American Sniper

by Chris Kyle

  So we started doing it that way, saving explosives and moving much faster.

  Pounding up and down the stairs, running to the roof, coming back down, hitting the next house—we got to where we were taking from fifty to one hundred houses a day.

  The Marines were hardly winded, but I lost over twenty pounds in those six or so weeks I was in Fallujah. Most of it I sweated off on the ground. It was exhausting work.

  The Marines were all a lot younger than me—practically teenagers, some of them. I guess I still had a bit of a baby face, because when we’d get to talking, and for some reason or another I’d tell them how old I was, they’d stare at me and say, “You’re that old?”

  I was thirty. An old man in Fallujah.

  JUST ANOTHER DAY

  AS THE MARINE DRIVE NEARED THE SOUTHERN EDGE OF THE CITY, the ground action in our section started to peter out. I went back up on the roofs and started doing overwatches again, thinking I would catch more targets from there. The tide of the battle had turned. The U.S. had mostly wrested control of the city from the bad guys, and it was now just a matter of time before resistance collapsed. But being in the middle of the action, I couldn’t tell for sure.

  Knowing that we considered cemeteries sacred, the insurgents typically used them to hide caches of weapons and explosives. At one point, we were in a hide overlooking the walled-in boundaries of a large cemetery that sat in the middle of the city. Roughly three football fields long by two football fields wide, it was a cement city of the dead, filled with tombstones and mausoleums. We set up on a roof near a prayer tower and mosque overlooking the cemetery.

  The roof we were on was fairly elaborate. It was ringed with a brick wall punctuated with iron grates, giving us excellent firing positions; I sat down on my haunches and spotted in my rifle through a gap in the grid work, studying the paths between the stones a few hundred yards out. There was so much dust and grit in the air, I kept my goggles on. I’d also learned in Fallujah to keep my helmet cinched tight, wary of the chips and cement frags that flew from the battered masonry during a firefight.

  I picked out some figures moving through the cemetery yard. I zeroed in on one and fired.

  Within seconds, we were fully engaged in a firefight. Insurgents kept popping up from behind the stones—I don’t know if there was a tunnel or where they came from. Brass flew from the 60 nearby.

  I studied my shots as the Marines around me poured out fire. Everything they did faded into the background as I carefully put my scope on a target, steadied the aim on center mass, then squeezed ever so smoothly. When the bullet leapt from the barrel, it was almost a surprise.

  My target fell. I looked for another. And another. And on it went.

  Until, finally, there were no more. I got up and moved a few feet to a spot where the wall completely shielded me from the cemetery. There I took my helmet off and leaned back against the wall. The roof was littered with spent shells—hundreds if not thousands.

  Someone shared a large plastic bottle of water. One of the Marines pulled his ruck over and used it as a pillow, catching some sleep. Another went downstairs, to the store on the first story of the building. It was a smoke shop; he returned with cartons of flavored cigarettes. He lit a few, and a cherry scent mingled with the heavy stench that always hung over Iraq, a smell of sewage and sweat and death.

  Just another day in Fallujah.

  THE STREETS WERE COVERED WITH SPLINTERS AND VARIOUS debris. The city, never exactly a showcase, was a wreck. Squashed water bottles sat in the middle of the road next to piles of wood and twisted metal. We worked on one block of three-story buildings where the bottom level was filled with shops. Each of their awnings were covered with a thick layer of dust and grit, turning the bright colors of the fabric into a hazy blur. Metal shields blocked most of the storefronts; they were pockmarked with shrapnel chips. A few had handbills showing insurgents wanted by the legitimate government.

  I have a few photos from that time. Even in the most ordinary and least dramatic scenes, the effects of war are obvious. Every so often, there’s a sign of normal life before the war, something that has nothing to do with it: a kid’s toy, for example.

  War and peace don’t seem to go together right.

  THE BEST SNIPER SHOT EVER

  THE AIR FORCE, MARINES, AND NAVY WERE FLYING AIR SUPPORT missions above us. We had enough confidence in them that we could call in strikes just down the block.

  One of our com guys working a street over from us was with a unit that came under heavy fire from a building packed with insurgents. He got on the radio and called over to the Marines, asking permission to call in a strike. As soon as it was approved, he got on the line with a pilot and gave him the location and details.

  “Danger close!” he warned over the radio. “Take cover.”

  We ducked inside the building. I have no idea how big the bomb he dropped was, but the explosion rattled the walls. My buddy later reported it had taken out over thirty insurgents—as much an indication of how many people were trying to kill us as how important the air support was.

  I have to say that all of the pilots we had overhead were pretty accurate. In a lot of situations, we were asking for bombs and missiles to hit within a few hundred yards. That’s pretty damn close when you’re talking about a thousand or more pounds of destruction. But we didn’t have any incidents, and I was also pretty confident that they could handle the job.

  ONE DAY, A GROUP OF MARINES NEAR US STARTED GETTING fire from a minaret in a mosque a few blocks away. We could see where the gunman was shooting from but we couldn’t get a shot on him. He had a perfect position, able to control a good part of the city below him.

  While, ordinarily, anything connected to a mosque would have been out of bounds, the sniper’s presence made it a legitimate target. We called an air strike on the tower, which had a high, windowed dome at the top, with two sets of walkways running around it that made it look a little like an air traffic control tower. The roof was made of panels of glass, topped by a spiked pole.

