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

Battle of the City of the Dead by Dick Camp chronicles a three-week battle in the Iraqi War. Mr. Camp manages to accomplish the telling of a compelling, in-depth account of the battle of Najaf in the summer of 2004. It was a seminal moment in the history of the of the Iraqi War when the U.S. civilian commander, L. Paul Bremer, had handed control of the Iraqi government on June 28th of 2004 to Ayad Allawi, who was heading up an interim government, succeeding Sadaam Hussein.

The battle would be a test of the new government. Najaf is home to the largest Muslim cemetery in the world and the home of the sacred shrine, the Imam Ali Mosque. It was those two factors that made the battle of Najaf difficult because of the lay of the land, with its crypts and crumbling gravesites. The four-color photographs in the book vividly display this difficulty. It is out of respect for the dead and out of respect for the religious beliefs of the Iraqis that made the battle complex. The self-imposed rules of engagement tied the hands of the U.S. forces.

What led to this insurgency? What led to this battle? The backstory is the internal battles that pitted sectarian violence between the The Shiites and Sunnis, who had been at war for decades in Iraq. This was compounded by the fact that the Iraqi Army had been disbanded by the United States, led by the civilian commander in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer. The net effect was the placing these disgruntled young men on the street of Iraq without jobs or the prospect of getting one.

This eventually 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 of the United States. Al-Sadr had been an opponent of Sadaam Hussein and his Sunni filled government. Al-Sadr, a Shiite, had been in this protracted battle with Hussein and the Sunnis. While Sadaam was out of power, these conflicts still existed. 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.

This book is about that battle. The U.S. forces fought in 120-degree heat and the fight related by Dick Camp was brutal. It makes for a riveting account of Americans in battle, complete with never-before-seen four-color photographs.

The graphic descriptions about this battle that started on July 31 and ended with a cease-fire on August 27 are rich in detail and come from the personal accounts of the U.S. soldiers that were there. Dick Camp conducted dozens of personal interviews and exhaustively researched every significant moment in this battle in the Muslim cemetery. There is the first-person account from First Lieutenant Michael J. Borneo, the Marine patrol leader, who describes in vivid detail the first battle in the cemetery. There are personal accounts from privates to NCO’s to commissioned officers that tell their story of this battle to the author. Pfc Heladio Zungia was happy that “happy we got to do something.” Lance Corporal Sanick P. DelaCruz, who recalled being “excited and nervous at the same time.” Then there was the account of Hospital Corpsman Benjamin Jensen who gave a lengthy and detailed account of tending to the first casualty of this battle.

We read about the story of First Sergeant Justin LeHew, who is recommended for a Bronze Star for his heroics on the battlefield in evacuating wounded from the battlefield under heavy enemy fire.

There was a description of the chaplain, Father Paul Shaughnessy, a Roman Catholic priest. A fearless man, who was walking in the middle of battle, unfazed by the shooting and the mortar fire and whose only concern was the welfare of his troops. “He was exactly like the chaplain you see in World War II movies,” said Lt. Seth Moulton. SSgt Ian Donnell described Father Paul Shaughnessy like this. “I remember looking over, and the chaplain was walking up and down the lines like he didn’t have a care in the world. After an explosion, he’d walk that way to make sure everyone was OK.”

These stories epitomize the first-person accounts in this book. It is this combined description of the brutal battles and the human compassion that brings great feeling to these pages of a book about war.

How did the battle end? Who won the battle?

A political cease-fire was negotiated after the nearly three-week battle. The next move for the U.S. forces would have been to attack the Imam Ali Mosque. It is not something that the soldiers were enthusiastic about and the political leaders were reluctant to approve an attack upon a holy mosque. Al-Sadr forces were surrounded and had nowhere to go. The political cease-fire was negotiated because of the ramifications of attacking the sacred mosque and the ensuing slaughter of those gathered in the mosque. There was reluctance on the part of the troops to attack the mosque for humanitarian reasons. The agreement was that the Al-Sadr forces would evacuate the mosque and that the U.S. forces would not attack the mosque. Both sides agreed to the cease-fire, but the Al-Sadr forces agreed to vacate the mosque, at the same time vowing to one day kill Americans.

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.