by Chris Kyle
I NEVER WORE EAR PROTECTION IN IRAQ. THE EAR PROTECTION we had contained noise-canceling circuitry. While it was possible to hear gunshots fired by the enemy, the microphone that picked up those sounds was omnidirectional. That meant you couldn’t tell what direction the shots were coming from.
And contrary to what my wife thinks, I wore my helmet from time to time. Admittedly, it was not often. It was a standard, U.S. military–issue helmet, uncomfortable and of minimal value against all but the weakest shots or shrapnel. To keep it from jostling on my head, I tightened it up using Pro-Tec pads, but it was still annoying to wear for long stretches. It added a lot of weight to my head while I was on the gun, making it harder to stay focused as the watch went on.
I’d seen that bullets, even from pistols, could easily go through a helmet, so I didn’t have much incentive to deal with the discomfort. The general exception to this was at night. I’d wear the helmet so I had a place to attach my night vision to.
Otherwise, I usually wore a ball cap: a platoon cap with a Cadillac symbol adapted as our unit logo. (While officially we were Charlie Platoon, we usually took on alternate names with the same letter or sound at the beginning: Charlie becomes Cadillac, etc.)
Why a ball cap?
Ninety percent of being cool is looking cool. And you look so much cooler wearing a ball cap.
Besides my Cadillac cap, I had another favorite—a cap from a New York fire company that had lost some of its men during 9/11. My dad had gotten it for me during a visit, after the attacks, to the “Lions Den,” a historic city firehouse. There he met members of Engine 23; when the firemen heard that his son was going to war, they insisted he take the hat.
“Just tell him to get some payback,” they said.
If they’re reading this, I hope they know that I did.
ON MY WRIST, I’D WEAR A G-SHOCK WATCH. THE BLACK WATCH and its rubber wristband have replaced Rolex Submariners as standard SEAL equipment. (A friend of mine, who thought it was a shame the tradition died, recently got me one. I still feel a little strange wearing a Rolex, but it is a throwback to the frogmen who came before me.)
In cool weather, I brought a personal jacket to wear—a North Face—because, believe it or not, I had trouble convincing the supply mafia to issue me cold-weather gear. But that’s a rant for a different day.
I WOULD STICK MY M-4 AND TEN MAGS (THREE HUNDRED ROUNDS) in the front compartments of my web gear. I would also have my radio, some lights, and my strobe in those pockets. (The strobe can be used at night for rendezvousing with other units or aircraft, ships, boats, whatever. It also can be used to identify friendly troops.)
If I had one of my sniper rifles with me, I would have some two hundred rounds in my backpack. When I carried the Mk-11 instead of the Win Mag or .338, then I wouldn’t bother carrying the M-4. In that case, the sniper rounds would be in my web gear, closer at hand. Rounding out my ammo were three mags for my pistol.
I wore Merrill high-top hiking boots. They were comfortable and held up to the deployment.
GET UP, KYLE
ABOUT A MONTH INTO MY TOUR WITH THE GROM, I WAS woken by a shake on my shoulder.
I jumped upright in bed, ready to deck whoever had snuck into my quarters.
“Hey, hey, it’s cool,” said the lieutenant commander who’d woken me. He was a SEAL, and my boss. “I need you to get dressed and come to my office.”
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled. I pulled on a pair of shorts and my flip-flops and went down the hall.
I thought I was in trouble, though I wasn’t sure what for. I’d been on good behavior working with the Poles, no fights to speak of. I searched my mind as I walked toward his office, trying to prepare a defense. My mind was still fairly blank when I got there.
“Kyle, I’m going to need you to get your sniper rifle and pack up all your gear,” the lieutenant commander told me. “You’re going to Fallujah.”
He started telling me about some of the arrangements and threw in some operational details. The Marines were planning a big push, and they needed snipers to help out.
Man, this is going to be good, I thought. We are going to kill massive amounts of bad guys. And I’m going to be in the middle of it.
