Part of a continuing series about the life of an embedded reporter in Iraq.

FALLUJAH, IRAQ — A couple Marines came stomping through the door of the hootch where I was sleeping at about 4 a.m., body armor and weaponry clattering behind them as they climbed into their own bunks. They were back from one of Echo Company’s late-night patrols in Fallujah, which are staggered to keep the insurgents off-balance.

I fell back into a vague sleep for a few more hours (it’s not exactly quiet in a cramped room with 16 other guys), and later in the morning headed out to the loading dock to talk with some of the troops. They told me that since their deployment to Fallujah a few months ago, they hadn’t seen any other American reporters pass through their area of control, but had a few Germans and some Danes embed with them. That surprised me. I had assumed that as their ability to get around on their own dried up, reporters — especially American reporters — would head out to embed more often, not less. Then again, I was with one unit in a wide theater of operations, and just because one company hadn’t seen other American reporters doesn’t mean they’re not out there. A couple of the guys said that there was an American writer bouncing around different units in the area working on a book, but no one seemed to remember his name.

Early that afternoon, I got the call from Capt. Pinion that I was heading out a mounted patrol. The guys loaded up and I got in the second of the two 7-ton trucks (when sitting, the steel plating along the sides reached roughly to my chin, and the top was...

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