Battle for the City of the Dead: In the Shadow of the Golden Dome, Najaf, August 2004

In the spring and summer of 2004, Iraq was coming apart at the seams. Sectarian violence pitted Shiite against Sunni. American proconsul L. Paul Bremer had disbanded the Iraqi Army, placing disgruntled young men on the street without jobs or the prospect of getting one. Their anger developed into a full-blown insurgency fed by a relentless campaign by the clergy for jihad against the “occupation force.” In August, a Shiite cleric named Muqtada Al-Sadr called upon his thousands of armed followers, the Mahdi Militia, to resist the occupation. Fighting broke out in several locations, including the holy city of Najaf, the site of the largest Moslem cemetery in the world, and the Imam Ali Mosque. The U.S. forces fought in 120-degree heat through a tangle of crypts, mausoleums, and crumbling graves. The fight was brutal, pitting religious zealots against the highly motivated and disciplined U.S. Army and Marine Corps troops. It makes for a riveting account of Americans in battle.

1100399713
Battle for the City of the Dead: In the Shadow of the Golden Dome, Najaf, August 2004

In the spring and summer of 2004, Iraq was coming apart at the seams. Sectarian violence pitted Shiite against Sunni. American proconsul L. Paul Bremer had disbanded the Iraqi Army, placing disgruntled young men on the street without jobs or the prospect of getting one. Their anger developed into a full-blown insurgency fed by a relentless campaign by the clergy for jihad against the “occupation force.” In August, a Shiite cleric named Muqtada Al-Sadr called upon his thousands of armed followers, the Mahdi Militia, to resist the occupation. Fighting broke out in several locations, including the holy city of Najaf, the site of the largest Moslem cemetery in the world, and the Imam Ali Mosque. The U.S. forces fought in 120-degree heat through a tangle of crypts, mausoleums, and crumbling graves. The fight was brutal, pitting religious zealots against the highly motivated and disciplined U.S. Army and Marine Corps troops. It makes for a riveting account of Americans in battle.

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Battle for the City of the Dead: In the Shadow of the Golden Dome, Najaf, August 2004

Battle for the City of the Dead: In the Shadow of the Golden Dome, Najaf, August 2004

by Dick Camp
Battle for the City of the Dead: In the Shadow of the Golden Dome, Najaf, August 2004

Battle for the City of the Dead: In the Shadow of the Golden Dome, Najaf, August 2004

by Dick Camp

Hardcover(First)

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Overview

In the spring and summer of 2004, Iraq was coming apart at the seams. Sectarian violence pitted Shiite against Sunni. American proconsul L. Paul Bremer had disbanded the Iraqi Army, placing disgruntled young men on the street without jobs or the prospect of getting one. Their anger developed into a full-blown insurgency fed by a relentless campaign by the clergy for jihad against the “occupation force.” In August, a Shiite cleric named Muqtada Al-Sadr called upon his thousands of armed followers, the Mahdi Militia, to resist the occupation. Fighting broke out in several locations, including the holy city of Najaf, the site of the largest Moslem cemetery in the world, and the Imam Ali Mosque. The U.S. forces fought in 120-degree heat through a tangle of crypts, mausoleums, and crumbling graves. The fight was brutal, pitting religious zealots against the highly motivated and disciplined U.S. Army and Marine Corps troops. It makes for a riveting account of Americans in battle.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780760340066
Publisher: MBI Publishing Company
Publication date: 03/28/2011
Edition description: First
Pages: 312
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Dick Camp is a retired Marine Corps colonel and the author of Lima-6, a memoir of his service 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, Last Man Standing: The 1st Marine Regiment on Peleliu, and Operation Phantom Fury: The Assault and Capture of Fallujah, Iraq. 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.

Table of Contents

Prologue Wadi al-Salaam Cemetery 1

Chapter 1 Valley of Peace 7

Chapter 2 Muqtada al-Sadr 19

Chapter 3 Uprising 33

Chapter 4 Back to the Brawl 51

Chapter 5 Revolutionary Circle 71

Chapter 6 Reinforcements 101

Chapter 7 Once More into the Breach 127

Chapter 8 Painful Negotiations and Fateful Decisions 149

Chapter 9 Raids and Feints 179

Chapter 10 Tomb Job 205

Chapter 11 Ghost Attack 227

Chapter 12 Endgame 253

Chapter 13 Cease-Fire 281

Epilogue Parting Shots 291

Appendix: Battle Time Line 297

Bibliography 299

Index 305

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

New York Journal of Books
"Dick Camp has created another oral history of a significant battle in the Iraq War as can only be told by a person with his credentials. A retired Marine colonel, Dick Camp served in the Marines as an officer for 26 years and tells this richly detailed account from the perspective of the soldier."

Leatherneck Magazine

"Intense combat in the open is as clean as war can be. But against religious or political fanatics at close quarters, it is beyond horrific—as brilliantly chronicled in Camp’s latest effort, Battle for the City of the Dead.

“…bristling with added technical detail, and magnified by anecdotes and vignettes obtained from two dozen personal interviews, organizational charts, colorful maps, as well as numerous hitherto unpublished color photographs, Battle for the City of the Dead forces a remembered scene from the World War I classic All Quiet on the Western Front, when German infantry died under writhing shellfire in a French cemetery. As in that movie, the intense firefights in one of the largest Muslim graveyards in the world, and around Najaf’s Imam Ali Mosque, the sacred shrine of the Iraqi Shiites, slowly moved beyond the old city walls, then across open squares, and down narrow streets to yet more doorways and basements…”

“As in Camp’s other books, a salty prose produces a thrilling immediacy that permeates throughout the text. Battle for the City of the Dead may well become a paragon in the Iraqi war literature.

Real and Simulated Wars Blog
"This book is the definitive study of the Battle of Najaf (2004) and is a must for the serious student of modern warfare. Highly recommended."

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