Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted with permission from The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood, now available from Thomas Nelson. Copyright © 2011.
Donovan Campbell has always pursued excellence. After he graduated with honors from Princeton University, he finished first in his class in the Marines’ basic officer course and later went on to graduate from Harvard Business School. Campbell served two combat deployments in Iraq and another in Afghanistan. He spent a little more than six months in Ramadi, Iraq, at the height of the violence, from March to September 2004. For his outstanding service in that war-torn city he was awarded the Combat Action Ribbon and a Bronze Star with Valor. His book, Joker One, is an account of his tour in Ramadi. Here, from an interview on my radio show, Campbell describes what he learned about leadership, sacrifice, heroism, and courage in his tenure there, embodying to the fullest what the U.S. Marine Corps stands for.
“No person was ever honored for what he received,” wrote Calvin Coolidge. “Honor has been the reward for what he gave.”
For Donovan Campbell, a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps who served in Ramadi during some of the most vicious fighting of Operation Iraqi Freedom, giving wasn’t on his mind when he first enrolled in the Marine Officer Candidates School after his junior year at Princeton University. In fact, he was mostly focused on taking.
“I need to do something to get serious about my job and career after Princeton,” Campbell recalls thinking, “but I wasn’t ready to do a desk job. My mind-set at the time was, ‘what will differentiate me from the other middle-of-the-rank students?’”
To Campbell, the Marines seemed like an ideal situation. He would use the honor and character building of military service as a springboard to worldly success.
“So I decided to enroll in Marine Officer Candidates School — that will show toughness — that will show that I’m dedicated, I have perseverance, and [it] will really stand out on a résumé. But I didn’t get it at the time — it was mainly about me.”
What Campbell did get was a rude awakening.
“Unsurprisingly, after ten weeks of being screamed at, bored, having my head shaved, and being terrified sometimes, I decided there was no way I would be a Marine. And I went back to senior year thinking, ‘Fortunately I’ve crossed that one off the list — what else is there?’
“But as the year went on, the more I thought seriously about who I wanted to become. I’m a Christian and I had started taking my faith more seriously — I knew my faith called me to do more than serve myself. It called me to put my words into action by serving others. I wanted something that would grow me up and allow me to give back.”
So Campbell made the decision to join the Marines.
“If I join the Corps I can serve, I can give back. When I say I’m a Christian, people will know it means something to me because I’m sacrificing at least four years of my life. I knew I was young, I knew I wanted to learn to lead and I didn’t see any way to do it [other] than to lead. I didn’t want to spend 14 hours per day in a cubicle behind a computer. I also knew I could have a little a bit of an adventure. So I accepted the commission I had earned the previous summer and became an officer in the Marine Corps the day I graduated.”
Flash forward to the city of Ramadi, Iraq, 2004. One morning every minaret from every mosque in the city started yelling “Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!” Pause. “Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!” That day, violence exploded all across Ramadi. Campbell’s unit ended up with 16 Marines killed in action and dozens wounded. In the course of the day’s events, three squads were separated from each other and were taking heavy casualties during house-to-house fighting. Shortly after the fighting started, Campbell, who had just fallen asleep after a 36-hour extended night patrol with his platoon, was awakened by a young Marine informing him of the situation: “You need to go rescue them!” So Campbell, sleeping with his boots still on, rolled out of bed, marshaled his men, and headed straight for the gunfire. For Campbell, it was one of his greatest tests of leadership in the midst of battle.
“When you’re in that situation as a young leader, all you can think is, Where are my guys? Where are the bad guys? It’s so chaotic and confusing. All you can do is try to figure out where the fighting is coming from and where all your people are.
“I don’t think you’re ever in control of the situation, you just do your best to manage the chaos to [the] best of your ability, keep your men safe, and achieve your mission. But keeping your men safe isn’t the only objective, although you hope and pray you can do that. Otherwise why would you leave the States?”
For Campbell, the difficulty of keeping his men safe was exacerbated by the nature of urban warfare. One of the most important aspects of the mission was to limit civilian casualties, an extremely difficult task given the high population density of the city. This meant limiting the weaponry that could be used against the enemy — a decision that placed his troops in danger but was a necessary component of the mission.
