Operation Phantom Fury: The Assault and Capture of Fallujah, Iraq - Hardcover

Camp, Dick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0760336989 ISBN 13: 9780760336984

Publisher: Zenith Press, 2009

Synopsis

The Second Battle for Fallujah, dubbed Operation Phantom Fury, took place over an almost two-month period, from November 7 to December 23, 2004. The Marine Corps’ biggest battle in Iraq to date, it was so prolonged and fierce that it has entered the pantheon of USMC battles alongside Iwo Jima, Inchon, and Hue City. This book offers an in-depth, intimate look into Operation Phantom Fury, the single most significant battle undertaken during the occupation of Iraq. The author, a retired Marine Corps colonel with combat service in Vietnam, conducted personal interviews with combatants, from the division commander in charge of the operation down to Marine infantrymen who did the fighting. The result--illustrated with a hundred action photographs--is a rare firsthand account of the brutal reality of the war in Iraq, how this battle for a key city was fought, and how such a crucial battle looks from positions of command and from the thick of the fight.

About this title

About the Author

Dick Camp is a retired Marine Corps colonel and the author of Lima-6, his memoir as a Marine infantry company commander at Khe Sanh. He has written several combat histories of the U.S. Marines, including The Devil Dogs at Belleau Wood, Battleship Arizona's Marines at War, Iwo Jima Recon, and Last Man Standing: The 1st Marine Regiment on Peleliu. He is also the author of Leatherneck Legends: Conversations with the Marine Corps' Old Breed and has published over sixty articles in various military-oriented magazines, including Vietnam, World War II, Marine Corps Gazette, and Leatherneck. Camp is currently the vice president for museum operations at the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, overseeing the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia.

From the Back Cover

Wednesday morning, March 31, 2004: a Blackwater private security firm convoy is ambushed on the streets of Fallujah, Iraq. Four American contractors are killed, their bodies desecrated and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River. Long-simmering tensions between insurgents and American forces had boiled over.

In Baghdad, the Coalition Provisional Authority s chief ambassador, L. Paul Bremer III, proclaims that the deaths will not go unpunished. Brigadier General Mark Kimmit, deputy operations director for the Joint Task Force in Iraq, states, We will hunt down the criminals. We will kill them or we will capture them . . . and we will pacify Fallujah.

American retaliation came the following Monday, April 4. In this first battle for Fallujah, Gen. James Mathis and his Marines had almost taken the city when increasing pressure from the Iraqi Governing Council in Baghdad over noncombatant civilian casualties resulted in Bremer announcing a unilateral cease-fire for April 9; Operation Vigilant Resolve, the first battle for Fallujah, ended with the insurgents still in control of the city. U.S. forces withdrew on May 1, turning the defense of Fallujah over to a local Iraqi force, the Fallujah Brigade. By September the brigade had disbanded, and its American-supplied weapons were in the hands of the insurgents. The stage was set for a second battle for Fallujah, Operation Phantom Fury, which commenced the night of November 7, 2004.

Over the next month and a half, U.S. and Iraqi forces led by the U.S. Marines would take back Fallujah. The first week of the battle was relentless: bloody street-by-street, house-by-house, and room-to-room combat against entrenched insurgents. Author Dick Camp tells this riveting story through the words of the Marines who fought there, drawing upon dozens of interviews with veterans of Operation Phantom Fury. The result is a comprehensive and exciting ground-level look at a hard-fought U.S. victory. The city was secure, and there would be no third battle for Fallujah.

From the Inside Flap

Operation Phantom Fury provides an in-depth, intimate look into the Marine Corps' biggest battle in Iraq, indeed the most significant single battle during the occupation: the Second Battle for Fallujah. Located about forty miles west of Baghdad, Fallujah has a primarily Sunni population and was a stronghold of the former regime of Saddam Hussein. Although spared from significant damage during the initial U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, tensions between civilians, insurgents, and coalition forces built up over the following year. Those tensions exploded in March 2004 with the ambush, murder, and desecration of four Blackwater contractors in the streets of Fallujah. Outrage resulting from photographs and video of the bodies of the Americans hanging from the Fallujah bridge reverberated around the world. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly is quoted as saying, "We should make the people of Fallujah bathe in their own blood." From that moment, retaking the city from the insurgents became a necessity. The abortive First Battle of Fallujah, Operation Vigilant Resolve, fell apart under political pressure due to the high toll on civilians during the operation. Local Iraqi forces, the Fallujah Brigade, took over after the U.S. withdrawal but failed to take any meaningful action, ultimately disbanding in the early fall. The brigade's U.S.-supplied weapons ended up in the hands of insurgents, further strengthening their position. A second battle for Fallujah was inevitable, and this time U.S. Marine and Army forces, along with a number of Iraqi Army battalions, would take the city back. Dick Camp, a retired Marine Corps full colonel and Vietnam combat veteran, presents a detailed account of Operation Phantom Fury that filled with personal interviews with those involved, from the division commander in charge of the operation down to the Marine infantrymen who did the fighting. With frequent firsthand accounts and over 150 color photographs, Operation Phantom Fury puts the reader on the frontlines of the war in Iraq.

Edition details

• Publisher: Zenith Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0760336989
• ISBN 13: 9780760336984
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320