AN ARMED CAMP
FROM A HISTORICAL POINT OF VIEW, THERE WERE TWO BATTLES for Fallujah. The first took place in the spring, as I’ve mentioned before. Political considerations, mostly driven by wildly distorted media reports and a lot of Arab propaganda, caused the Marines to back off their offensive soon after it was begun, and well before it achieved its aim of kicking the insurgents out of the city. In place of the Marines, Iraqis loyal to the interim government were supposed to take control and run the city.
That didn’t work. Pretty much the moment the Marines pulled back, the insurgents completely took over Fallujah. Civilians who were not connected with the insurgency were killed, or fled the city. Anyone who wanted peace—anyone with any sense—left as soon as they could, or ended up dead.
Al-Anabar Province, the area that contained the city, was studded with insurgents of various forms. A lot were Iraqi mujahedeen, but there were also plenty of foreign nationals who were members of “al-Qaeda in Iraq” or other radical groups. The head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi—had his headquarters in the city. A Jordanian who had fought with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, he was committed to killing Americans. (Despite numerous reports to the contrary, as far as is known, Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi escaped from Fallujah and is still at large.)
The insurgents were one-part terrorists, another-part criminal gangs. They would plant IEDs, kidnap officials and their families, attack American convoys, kill Iraqis who didn’t share their faith or politics—anything and everything they could think of. Fallujah had become their safe haven, an anti-capital of Iraq dedicated to overthrowing the interim government and preventing free elections.
Al-Anabar Province and, more specifically, the general area around Fallujah became known through the media as the Sunni Triangle. That’s a very, very rough approximation both of the area—contained between Baghdad, Ramadi, and Baqubah—and the ethnic composition.
(Some background on Islam in Iraq: There were two main groups of Muslims in Iraq, Sunnis and Shiites. Before the war, Shiites lived mostly in the south and east, say from Baghdad to the borders, and Sunnis dominated around Baghdad and to the northwest. The two groups coexisted but generally hated each other. While Shiites were the majority, during Saddam’s time they were discriminated against and not allowed to hold important offices. Farther north, the areas are dominated by Kurds, who, though mostly Sunni, have separate traditions and often don’t think of themselves as being part of Iraq. Saddam considered them to be an inferior people; during one political suppression, he ordered chemical weapons used and waged a despicable ethnic-cleansing campaign.)
WHILE USING FALLUJAH AS A BASE TO ATTACK THE SURROUNDING area and Baghdad, the insurgents spent considerable time fortifying the city so they could withstand another attack. They stockpiled ammo and weapons, prepared IEDs, and fortified houses. Mines were planted, and roads closed off so they could be used for ambushes. “Rat holes” were created in compound walls, allowing insurgents to move from one house to another, avoiding streets. Many if not all of the two hundred mosques in the city became fortified bunkers, since the insurgents knew that Americans respected houses of worship as sacred and therefore were reluctant to attack there. A hospital was turned into an insurgent headquarters and used as a base of operations for the insurgents’ propaganda machine. In sum, the city was a terrorist fortress by the summer of 2004.
In fact, the insurgents were confident enough to regularly launch rocket attacks against U.S. bases in the area and ambush convoys moving on the main roads. Finally, the American command decided that enough was enough—Fallujah had to be retaken.
The plan they drew up was called Phantom Fury. The city would be cut off so that enemy supplies and reinforcements could no longer get in. The insurgents in Fall
ujah would be rooted out and destroyed.
While Marines from the First Marine Division made up the backbone of the attack force, all of the other services added key pieces. SEAL snipers were integrated with small Marine assault groups, providing overwatch and performing traditional sniper missions.
The Marines spent several weeks getting ready for the assault, launching a variety of operations to throw the insurgents off-balance. The bad guys knew something was coming; they just didn’t know where and when. The eastern side of the city was heavily fortified, and the enemy probably thought that’s where the attack would be launched.
Instead, the attack would come from the northwest and roll down into the heart of the city. That’s where I was headed.
