Category: Biographies & Memoirs > Military & War

The Eve of the Real Desert Storm…23 February 1991…Thirty-five years ago tonight!

The day before the ground invasion, our Operations Officer (callsign Dealer) asked me to mark the route to the first obstacle belt in Kuwait with chem lights that were only visible to our forces. Mission accomplished and we got our final briefing from the intel weanies who knew nothing. I gave my Marines the real gouge on the warrior prowess of Arab forces…they have none, simply put!

The real start of Desert Storm was the ground invasion of Kuwait by us grunts on 24 February 1991. Here’s what my Heavy Machine Gun Platoon (1st Battalion, 5th Marines, Task Force Ripper, 1st Marine Division) did that day…from my book, OUT OF AFRICA AND INTO THE CORPS:

On February 23rd, 1991, Dealer called out to me and asked that I mark a route for our battalion to the first obstacle belt. I grabbed Sergeant Jenkins’ section. One of his superb Squad Leaders was Corporal Tod Shores. We found a suitable route to the point in the obstacle belt that was 1/5’s designated penetration point. On the way back to our battalion’s position, we emplaced infrared chem-lights, making them only visible to our eyes, traveling from south to north and not to any enemy eyes looking to the south from the north. We accomplished the mission and made it back to our platoon area about 1700. In just seven hours, our battalion was to begin movement to our attack positions at 0001 on 24 February 1991.

In the final briefing by our intelligence analysts, they predicted that we would face fierce opposition from the Iraqi troops in Kuwait and predicted thirty percent casualties in the fight through the obstacle belts.

When they departed, I told my Marines of Heavy Machine Gun Platoon that I felt the intel guys were full of shit. “My dad used to joke about the shortest book in the world being of Arab war heroes,” I said. “I grew up for a good chunk of my life around Arabs. My experience is that when faced with danger, they are cowards unless they are hyped up on drugs, like methamphetamines. My personal assessment is that when faced with United States Marines, they will quickly surrender and throw up white flags. How we perform in battle will reverberate through eternity. We will prevail and be heading home soon to tell our war stories back home. Our road home is through Kuwait. The faster we get this done, the faster we go home to our families and the land of ‘milk and honey.’ Our reputation precedes us into battle, warriors. Let us not disappoint our legendary Marine heroes on whose shoulders we stand today. When God is for us, no one can stand against us, and I am certain that God is with us. We will fight, fight, fight, crush our enemies, and see them driven before us.’” I then directed our Marines to “suit up at MOPP Level 2.” From our training in Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) warfare, we know that MOPP stands for Mission Oriented Protective Posture and the various levels are to protect military members. MOPP Level 2 is actually putting on and wearing the chemical suit that is worn over our uniforms along with the overboots. We were each issued a single suit that we put on, carrying our gas masks and gloves on our person. This combo was worn for the next four days. It was hot and sweaty…very uncomfortable but had to be worn.

The Battle of Fallujah – Part II: Operation Phantom Fury

“November 8, 2004. RCT-1 and RCT-7 rolled into the attack at 1900 under the cover of darkness.
The Army’s heavy armor punched through the insurgent lines like a sledgehammer.
Marines and Iraqi soldiers followed, clearing house by house in the most intense urban combat since Hue City.
By the Marine Corps’ 229th Birthday, both regiments had seized MSR Michigan and controlled the center of Fallujah.
The enemy who swore they would never leave alive…were either dead, captured, or fleeing west along the Euphrates.
This is the story of how we took the fight to the terrorists in their own sanctuary — and won.”

“Remember Fallujah!” – The Battle Cry That Was Stolen from the Enemy and Given Back to America

In November 2004, the city of Fallujah was the bright ember burning at the heart of the Iraqi insurgency.

Foreign fighters, Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda terrorists, and local thugs had turned the “City of Mosques” into a fortified hellhole of IED factories, torture chambers, and execution sites.

They bragged they would make it America’s Stalingrad.

They were wrong.

Operation Phantom Fury (Al Fajr – “New Dawn”) became the single most decisive urban battle of the Iraq War.

In 10 days of savage house-to-house fighting, coalition forces crushed the insurgency’s stronghold, killed or captured thousands of fighters, and opened the door for Iraq’s first free elections.

And one Marine officer was in the middle of it all — planning it, briefing Congress and the media, then stepping into the fight with the Army’s Black Jack Brigade before taking over as I MEF Forward’s Current Operations Officer.

That officer was then-Major (soon-to-be LtCol) Dan Hunter Wilson.

Twenty years later, on the anniversary of the battle, Colonel Wilson (Ret.) has expanded his original 2005 Marine Corps Gazette article into a powerful, firsthand book:

The Battle of Fallujah – Part II: Operation Phantom Fury

This is not another dry history book.

