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Retired Marine Col. Dick Camp stands in the Khe Sanh exhibit at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. Retired Col. Dick Camp works at the National Museum of the Marine Corps and writes books about epic Corps battles. His latest focuses on the fighting in Fallujah, Iraq. |
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
"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.
FALLUJAH FALLOUT
Camp doesn't shy away from U.S. screw-ups or how politics in Washington affects battles in the war zone.
He spent about a year gathering material for the book on Fallujah, which may join Belleau Wood in World War I, Guadalcanal in World War II, Chosin Reservoir in Korea and Khe Sanh in Vietnam in the constellation of memorable Marine battles.
A city of about 350,000 people 40 miles west of Baghdad, Fallujah was largely spared in the initial push to Baghdad at the start of the Iraq war in 2003.
But by the following year, it had become a nexus of tension between coalition forces, Sunni insurgents and civilians.
The coalition's first foray into the city in March 2004 was prompted by the brutal murder of four civilian contractors with Blackwater USA. Their convoy was blocked, they they were killed and dragged through the streets, their corpses strung up on a bridge.
The Marines went in four days later.
"[They] did not want to do it," Camp says, because of limited forces and too-little planning time, along with the expectation that there would be "a great deal of collateral damage" in civilians killed or wounded.
The outcome was not what President Bush and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were expecting.
While Marines were winning on the ground, Camp says, they were losing the battle of international public opinion.
Arab media such as Al-Jazeera were portraying the assault as the slaughter of innocent Iraqis.
"We had killed a lot of [insurgents] and, yes, they hurt us, [but] we were all set to roll them up."
But before they could complete the mission, the Marines were ordered out of the city.
GOING IN, AGAIN
That set the stage for Operation Phantom Fury, the code name for the better-planned, and ultimately successful, second battle for Fallujah. Out-manned and outgunned, Marines fought house to house against entrenched insurgents. They suffered more than 600 casualties in the heaviest urban combat since the 1968 battle of Hue City in Vietnam.
Retired Marine Gen. Carl Mundy Jr., a former commandant of the Marine Corps and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whom Camp served under during Vietnam, says Camp's background as Marine, writer and historian gives him unusual insight into the subject.
"[He] has emerged to take his place among the foremost authors of battle histories of the Marine Corps," Mundy said. "He writes not as an academician, but as a battle-tested leader who has been there."
In Vietnam, Camp was aide-de-camp to Gen. Ray Davis, one of the Marine Corps' legendary combat leaders. Camp wrote about his combat experiences there in his memoir, "Lima-6."
Chief Warrant Officer Michael Fay, a Marine combat artist and friend of Camp's, says writers and artists strive to capture the essence of conflict.
"There's a certain Spartan aesthetic to it, to describe combat--the blood, sweat and tears, the downtime"-- in a simple, honest way.
WRITING IT DOWN
Camp began his writing career a decade ago.
"I had read an awful lot of history and I decided I'd try to write about Marines [serving] in China," he said.
He sent his story to Leatherneck Magazine.
"They called me back and said they were going to print the article," he said smiling.
Camp mentioned that he'd written two more stories. He sent them in and they were published. He's been a regular contributor to Leatherneck.
This year, he won Marine Corps Gazette's Col. Robert Debs Heinl Jr. Award for "Talking With the Enemy," published in Leatherneck in October 2008. It's about Marine Maj. Harry Pratt, chief interpreter during the post-World War II trial of Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, commander of the Imperial Japanese 14th Army, in Manila. Heinl was a Marine Corps officer, journalist and historian.
Camp has written more than 50 articles for magazines and other publications.
He says friend, military historian and author Eric Hammel got him started on "Lima-6," his first book.
"We were out to dinner one night and [Hammel] said, 'I'm tired even hearing your BS--either write it or shut up.'"
Camp did. Then Hammel helped him publish his next book, "Leatherneck Legends: Conversations with the Marine Corps' Old Breed."
Camp's other books include: "Battleship Arizona's Marines at War;" "The Devil Dogs at Belleau Wood: U.S. Marines in World War I," the subject of a new gallery in the works at the Marine Corps museum; "Iwo Jima Recon: The U.S. Navy at War, Feb. 17, 1945;" and "Last Man Standing: The 1st Marine Regiment on Peleliu, Sept. 15-21, 1944."
Camp is working on a new book about Marines in Najaf, Iraq.
Camp grew up in Roches-ter, N.Y. His high school coach, a Marine who served in Korea, got him interested in the service, and Camp signed up.
Several of his uncles fought with the Army in World War II. His father was a New York state trooper.
One day, Camp and his dad stopped at a small antique store in upstate New York.
"On the back wall there was this typical scroll from World War I, which said 'Augusta Camp,'" Dick Camp said.
He brought his dad back for a look.
"Yeah, that's your great-uncle," his father told him.
Augusta Camp was the first soldier in Wayne County, N.Y., killed in action in World War I.
During one battle in Vietnam, two North Vietnamese regiments had penetrated the battalion defenses, Camp remembered.
When the fighting was over, 54 Marines lay dead, with 400 wounded.
"It looked as though every man had been hit. I thought I'd never survive it," Camp said. "But that's another story."
Rusty Dennen: 540/374-5431
Email: rdennen@freelancestar.com
| 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 "Operation Phantom Fury" and Camp's other titles are available at online bookstores and
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