New Dawn: The Battles for Fallujah

Richard S. Lowry, USN, “is an internationally recognized military historian, author & a veteran of the US Navy Submarine Service. He published The Gulf War Chronicles in 2003. He has been published in Military Magazine, Leatherneck & the Marine Corps Gazette. In June 2004, Richard was awarded a research grant from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation & invited to the Marine Corps Historical Center to research the events of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He maintains a vast collection of Gulf War documentation. He has compiled over 400 hours of audio of his and other interviews as well as 1000s of pages of documentation. Richard Lowry is the author of Marines in the Garden of Eden: The True Story of Seven Bloody Days in Iraq; US Marine in Iraq: Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003; &, The Gulf War Chronicles: A Military History of the First War with Iraq. According to the description of New Dawn, “Fallujah. Few names conjure up as many images of blood, sacrifice, and valor as does this ancient city in Al Anbar province forty miles west of Baghdad. This sprawling concrete jungle was the scene of two major U.S. combat operations in 2004. The first was Operation Vigilant Resolve, an aborted effort that April by Marines intent on punishing the city's insurgents. The second, Operation Phantom Fury, was launched seven months later. Lowry's New Dawn for Fallujah' is the first comprehensive history of this fighting. Also known as the Second Battle for Fallujah, Operation Phantom Fury was a protracted house-to-house and street-to-street combat that began on November 7 and continued unabated for seven bloody and exhausting weeks. It was the largest fight of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the heaviest urban combat since the Battle of Hue City, Vietnam 1968. Death and redemption were found everywhere, from narrow streets to courtyards, kitchens, bedrooms, and rooftops. By the time the fighting ended, more than 1,400 insurgents were dead, compared to ninety-five Americans (and 1,000 wounded).”