Book Description

This award–winning “powerful narrative history” presents a vividly detailed chronicle of grueling combat operations in Fallujah during the Iraq War (Midwest Book Review). Few places are as closely associated with blood, sacrifice, and valor as the ancient city Fallujah, forty miles west of Baghdad. This sprawling concrete jungle was the scene of two major U.S. combat operations in 2004. The first, Operation Vigilant Resolve, was an aborted effort by U.S. Marines to punish the city’s insurgents. The second, Operation Phantom Fury, was launched seven months later. Also known as the Second Battle for Fallujah, Operation Phantom Fury was a protracted house-to-house and street-to-street conflict that began on November 7th and continued unabated for seven bloody weeks. It was the largest fight of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the heaviest urban combat since the Battle of Hue City, Vietnam in 1968. By the time the fighting ended, more than 1,400 insurgents were dead, along with ninety-five Americans (and another 1,000 wounded). In New Dawn, military historian Richard Lowry draws on archival research, as well as the personal recollections of nearly 200 soldiers and Marines who participated in the battles for Fallujah, from the commanding generals who planned the operations to the privates who kicked in the doors. The result is a gripping narrative of individual sacrifice and valor that also documents the battles for future military historians. Winner of the Military Writers Society of America Gold Medal for History