Author gives life to epic war stories

By RUSTY DENNEN

Dick Camp won't ever forget Jan. 21, 1968.

It began as another day in combat for the commander of a Marine rifle company in Khe Sanh, Vietnam.

As he and his men sat outside sandbag-lined bunkers, talking about home, 20,000 North Vietnamese Army soldiers were preparing to lay siege to the base, following up 10 days later with the countrywide Tet offensive that would change the course of the war.

"Off in the distance I heard, 'boom, boom, boom!'" Camp recalled.

Seconds later, artillery was exploding all around "and everybody was trying to pull their helmet down to their ankles." And then, "Skipper, we've got a casualty!"

Camp, 69, a retired colonel now living in Fredericksburg, is no longer part of the action. But for the past 10 years, he's been writing about iconic Marine battles from World War I to the present.

His latest book, "Operation Phantom Fury: The Assault and Capture of Fallujah, Iraq" (Zenith Press, $30), just arrived in book stores.

"There are great stories about combat in Iraq. I wanted to do a book that would get me current and bring my writing up to speed" with the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, Camp said.

He has tactical advantages over writers wanting to tackle Marine history. He's vice president for operations with the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, and within a pistol shot of Marine Corps Base Quantico, the "Crossroads of the Marine Corps," where prime interview subjects are always passing through.

"This is a great place to be," Camp said in a recent interview. The Marine Corps History Division, where he worked for a time, is there, as well as the Gen. Alfred M. Gray Marine Corps Research Center at Quantico, which holds a vast collection of library, research and archival material.

"My books are basically oral history that complement a text. I want a book to come alive," he said.

He blends personal accounts--from the lowest enlisted men to division commanders--with military planning and tactics--and not just from the Marines' side.

"Operation Phantom Fury," for example, includes excerpts from the Iraqi Resistance Report, an insurgents' Web site that gives a daily account of its side of the fight.

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Dick Camp served 26 years in the Marines, retiring as a colonel in 1988.

His assignments included the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C.; instructor at The Basic School at Quantico; commanding officer of the 1st Recruit Training Battalion, San Diego, Recruiting Station, Milwaukee and the 12th Marine Corps District; and he was aide-de-camp at the Marine Corps Education Center.

He served one tour of duty in Vietnam, commanding Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment.

After that, he was a school district business manager in Cincinnati, deputy director of the Marine Corps University History Division, and is currently vice president for operations for the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

"Staff Sgt. David Bellavia was ready to go. The wait that afternoon for H-Hour was absolute agony. There are only so many Knute Rockne pep talks you can give when you're stacked eight to a man in a Bradley" Fighting Vehicle. "We gorged ourselves on MREs, drinking as much water as we could, getting some shut eye and not really knowing what a sustained urban fight was going to be like."

"Cpl. Francis Wolf, an experienced squad leader, described his technique for assaulting a 'suspicious' house. 'Usually we'll start off with a rocket and then light it up with [grenades] and small arms fire--basically we just shoot it to hell, 'til we go in.'"

"Operation Phantom Fury" and Camp's other titles are available at online bookstores and in the National Museum of the Marine Corps' gift shop.

Date published: 12/10/2009

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