“We had to do the best we could to protect civilians, in addition to finding those who wanted to kill us on a daily basis, so we voluntarily limited some of the tools we could use. We never fired artillery in the city, rarely used tanks; we didn’t bring to bear the heaviest weapons we could in order that we wouldn’t kill people indiscriminately. So we generally fought house to house with only what we can carry on our backs.”
Complicating the issue was the ever-present uncertainty of who were friends and who were enemies. Often it took restraint to hold fire.
“It doesn’t matter whether you think people love you or are against you. What matters is what you have to do. You cannot shoot indiscriminately. We made the choice as young leaders to risk our own lives and our men’s lives more often than not, and it was very hard to err on the side of not shooting. Often the decision to not shoot is far harder than to shoot.”
But not every lesson in leadership happened amid hellacious fighting. Captain Campbell learned quickly that the smallest things make the biggest difference.
“Originally, my thinking as a leader was, I need to make big decisions well, show heroism in combat, give the occasional great speech. But I didn’t realize that my men watched everything. It didn’t matter what I did with larger decisions if I wasn’t consistent in smaller ones.”
Before shipping out to Ramadi, Campbell and his men were stationed in Kuwait on a base that had very rudimentary facilities. Marines couldn’t call home very often. There were two phones, but their use was restricted — one for Marines, one for emergencies. Eventually, officers began taking liberties with the emergency phone.
“Officers were calling home every two or three days, but my guys could only call every two to three weeks. One day one of my Marines, one of the best Marines I’ve ever met, pulled me aside . . . and said, ‘We notice that you use the cell phone a lot and we don’t use it as often.’ I felt about six inches tall at that point.”
The U.S. Marines are known the world over for their lethal capabilities in warfare. But some of Campbell’s proudest moments revolve around witnessing his men’s acts of mercy, at their mortal expense.
One day while they were on patrol, a rocket from a group of insurgents had missed its target — Campbell’s platoon — and hit directly in the middle of a group of children. The carnage of so many children slaughtered was ghastly, “A macabre tableau from hell,” as Campbell described it. In spite of the attendant danger, the first reaction of the platoon was to rush to the children’s aid. The unit’s doctors started working feverishly to help the wounded, not even bothering to put on latex gloves. The instinct of the Marines to help the wounded, even at great harm to themselves, was in full view that day.
“My guys were phenomenal — I love them so much. There’s a moment of decision when something like that happens. We could have shut all the doors and driven away, knowing that it would have gotten us out of the line of fire and preserved us all, or [we could] jump out of the Humvee, run toward the fire, and help those who need help. And we just jumped out of Humvees and starting tending the wounded. I took part of the platoon and pursued part of those who attacked us but we couldn’t get them.
“When I came back I faced another decision: Do we stay and wait for Iraqis to come with [an] ambulance for the children, or do we leave? If we stayed we would be there for a while and we would get attacked again. Ten minutes in the same place you will get attacked. But I made the decision to stay there and help them.”
Then, Campbell, in a decision questioned by many military officers, directed his men to stay despite the risk.
(At this point, Campbell couldn’t hold back the tears.)
“That’s what the U.S. Marines do.
“We’re not in this just to protect ourselves. I lost a man as a result of that, but I think it was the right call.”
Human beings have always shown an ability to form unbreakable bonds in the midst of the most desperate circumstances. Suffering produces camaraderie. One of the most distinguishing features of Campbell’s time in Iraq was the concern that his men showed for him and for one another — “I was one man trying to take care of forty, but I had forty trying to take care of me.”
After leading a unit through so much chaos and bloodshed in only a few months, Campbell, who by his own estimation was clinically depressed through much of his tour in Ramadi, experienced a crisis of faith.
“You keep asking yourself why and don’t get any good answers. Eventually I questioned if there is a God and why he allows such evil to exist. My faith took a beating, but I had an immature faith. I was too often in it to see what God could give to me, not what I could give to God.”
In the end, the few and the proud proved themselves to be just that. After months of killing and misery, those bonds that had been forged between Marines in the most terrible of circumstances proved more meaningful, more real, than the horrors that Campbell experienced.
“Part of what brought me back was seeing my men’s love for each other, how such a beautiful thing could exist even in such a horrifying context. There is good and beauty even in the worst places. I am more humble now, and I don’t think I will ever understand a magnificent and transcendent God.”
Semper Fi.
Always Faithful.
— William J. Bennett is author of The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood.