THE FIRST BATTLE OF MANBIJ

THE FIRST BATTLE OF MANBIJ
June–August 2016 CE — Near the Euphrates River, Northern Syria

EXT. ROJAVA HILL VILLAGE — DAY

A brittle heat shimmers off the dirt. Mud-brick houses and a squat, grim-looking mosque stand stubbornly on a low ridge. Gunfire echoes. The rattle of PKM fire sprays against a wall. Our fighters stay low, hugging the dust. The courtyard is cratered, blackened. Through narrow sniper holes—retaliation. Controlled bursts. Cursing in Kurdish, Arabic, English.

NARRATOR (V.O.)
Before we reached Manbij, there were weeks of reconnaissance. Daesh had dug in across the villages west of the Euphrates. We were told the locals—neutral at best, hostile at worst. Three years they’d lived under the black banner.

INT. FARMHOUSE COMPOUND — CONTINUOUS

A small, hardened group of fighters—Kurds, Arabs, Europeans—return fire across the ravine. A sniper rests his barrel on a broken window. A female fighter yells coordinates. A rocket streaks out. The mosque shudders.

NARRATOR (V.O.)
To take Manbij, we had to sweep through dozens of hill towns like this. All the same—mud huts, sheep pens, and the same damn ugly little mosque. Some 700 meters between us and them. All day, it went on like that.

EXT. MOSQUE RIDGE — LATER

A woman screams a bloodcurdling battle cry. It echoes across the valley. The Daesh fighters flinch. The fire intensifies—heavy machine guns now. The sound of RPGs splitting air. Dust. Debris. Screams. Radios chirp.

NARRATOR (V.O.)
They fear that sound—a woman’s voice in battle. Fear dying at her rifle.

EXT. HILL VILLAGE — MIDDAY HEAT

Stillness. Everything slows. The sun is a hammer in the sky. Fighters nap in the shade, meditate, or simply collapse.

NARRATOR (V.O.)
From eleven to three, we’d all just stop. Hibernating in the heat. Unless someone got martyred—then we fought on. No time to eat. No time to breathe.

INT. COMPOUND — EARLY EVENING

A young fighter mans the radio. Nearby, the COMMANDER—a hard-faced, mountain veteran—refuses to call in air support.

COMMANDER
(quietly, in Kurdish)
Only if we can’t take the mosque ourselves.

NARRATOR (V.O.)
He was a Kadro. Old guard. Mountain fighter. Said we shouldn’t rely on the Americans unless we had to. He still blames them for Apo’s capture. Says they’d let us all hang once it suited them.

FLASHBACK – TRAINING CAMP (PAST)

American advisors demonstrate how to paint laser targets. Drones overhead. Kurdish fighters scribble notes in notebooks.

NARRATOR (V.O.)
They trained us to call the airships. Taught us to paint targets, to speak their lingo. But trust? That was harder.

EXT. MOSQUE — NIGHT ASSAULT

Four columns of YPG light infantry descend like wraiths. Silently. Steadily. The doors are kicked in. Grenades tossed inside. Brief, ferocious gunfire. Screams. Then silence.

INT. MOSQUE — MOMENTS LATER

Five wounded Daesh fighters sit slumped. One reaches for something—he’s shot dead. The others are executed against the outer wall. Cold, quiet work.

NARRATOR (V.O.)
That was that. Few of them left alive. No Hevals martyred. So we had tea.

EXT. MAKESHIFT FIELD CLINIC — LATER THAT NIGHT

Foreign fighters in medical gear tend to the wounded. One of them, MACER GIFFORD, moves like a surgeon, giving orders. Bandaging. Extracting. The Tactical Medical Unit—sleek, efficient, quiet.

NARRATOR (V.O.)
A new thing then—foreign Hevals doing combat medicine. Macer Gifford led them. British. Always on the news. They let him lead the Takim because he was trusted. It wasn’t a Tabor. Just eighteen or twenty people. But it worked.

Heval Roj, a FRENCH FIGHTER with a thick beard, hefts a DShK on a pickup truck. He yells to his Kurdish co-leader.

NARRATOR (V.O.)
We had others—Heval Roj in heavy weapons, a Chinese friend, too. But no foreigner ever really commanded alone. Someone Kurdish was always in charge. Still, the foreigners pulled their weight. And bled with us.

EXT. ROJAVA PLAIN — DAWN

Over the radio, voices crackle. Reports of thousands of fighters crossing the Euphrates with American support. Convoys of pickup trucks stretching to the horizon.

NARRATOR (V.O.)
Thousands were bridging the river now. Manbij was next. And beyond that, Deir Ez-Zor. Oil fields. The final badlands.

The camera holds on the ruined mosque, now abandoned. A goat wanders in. The war moves forward. The town is left behind.

FADE OUT.