Combat
Anti-ISIS Campaign (Op INHERENT RESOLVE)
The campaign against the Islamic State was the multinational effort to destroy the group that had seized vast territory across Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate.
For the Marine Corps it was a markedly different war from the large ground deployments of the previous decade, built on enabling local partner forces, the Iraqi security forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces, to do the ground fighting while the United States and its coalition provided firepower, advisors, intelligence, and logistics. The most prominent Marine contribution was expeditionary artillery: rotating batteries from Marine Expeditionary Units fired in support of the assaults on the group's strongholds, from Fire Base Bell near Mosul in 2016 to the intense bombardment of Raqqa in 2017 and the final fight at Baghouz. The campaign's sole Marine combat death, Staff Sergeant Louis Cardin, fell at Fire Base Bell. The advise-and-assist approach destroyed the territorial caliphate while keeping Marines off the front lines.
Engagements in this conflict (5)
Record no. 881