GETTING THERE
DISMISSED BY THE LIEUTENANT COMMANDER, I IMMEDIATELY gathered my gear, then headed outside to a pickup truck that was waiting to take me out to the helo. A 60—a Blackhawk H-60—was waiting for me and another guy who’d been working with the GROM, a coms specialist named Adam. We looked at each other and smiled. We were thrilled to be getting into a real battle.
SEALs from all over Iraq were making a similar trip, heading toward the large Marine base south of the city at Camp Fallujah. They’d already established their own small base inside the camp by the time I arrived. I treaded my way through the narrow halls of the building, which had been dubbed the Alamo, trying not to knock into anything. The walls were lined with equipment and gear, gun boxes and metal suitcases, cartons and the odd box of soda. We could have been a traveling rock band, staging a stadium road show.
Except that our road show had very serious pyrotechnics.
Besides snipers from Team 3, men had been pulled from Team 5 and Team 8 to join the assault. I already knew most of the West Coast guys; the others I’d come to respect over the next few weeks.
The energy level was intense. Everyone was eager to get into the fight and help the Marines.
THE HOME FRONT
AS THE BATTLE DREW NEAR, MY THOUGHTS WANDERED TO MY wife and son. My little baby boy was growing. Taya had started sending me photos and even videos showing his progress. She’d also sent images through e-mail for me to look at.
I can see some of those videos now in my mind—he’d be lying on his back, and shake his hands and feet, going as if he was running, a big ol’ smile on his face.
He was a super-active kid. Just like his daddy.
Thanksgiving, Christmas—in Iraq, those dates didn’t mean all that much to me. But missing my son’s experience of them was a little different. The more I was gone, and the more I saw him grow, the more I wanted to help him grow—do the things a father does with and for a son.
I called Taya while I was waiting for the assault to begin.
It was a brief conversation.
“Look, babe, I can’t tell you where I’m going, but I’m going to be gone for a while,” I said. “Watch the news and you’ll figure it out. I don’t know when I’m going to be able to talk to you again.”
That was going to have to do for a while.
IT BEGINS
ON THE EVENING OF NOVEMBER 7, I SQUEEZED INTO A MARINE amtrac with a dozen Marines and a few SEALs, all keyed up for battle. The big armored vehicle rumbled to life, and slowly moved toward the head of a massive procession of armor heading out of camp and north of the city, into the open desert.
We sat knee to knee on benches facing each other in the bare-bones interior. A third row had been squeezed into the middle of the compartment. The AAV-7A1 wasn’t exactly a stretch limo; you might try not to crowd out the guys on either side of you, but there was only so much you could do. Tight wasn’t the word. Thankfully, just about everyone inside with me had showered recently.
At first, it was cold—this was November, and to a Texas boy it felt like deep winter—but within a few minutes the heater was choking us and we had to ask them to crank it down. I put my ruck down on the floor. With my Mk-11 propped between my legs and my helmet on the butt, I had a makeshift pillow. I tried to nap as we moved. Close your eyes, and time moves faster.
I didn’t get all that much sleep. Every so often I glanced toward the slit windows in the rear door, but I couldn’t see past the guys sitting there. That wasn’t much of a loss—all they could see was the rest of the procession, a haze of dust, and a few patches of empty desert. We’d been practicing with the Marines for about a week, going over everything from getting in and out of their vehicles to figuring out exactly what sort of charges we would use to blow sniper holes through buildings. In between we’d worked on radio coms and general strategy, exchanged ideas about how to provide the best cover for the squads we’d be accompanying, and made a dozen tentative tactical decisions, such as deciding whether it would be generally better to shoot from the top floor or the one right below.
Now we were ready, but as often happens in the military, we were in hurry-up-and-wait mode. The tracked vehicles drove us up north of Fallujah, then stopped.
We sat there for what seemed like hours. Every muscle in my body cramped. Finally someone decided we could drop the ramp and stretch a bit. I unfolded myself from the bench and went out to shoot the shit with some of the other SEALs nearby.
Finally, just before daybreak, we loaded back up and began trundling toward the edge of the city. There was maximum adrenaline inside that tin can on treads. We were ready to get it on.