This is the raw, unfiltered account from the man who:

• Helped draft the final operations order signed by LtGen John Sattler

• Served as senior Marine liaison to the Army’s Black Jack Brigade during the assault

• Became the MEF’s Current Operations Officer and VIP briefer (briefing Senators McCain, Kerry, Biden, Clinton, and more)

• Watched Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Iraqi partners fight with the same indomitable spirit that has defined the Corps for 229 years

You’ll read the real story behind:

• The brilliant shaping operations and feints that fooled the enemy

• The night assault from the north that shattered insurgent defenses in hours

• The “three-building war” — fighting, clearing caches, and delivering humanitarian aid on the same block

• The wounded Marine NCO who raised his trigger finger and said, “Sir, send me back to my team. My trigger-finger is still good!”

• How the battle directly led to 40% fewer attacks, the first free elections in Anbar, and the Sunni Awakening that broke the back of the insurgency

And the sobering post-script:

How the hard-won victory was later squandered by a precipitous U.S. withdrawal, allowing ISIS to rise — and why Fallujah had to be fought for all over again.

This book is Colonel Wilson’s gift to every Marine, Soldier, Sailor, Airman, and Iraqi who fought in Phantom Fury.

It is dedicated to those who sacrificed “some” and those who sacrificed all.

If you want to understand what really happened in Fallujah — told by a warrior who was there from planning to victory — this is the book.

Available now on Amazon:

→ Paperback

→ Kindle eBook

→ Audible Audiobook – narrated by the author

Semper Fi. Remember Fallujah.

— Colonel Dan Hunter Wilson, USMC (Ret.)

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

The Swamp Fox Unleashed

The night the Swamp Fox taught the British a lesson they never forgot…
Francis Marion’s men had almost no ammunition.
So he did what any good Marine would do: he improvised.
At Fort Watson, he ordered his riflemen to build a tower taller than the British stockade walls — using nothing but axes, logs, and sheer willpower.
At dawn the marksmen climbed up and opened fire straight down into the fort. The British couldn’t return fire without exposing themselves.
Within hours the white flag went up.
That was 1781.
Two centuries later, the U.S. Marine Corps wrote the same principle into MCDP 1 Warfighting: attack the enemy’s critical vulnerability with everything you have, even if you have to build the weapon on the spot.
Colonel Dan Wilson — combat Marine, former battalion commander, and author of this book — calls Francis Marion “the first American maneuverist.”
He wasn’t wrong.
The Swamp Fox didn’t just win battles.
He wrote the doctrine… before the doctrine existed.
Available now on Amazon → https://www.amazon.com/Swamp-Fox-Unleashed-General-Marion/dp/B0D3K9L2M4
Semper Fi.

The Swamp Fox Unleashed – The Revolutionary War guerrilla who secretly invented modern Marine Corps warfare… 200 years before the Corps wrote the book.

What if the most brilliant warfighting mind in American history never wore a Marine uniform… but fought exactly like one?

That’s the jaw-dropping revelation in Colonel Daniel Hunter Wilson’s explosive new book, The Swamp Fox Unleashed: General Francis Marion and Marine Corps Warfighting Doctrine.

In 2000–2001, then-Major Wilson submitted a research paper at Marine Corps Command and Staff College that stunned his professors. He proved — with primary sources and cold, hard analysis — that Brigadier General Francis Marion (the legendary “Swamp Fox”) was practicing maneuver warfare in the swamps of South Carolina in 1780… decades before the U.S. military even had a name for it.

This is not just another Revolutionary War biography.

This is the first book ever to take Francis Marion’s rag-tag militia tactics and hold them up against MCDP 1 Warfighting — the Marine Corps’ sacred capstone doctrine — and show they are identical.

You will discover:

  • How Marion used recon-pull, speed, surprise, and deception to run circles around the British — the exact same concepts taught at Quantico today.
  • How he integrated the six warfighting functions (Command & Control, Maneuver, Fires, Intelligence, Logistics, Force Protection) with zero staff, zero budget, and almost no ammunition.
  • How he turned a handful of farmers and hunters into a force that exhausted Lord Cornwallis and helped win the South.
  • How his leadership style — lead from the front, share every hardship, reward valor publicly, protect your men like sons — is the blueprint every Marine leader still studies.

And the best part? The author isn’t some armchair historian. Colonel Dan Wilson is a retired Marine infantry officer who commanded in combat from Desert Storm to Fallujah, earned the Bronze Star, and rose to become the senior Colonel in the entire Marine Corps. When he says Marion “would fit right in with today’s Marine Corps,” he speaks from four decades of leading Marines in the same doctrine.

This book is short, sharp, and impossible to put down. It reads like a thriller but teaches like a textbook. Whether you’re a history buff, a serving or former Marine, a leadership junkie, or just love stories of underdogs who outsmart empires, The Swamp Fox Unleashed will change how you think about warfare, leadership, and American grit.

Available right now on Amazon → https://www.amazon.com/Swamp-Fox-Unleashed-General-Marion/dp/B0D3K9L2M4

The Swamp Fox didn’t just fight the British. He fought the way Marines still fight today.

And Colonel Wilson just proved it.

Semper Fi — and read this book.

The Swamp Fox Unleashed