed, farm tools and sluice gates to help with irrigation.
This was to be the Marines' strategy for winning friends in the restive Sunni Triangle region. But when four American civilian contractors were killed and their bodies mutilated, the newly arrived Marines were ordered to place a cordon around Fallujah and engaged a group of heavily armed insurgents in combat for nearly a month.
Now, as a result of an agreement cobbled together with help from former Iraqi generals and Iraqi politicians, the shooting appears over, at least temporarily.
No one knows if the truce will hold, or if the Fallujah Protective Brigade will prove capable, or willing, to bring the insurgency movement to heel. But this much is known: For five days, not a shot has been fired at the Marines.
Farming implements
And so Marines fanned out Saturday into the surrounding countryside, distributing goodies to kids and farming implements to the adults. They also asked what battle damage the village suffered; a Marine lawyer will do follow-up and decide on any compensation.
When the Marines in mid-March assumed responsibility for much of the Al Anbar province from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, they hoped to emphasize the first part of the 1st Marine Division's motto, "No better friend." Instead they found themselves emphasizing the second part, "No worse enemy."
Now they're attempting a new beginning.
"We're trying to do as much good as we can," said Navy corpsman Marcos Figueroa, 28, of Culver City, Calif.