Our destination was an apartment complex overlooking the northwestern corner of the city. Roughly eight hundred yards from the start of the city proper, the buildings had a perfect view of the area where our Marines were going to launch their assault—an excellent location for snipers. All we had to do was take it.
“Five minutes!” yelled one of the NCOs.
I hooked one arm through my ruck and got a good grip on my gun.
The amtrac jerked to a halt. The rear ramp slammed down and I leapt out with the others, running toward a small grove with some trees and rocks for cover. I moved quickly—I wasn’t afraid of getting shot as much as I was of being run over by one of the armada that had ferried us here. The mammoth amtracs didn’t look like they’d stop for anybody.
I hit the dirt, got the ruck next to me, and began scanning the building, watching for anything suspicious. I worked my eyes around the windows and the surrounding area, expecting all the while to be shot at. The Marines, meanwhile, poured out their vehicles. Besides the tracked personnel carriers there were Hummers and tanks and dozens of support vehicles. The Marines just kept coming, swarming over the complex.
They started kicking in doors. I couldn’t hear much, just the loud echoes of the shotguns they used to blow out the locks. The Marines detained a few women who had been outside, but otherwise the yard around the building was vacant.
My eyes never stopped moving. I scanned constantly, trying to find something.
Our radio guy came over and set up nearby. He was monitoring the Marine progress as they worked up through the apartment building, securing it. The few inhabitants they found inside had to be taken out and moved to safety. There was no resistance inside—if there were insurgents, they’d either gotten out when they saw us coming, or they pretended now that they were loyal Iraqis and friends of the U.S.
THE MARINES ENDED UP MOVING ABOUT 250 CIVILIANS FROM the complex, a fraction of what they had been told to expect. Each one was questioned first. Assuming they hadn’t fired a weapon recently (the Marines did gunpowder checks), weren’t on a wanted list, or were not otherwise suspicious, the head of each family was given $300 and told they had to leave. According to one of the Marine officers, they were allowed to go back to their apartments, take what they needed, and leave.
(A few known insurgents were captured and detained in the operation.)
WHILE WE WERE ON THE BERM WATCHING THE CITY, WE WERE also watching warily for an Iraqi sniper known as Mustafa. From the reports we heard, Mustafa was an Olympics marksman who was using his skills against Americans and Iraqi police and soldiers. Several videos
had been made and posted, boasting of his ability.
I never saw him, but other snipers later killed an Iraqi sniper we think was him.
TO THE APARTMENTS
“ALL RIGHT,” SAID OUR RADIO GUY FINALLY. “THEY WANT US INSIDE.”
I ran from the trees to the apartment complex, where a SEAL lieutenant was organizing the overwatches. He had a map of the city and showed us where the assault was going to take place the next day.
“We need to cover this area here, here, and here,” he said. “Y’all go find a room to do it.”
He gave us a building and off we went. I’d been paired with a sniper I’d met during BUD/S, Ray. (I’ve used the name to protect his identity.)
Ray is a big-time gun nut. Loves guns, and knows ’em real well. I’m not sure how good a shot he is, but he’s probably forgotten more than I know about rifles.
We hadn’t seen each other for years, but from what I remembered from BUD/S I figured we’d get along all right. You want to feel confident the guy you’re working with is someone you can rely on—after all, you are literally trusting him with your life.
A Ranger we called Ranger Molloy had been shepherding our rifles and some gear with us in a Hummer. He came up and gave me my .300 Win Mag. The rifle’s extra distance over the Mk-11 would be handy once I found a good hide to shoot from.
Running up the stairs, I sorted the situation out in my head. I knew what side of the building I wanted to be on, and roughly where I wanted to be. When I reached the top—I’d decided I wanted to shoot from a room rather than the roof—I started walking through the hall, scanning for an apartment that had the right view. Going inside, I looked for one with furniture I could use to set up.
To me, the home I was in was just another part of the battlefield. The apartments and everything in them were just things to be used to accomplish our goal—clearing the city.