First Fights in Fallujah

First Fights in Fallujah PDF Author: David E. Kelly
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1636243193
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
"This book will add to the long and distinguished collection of marine history and is well worth the read for anyone interested in personal accounts of modern combat. It also provides a good snapshot into urban combat and the tactics and techniques necessary to succeed in it." — Military Review In March 2004, the unprovoked ambush killing and desecration of the bodies of American civilian security contractors in Fallujah, Iraq, caused the National Command Authorities in Washington, DC. to demand that the newly arrived Marine Expeditionary Force there take action against the perpetrators and other insurgent forces. Planned Stability and Support Operations were cast aside as insurgent fighters dared the Marines to enter Fallujah. Marine infantrymen, tankers, helicopter crews, and amphibious vehicle drivers all pitched into high-intensity battles and firefights during the first fights of Fallujah in April 2004. Across the board cooperation and innovation marked these fighting Marines in combined arms fights that no one expected. Marines fought in the streets, conducted house-to-house searches, cleared buildings of enemy, and used tank main guns in direct support of urban environment operations. Helicopter crews supported operations on the ground with rockets and machine-gun fire, and Amtrac Marines transported forces to face enemy RPG and machine-gun fire. Marines from infantry squad members to a battalion commander were interviewed by Marine Corps field historians within days or weeks of the events at nearby combat outposts and camps. This book combines these interview notes and the words of the men themselves to create a unique narrative of Marines in this combat. Casualties only stiffened the will of the Marines to crush the enemy. A late April political plan called for the withdrawal of Marine forces from the city, and Marines at every level, though frustrated, understood the need to allow this attempted solution to play itself out.

First Fights in Fallujah

First Fights in Fallujah PDF Author: David E. Kelly
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1636243193
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This book will add to the long and distinguished collection of marine history and is well worth the read for anyone interested in personal accounts of modern combat. It also provides a good snapshot into urban combat and the tactics and techniques necessary to succeed in it." — Military Review In March 2004, the unprovoked ambush killing and desecration of the bodies of American civilian security contractors in Fallujah, Iraq, caused the National Command Authorities in Washington, DC. to demand that the newly arrived Marine Expeditionary Force there take action against the perpetrators and other insurgent forces. Planned Stability and Support Operations were cast aside as insurgent fighters dared the Marines to enter Fallujah. Marine infantrymen, tankers, helicopter crews, and amphibious vehicle drivers all pitched into high-intensity battles and firefights during the first fights of Fallujah in April 2004. Across the board cooperation and innovation marked these fighting Marines in combined arms fights that no one expected. Marines fought in the streets, conducted house-to-house searches, cleared buildings of enemy, and used tank main guns in direct support of urban environment operations. Helicopter crews supported operations on the ground with rockets and machine-gun fire, and Amtrac Marines transported forces to face enemy RPG and machine-gun fire. Marines from infantry squad members to a battalion commander were interviewed by Marine Corps field historians within days or weeks of the events at nearby combat outposts and camps. This book combines these interview notes and the words of the men themselves to create a unique narrative of Marines in this combat. Casualties only stiffened the will of the Marines to crush the enemy. A late April political plan called for the withdrawal of Marine forces from the city, and Marines at every level, though frustrated, understood the need to allow this attempted solution to play itself out.

Operation Phantom Fury

Operation Phantom Fury PDF Author: Dick Camp
Publisher: Zenith Press
ISBN: 1616732539
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
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.

U.S. Marines in Battle

U.S. Marines in Battle PDF Author: Timothy S. McWilliams
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781782667018
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description
This is a study of the Second Battle of Fallujah, also known as Operation Al-Fajr and Operation Phantom Fury. Over the course of November and December 2004, the I Marine Expeditionary Force conducted a grueling campaign to clear the city of Fallujah of insurgents and end its use as a base for the anticoalition insurgency in western Iraq. The battle involved units from the Marine Corps, Army, and Iraqi military and constituted one of the largest engagements of the Iraq War. The study is based on interviews conducted by Marine Corps History Division field historians of battle participants and archival material. The book will be of primary interest to Marines, other service members, policy makers, and the faculty and students at the service schools and academies. Historians, veterans, high school through univeristy history departments and students as well as libraries may be interested in this book as well. With full color maps and photographs.

