What’s it like to wake up in gunfight surrounded by terrorists? New movie reveals horrors of Iraq war’s bloodiest battle

SURROUNDED by al-Qaeda fighters, US Navy Seal Ray Mendoza faced a hail of machine gun fire as he helped bring his wounded best pal to an armoured vehicle.

But far worse was to follow in the infamous battle for Ramadi in Iraq in 2006.

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An Improvised Explosive Device blew up by the tank next to Ray and his colleagues, killing one of them and leaving three others seriously wounded.

This incident forms the basis of new movie Warfare which is filled with hot young British acting talent, including Joseph Quinn, who will play George Harrison in the upcoming Beatles biopics, and Shogun star Cosmo Jarvis.

Co-directed by British film-maker Alex Garland — screenwriter of The Beach, 28 Days Later and last year’s hit action thriller Civil War — the script was penned in an effort to help Ray’s sniper friend Elliott Miller remember what happened to him on that fateful day.

Even for Ray — who co-wrote and co-directed the film — a lot of what went on was so hazy that he needed help from some of his army colleagues to piece the events together.

The huge explosion knocked him off his feet and left him with brain damage.

Talking exclusively to The Sun, Ray says: “There is no scarier feeling than waking up in the middle of a gunfight.

“You are like, how did I get here?

“I was frozen. I didn’t hear anything — everything felt black and white. Then it all came rushing back.

“I thought Elliott was dead.”

The Second Battle of Ramadi was one of the fiercest experienced by Allied forces in Iraq, running from March to November in 2006.

Over a thousand people died, including 80 US troops and eight British soldiers.

The then al-Qaeda-aligned Islamic State of Iraq had declared Ramadi to be their capital and were led by the so-called sheikh of the slaughterers, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Known for their brutal treatment of locals, the insurgents started using chlorine bombs.

Communications officer Ray, 45, and the rest of the small unit were often sent into the heart of enemy ­territory to carry out surveillance missions.

He recalls: “Ramadi was the toughest place to be. It was the hotbed of the insurgency.

“We had done this mission multiple times. Often we would pick up that they were trying to surround us and we were out of there. This day we didn’t get to make that decision.”

In November 2006, the Seals had taken over a house to spy on al-Qaeda when a grenade landed in the room where Elliott and leading petty officer Joe Hildebrand were stationed.

They had to be “extracted” for treatment to their injuries — but the insurgents were ready for their exit and the bomb went off.

Snapping back into action, Ray dragged Elliott’s motionless and bloodied body back into the ­compound from where they had just emerged.

To make matters worse, a call had gone out “to all Muslims” to “kill the Americans.” That meant they had to get even more heavily injured men to safety while al-Qaeda-aligned fighters closed in.

He had a decent-sized hole in the shoulder, multiple fractures and injuries to his legs and abdomen.

Ray Mendoza on sniper pal Elliott Miller

They had to try to prevent them from getting on to their roof before back-up and more tanks arrived.

For the second extraction, Ray and a colleague had to carry Elliott on a stretcher under fire.

It sounds scary, but Ray says: “When I am with my friends there is not a lot of fear going on.

“For me it was more confusion. I was blacking out — one minute I would be on my knees, the next I would be standing up.”

That was because Ray had a traumatic brain injury from the first explosion. For Elliott it was far worse.

Ray explains: “He had a decent-sized hole in the shoulder, multiple fractures and injuries to his legs and abdomen.

"On his transit from Baghdad to Germany, he had some kind of stroke.

"The machine that was ­helping him to breathe shut down because of the brain trauma and he flatlined a few times.”

While most Hollywood movies spare the audience the full horror of ­conflict, Warfare does not.

Co-directors Alex and Ray decided it was important to show the fatal injuries suffered by an Iraqi Army scout serving alongside the Seals when the IED went off.

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Ray explains: “It is difficult to see. We tried to replicate it, based on what people saw.”

Even though Ray and his colleagues were incredibly brave, Warfare is not some gung-ho Hollywood movie that glosses over their frailties.

It shows some of the tough members of this special forces team not wanting to go on and being tearful.

The hardest moment for Ray was when he thought Elliott, who he had served with since 2002, was dead.

He admits: “I got the shaky chin. It was a rush of emotions.

“I wanted the film to show the human capacity and the ability to snap out of it, as easily as you go into it.”

Two days later, Ray was back out in the field, even though he had a traumatic brain injury.

Explaining the short and long-term effects, he says: “When you are that close to the explosion, there’s a lot of force travelling through your brain.

“The effects were depression, lack of emotion and lack of sensitivity.

“Things don’t smell, taste, or sound as bright as they used to.”

When you are in a wartime ­environment for 12 months you have to be functional. You can’t do that if you are crying all day.

Ray Mendoza

But Ray, who served in the US military for 17 years and reached the rank of Special Operator Chief when he left the service, could not talk about his emotions back then.

He says: “When we were young we were invincible — we were driven by aggression.

“When you are in a wartime ­environment for 12 months you have to be functional. You can’t do that if you are crying all day.”

Elliott, who is in a wheelchair, still cannot remember what happened — but the film did move him. He joined Ray on the set of Warfare in early 2024 at Bovington Airfield Studios near Hemel Hempstead, Herts.

The British production team had recreated the street in Ramadi so faithfully that the two Seals were soon transported back to the trauma of that day.

It got so demanding at one point that Ray took a break from co-directing. He admits: “I had to step off set. The right lighting, the right sound — Elliott got emotional, I got emotional.”

To get the actors into the right mindset, they were also put through a three-week boot camp where they underwent training similar to that given to Seals and were taught how to handle weapons.

The stars who play commanding officers in the film were expected to be in charge of the other actors.

Cosmo Jarvis, who plays Elliott, says: “The bootcamp process was an innovative way of preparing everyone for this job, and we all became incredibly close.

“When we went to shoot our scenes, that familiarity had already been established.”

Tim Chappel, a former British Army Royal Green Jacket, helped to train the actors.

And Ray, who also worked as a military consultant on Mark Wahlberg’s 2013 action drama Lone Survivor, hopes next to make a movie telling the accounts of Britain’s brave troops who fought alongside the Americans in Afghanistan.

He says: “I want to do a few British stories. Tim was telling me about some big firefights in Afghanistan.

“There are a lot of British vets who are in the movie industry in the US.”

Ray did not fight in Iraq, but did hear about British soldiers’ bravery.

He says: “I served a lot with Polish special forces. I wasn’t fortunate enough to serve with any Brits but I heard they were really good.”

It is a reminder that US Vice President JD Vance was wrong to dismiss Britain as “some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.”

Warfare does not pass any moral comment on whether the United States was right to invade Iraq in 2003 in order to overthrow dictator Saddam Hussein.

It simply shows what happened to the Seals in one military operation.

But Ray believes Allied forces did important work in the toughest circumstances.

He concludes: “Once we were there, we discovered there are bad people in the world.

“If we were inadvertently injuring civilians we tried to counter it with good things such as putting on ­medical stations for women or ­helping people who wanted to go to the States.

“We did a lot of good there, but we left and there was a vacuum, and the extremists came back in and they are now back to doing what we tried to stop them from doing.”

• Warfare (15) opens in cinemas today.

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