Military reports from Iraq portrayed violence as Marine Capt. Frank Diorio traveled to his post in the embattled city of Husaybah.

Terrorists were pouring across the nearby border with Syria to join the resisting Iraqis.

They had graduated from small arms to rocket-propelled grenades. Makeshift bombs were hitting armored vehicles filled with Marines.

It was February 2005, almost two years after U.S. soldiers ended Saddam Hussein's rule. Chaos had filled the power vacuum left by the tyrant's fall. Diorio was taking command of an outpost in one of Iraq's bloodiest regions.

Besides his rifle, Diorio armed himself with lessons from prior American wars that he learned as an American studies major at the University of Notre Dame. In particular, he recalled how Marines eliminated enemy havens in Vietnam by befriending locals and defending their villages from marauding Viet Cong. With this lesson in mind, Diorio led 350 Marines of India Company through seven months of daily warfare, including one of the most frightening episodes in the U.S. attempt to stabilize Iraq.

Diorio grew up hearing stories about how his uncles, the sons of Italian immigrants, fought against their parents' homeland in World War II. "That always stuck with me," said Diorio, now 33, in an interview with IBD.

Instead of contemplating life in the military, Diorio focused on sports. He played defensive back on the high school football team in Sparta, N.J. During the winter, he wrestled in the 125-pound weight class. In college, he took up intramural boxing.

On campus, Diorio met a Marine recruiter who challenged him to be a leader. "Being in the military is not like a science project with specific data that you could fit into an equation to get a result," Diorio realized. "This is about leading men. It's about the things that bring people together in a common cause when the only certainty is that you might get hurt or die."

Diorio's base in Iraq, named Camp Gannon after a fallen Marine commander, was inside city limits. Regular days brought sniper shots from a few hundred yards away. Bad days brought a hail of gunfire and mortar attacks from nearby buildings.

What most concerned Diorio was the rise in suicide bombings using vehicles packed with explosives. In particular, he worried about a fire truck that terrorists had.

"No one could find it. It was like a ghost ship," said Diorio. "We had enough information to know that it was out there, and we had been trying to track it down. But they were smart and kept moving it."

Early in the morning on April 11, an explosion knocked everyone in the command center to the floor and lifted the ceiling off its moorings. "The earth just opened up," Diorio recalled. "I thought we had taken a direct hit from a mortar."

Over the radio, Diorio could hear his Marines yelling, "Fire truck, fire truck, fire truck!"

A second and more powerful blast rocked the area. "My heart just sank," Diorio said. "I thought I could have lost 40 or 50 men."

His mind quickly prioritized tasks: send Marines to reinforce positions that took losses; pick landing zones for helicopters to evacuate the injured; determine if his outfit needed reinforcements.

"Frank is blessed with the ability to look at a problem and make the right decisions at the right time," said retired 1st Sgt. Donald Brazeal, a 23-year Marine Corps veteran who served alongside Diorio and earned the Bronze Star.

One by one, reports came in that there were no casualties. The Marines' rifle fire had forced two bomb-laden vehicles — a dump truck and the fire truck — to detonate their loads before reaching Diorio's command post. Now his men faced a firefight with terrorists shooting from homes seized from locals.

"It was their Tet offensive," said Diorio, referring to a surprise attack by the Viet Cong in 1968 that killed more than 200 U.S. soldiers.

Basic fighting techniques are crucial in the heat of battle. Diorio and his men made sure no one ran out of ammunition. He coordinated support from aircraft and tanks. After three days, Diorio called for reinforcements to relieve his soldiers, who had fought nonstop without food or sleep — and held the city.

Their victory showed the locals that the terrorists couldn't deliver on their promise to rid Husaybah of the Americans.

Perhaps more important, the Marines won a moral victory. Diorio forbade shooting into some areas of the town for fear of civilian casualties. And his men refrained from returning fire when the terrorists emptied a school and made children run across the street with them as human shields.

After the battle, Diorio realized a rift was emerging between the locals and the terrorists. He saw an opportunity to erode the enemy's base of support.

"The locals had to choose between an insurgency that was going to continue the violence in their neighborhoods and our forces that were trying to end it," said Diorio.

He met with community leaders to discuss their needs, like rebuilding parts of the water system destroyed by the fire truck. His men delivered packages of food and water on locals' doorsteps. After a month passed with no suicide vehicle attacks, the Marines rebuilt the city's water system. The locals responded by informing India Company of imminent attacks.

A greater display of U.S. goodwill came months later in August 2005. Acting on intelligence, Diorio and India Company led a nighttime mission that decimated terrorists coming into Husaybah to punish locals for their waning support. Afterward, a local elder called to say "his tribe was indebted to the U.S. Marines forever," recalls Diorio.

Diorio listened to his Marines and took their advice. One day, two corporals warned him that some men who appeared to be fixing the roof of a nearby building kept looking at one of the Marines' gun positions. The corporals suggested moving the position. Diorio hesitated since it guarded the main avenue to the base. Then he replaced the gunner with a dummy. Moments later, a mortar destroyed the position.

"You have to trust your men and their instincts," said Diorio. "They see this stuff every day."

Not a single Marine died under his command despite enduring 300 attacks. After his seven-month tour, Diorio was promoted to major and now is an instructor with the Marines' Reserve Officers' Training Corps. He too received the Bronze Star for leadership and courage during his tour.

By phone and e-mail, Diorio stays in touch with the men who served in his command at Camp Gannon. He has also attended the funerals of those who died during subsequent tours, like Lance Cpls. Ryan Miller and William Koprince.

"They're still my Marines," he said.

BY DANIEL DEL'RE