We Were One

We Were One PDF Author: Patrick K. O'Donnell
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 0306815931
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
A riveting first-hand account of the fierce battle for Fallujah during the Iraq War and the Marines who fought there--a story of brotherhood and sacrifice in a platoon of heroes Five months after being deployed to Iraq, Lima Company's 1st Platoon, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, found itself in Fallujah, embroiled in some of the most intense house-to-house, hand-to-hand urban combat since World War II. In the city's bloody streets, they came face-to-face with the enemy-radical insurgents high on adrenaline, fighting to a martyr's death, and suicide bombers approaching from every corner. Award-winning author and historian Patrick O'Donnell stood shoulder to shoulder with this modern band of brothers as they marched and fought through the streets of Fallujah, and he stayed with them as the casualties mounted.

Once a Marine

Once a Marine PDF Author: Nick Popaditch
Publisher: Savas Beatie
ISBN: 1611210372
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
The Silver Star–awarded marine chronicles his service in Iraq in this “transcendent memoir of military service and its personal consequences” (Ralph Peters, Lt. Col., ret., author of Looking For Trouble). In April, 2003, an AP photographer captured a striking image seen around the world of Gunny Sergeant Nick Popaditch smoking a victory cigar in his tank, the haunting statue of Saddam Hussein hovering in the background. Though immortalized in that moment as “The Cigar Marine,” Popaditch’s fighting was far from over. The following year, he fought heroically in the battle for Fallujah and suffered grievous head wounds that left him legally blind and partially deaf. But he faced the toughest fight of his life when he returned home: the battle to remain the man and Marine he was. At first, Nick fights to get back to where he was in Iraq-in the cupola of an M1A1 main battle tank, leading Marines in combat. As the seriousness and permanence of his disabilities become more evident, Nick fights to remain in the Corps in any capacity and help his brothers in arms. Then, following a medical retirement, he battles for rightful recognition and compensation for his disabilities. Throughout his harrowing ordeal, Nick fights to maintain his honor and loyalty, waging all these battles the same way—the Marine way—because anything less would be a betrayal of all he holds dear.

Hell in the Streets of Husaybah

Hell in the Streets of Husaybah PDF Author: David E. Kelly
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1636241514
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
First-person accounts chronicling the 3/7 Marines engaging in intense street-by-street fighting to put down an uprising in Iraq in April 2004. During the April 2004 fights throughout Iraq, most media attention was focused on the city of Fallujah. However, at the same time, out on the border with Syria in and around the city of Husaybah, fighting was equally intense. This book tells the story of that period through many first-person accounts of intense fighting in the town of Husaybah, Iraq, during. It is based on interviews with Marines at all levels of the fight, from battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Matt Lopez, USMC, to infantrymen and squad leaders. When the Lima Company commander Captain Richard Gannon (Call sign Lima 6) was killed on entry to an enemy-held building, the company’s executive officer, Lieutenant Dominique Neal (Lima 5) informed his Marines that he had assumed command with the radio message, “Lima 5 is now Lima 6.” It also details the heroic actions of Corporal Jason Dunham who saved the Marines around him by covering an enemy grenade with his body. Praise for Hell in the Streets of Husaybah “The young riflemen do not sound like college professors, and the officers occasionally seem to be weighing their words. . . . The overall effect is mesmerizing, as the reader is transported onto the battlefield, firefight-by-firefight, and even granted a glimpse or two into how individual Marines felt about what was happening.” —The Journal of America’s Military Past

House to House

House to House PDF Author: David Bellavia
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471105873
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
On 8 November 2004, the largest battle of the War on Terror began, with the US Army's assault on Fallujah and its network of tens of thousands of insurgents hiding in fortified bunkers, on rooftops, and inside booby-trapped houses. For Sgt. David Bellavia of 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, it quickly turned into a battle on foot, from street to street and house to house. On the second day, he and his men laid siege to a mosque, only to be driven to a rooftop and surrounded, before heavy artillery could smash through to rescue them. By the third day, Bellavia charges an insurgent-filled house and finds himself trapped with six enemy fighters. One by one, he shoots, wrestles, stabs, and kills five of them, until his men arrive to take care of the final target. It is one of the most hair-raising battle stories of any age -- yet it does not spell the end of Bellavia's service. It would take serveral more weeks before the Battle of Fallujah finally came to a close, with Bellavia, miraculously, alive. In the words of the author: "HOUSE TO HOUSE holds nothing back. It is a raw, gritty look at killing and combat and how men react to it. It is gut-wrenching, shocking and brutal. It is honest. It is not a glorification of war. Yet it will not shy from acknowledging this: sometimes it takes something as terrible as war for the full beauty of the human spirit to emerge."

Fallujah, with Honor

Fallujah, with Honor PDF Author: Gary Livingston
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781928724063
Category : Iraq War, 2003-
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


The Ragged Edge

The Ragged Edge PDF Author: Michael Zacchea
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1613738447
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Deployed to Iraq in March 2004 after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, US Marine Michael Zacchea thought he had landed a plum assignment. His team's mission was to build, train, and lead in combat the first Iraqi Army battalion trained by the US military. Quickly, he realized he was faced with a nearly impossible task. With just two weeks' training based on outdated and irrelevant materials, no language instruction, and few cultural tips for interacting with his battalion of Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Yazidis, and others, Zacchea arrived at his base in Kirkush to learn his recruits would need beds, boots, uniforms, and equipment. His Iraqi officer counterparts spoke little English. He had little time to transform his troops—mostly poor, uneducated farmers—into a cohesive rifle battalion that would fight a new insurgency erupting across Iraq. In order to stand up a fighting battalion, Zacchea knew, he would have to understand his men. Unlike other combat Marines in Iraq at the time, he immersed himself in Iraq's culture: learning its languages, eating its foods, observing its traditions—even being inducted into one of its Sunni tribes. A constant source of both pride and frustration, the Iraqi Army Fifth Battalion went on to fight bravely at the Battle of Fallujah against the forces that would eventually form ISIS. The Ragged Edge is Zacchea's deeply personal and powerful account of hopeful determination, of brotherhood and betrayal, and of cultural ignorance and misunderstanding. It sheds light on the dangerous pitfalls of training foreign troops to fight murderous insurgents and terrorists, precisely when such wartime collaboration is happening more than at any other time in US history.

Redeployment

Redeployment PDF Author: Phil Klay
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 069815164X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction "Redeployment is hilarious, biting, whipsawing and sad. It’s the best thing written so far on what the war did to people’s souls.” —Dexter Filkins, The New York Times Book Review Selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post Book World, Amazon, and more Phil Klay's Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival, the characters in these stories struggle to make meaning out of chaos. In "Redeployment", a soldier who has had to shoot dogs because they were eating human corpses must learn what it is like to return to domestic life in suburbia, surrounded by people "who have no idea where Fallujah is, where three members of your platoon died." In "After Action Report", a Lance Corporal seeks expiation for a killing he didn't commit, in order that his best friend will be unburdened. A Morturary Affairs Marine tells about his experiences collecting remains—of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers both. A chaplain sees his understanding of Christianity, and his ability to provide solace through religion, tested by the actions of a ferocious Colonel. And in the darkly comic "Money as a Weapons System", a young Foreign Service Officer is given the absurd task of helping Iraqis improve their lives by teaching them to play baseball. These stories reveal the intricate combination of monotony, bureaucracy, comradeship and violence that make up a soldier's daily life at war, and the isolation, remorse, and despair that can accompany a soldier's homecoming. Redeployment has become a classic in the tradition of war writing. Across nations and continents, Klay sets in devastating relief the two worlds a soldier inhabits: one of extremes and one of loss. Written with a hard-eyed realism and stunning emotional depth, this work marks Phil Klay as one of the most talented new voices of his generation.