  We hunkered down as the aircraft came in. The bomb flew through the sky, hit the top of the minaret, and went straight through one of the large panes at the top. It then continued down into a yard across the alley. There it went low-order—exploding without much visible impact.

  “Shit,” I said. “He missed. Come on—let’s go get the son of a bitch ourselves.”

  We ran down a few blocks and entered the tower, climbing what seemed an endless flight of stairs. At any moment, we expected the sniper’s security or the sniper himself to appear above and start firing at us.

  No one did. When we made it to the top, we saw why. The sniper, alone in the building, had been decapitated by the bomb as it flew through the window.

  But that wasn’t all the bomb did. By chance, the alley where it landed had been filled with insurgents; we found their bodies and weapons a short time later.

  I think it was the best sniper shot I ever saw.

  REDISTRIBUTED

  AFTER I’D BEEN WORKING WITH KILO COMPANY FOR ABOUT two weeks, the commanders called all the SEAL snipers back so they could redistribute us where we were needed.

  “What the hell are you doing out there?” asked one of the first SEALs I met. “We’re hearing shit that you’re down there on the ground.”

  “Yeah, I am. No one’s coming out on the street.”

  “What the hell are you doing?” he said, pulling me aside. “You know if our CO finds out you’re doing this, you’re out of here.”

  He was right, but I shrugged him off. I knew in my heart what I had to do. I also felt pretty confident in the officer who was my immediate commander. He was a straight shooter and all about doing the job that needed to get done.

  Not to mention the fact that I was so far out of touch with my top command that it would have taken a long time for them to find out, let alone issue the orders to get me pulled out.

  A bunch of other guys came over and started agreeing with me:
down on the street was where we needed to be. I have no idea what they ended up doing; certainly, for the record, they all remained on the roofs, sniping.

  “Well hell, instead of using that Marine M-16,” said one of the East Coast boys, “I brought my M-4 with me. You can borrow it if you want.”

  “Really?”

  I took it and wound up getting a bunch of kills on it. The M-16 and the M-4 are both good weapons; the Marines prefer the latest model of the M-16 for various reasons that have to do with the way they usually fight. Of course, my preference in close quarters combat was for the short-barreled M-4, and I was glad to borrow my friend’s gun for the rest of my time in Fallujah.

  I was assigned to work with Lima Company, which was operating a few blocks away from Kilo. Lima was helping fill in holes—taking down pockets of insurgents who had crept in or been bypassed. They were seeing a lot of action.

  That night, I went over and talked to the company leadership in a house they’d taken over earlier in the day. The Marine commander had already heard what I’d been doing with Kilo, and after we talked a bit, he asked what I wanted to do.

  “I’d like to be down on the street with y’all.”

  “Good enough.”

  Lima Company proved to be another great group of guys.

  DON’T TELL MY MOM

  A FEW DAYS LATER, WE WERE CLEARING A BLOCK WHEN I heard shooting on a nearby street. I told the Marines I was with to stay where they were, then ran over to see if I could help.

  I found another group of Marines, who had started up an alley and run into heavy fire. They’d already pulled back and gotten under cover by the time I got there.

  One kid hadn’t quite made it. He was lying on his back some yards away, crying in pain.

  I started laying down fire and ran up to grab him and pull him back. When I got to him, I saw he was in pretty bad shape, gut-shot. I dropped and got an arm under each of his, then started hauling him backward.

  Somehow I managed to slip as I went. I fell backward, with him on top of me. By that point, I was so tired and winded I just lay there for a few minutes, still in the line of fire as bullets shot by.

  The kid was about eighteen years old. He was really badly hurt. I could tell he was going to die.

  “Please don’t tell my momma I died in pain,” he muttered.

  Shit, kid, I don’t even know who you are, I thought. I’m not telling your momma anything.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. Everybody will make it sound great. Real great.”

  He died right then. He didn’t even live long enough to hear my lies about how everything was going to be okay.

  A bunch of Marines came. They lifted him off me and put him in the back of a Hummer. We called in a bomb strike and took out the shooting positions where the fire had come from, at the other end of the alley.

  I went on back to my block and continued the fight.

  THANKSGIVING

  I THOUGHT ABOUT THE CASUALTIES I’D SEEN, AND THE FACT that I could be the next one carried out. But I wasn’t going to quit. I wasn’t going to stop going into houses or stop supporting them from the roofs. I couldn’t let down these young Marines I was with.

  I told myself: I’m a SEAL. I’m supposed to be tougher and better. I’m not going to give up on them.

  It wasn’t that I thought I was tougher or better than they were. It was that I knew that was the way people looked at us. And I didn’t want to let those people down. I didn’t want to fail in their eyes—or in mine.

  That’s the line of thinking that’s beaten into us: We’re the best of the best. We’re invincible.

  I don’t know if I’m the best of the best. But I did know that if I quit, I wouldn’t be.

  And I certainly did feel invincible. I had to be: I’d made it through all sorts of shit without getting killed . . . so far.

  THANKSGIVING SHOT PAST WHILE WE WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF the battle.

  I remember getting my Thanksgiving meal. They halted the assault for a little bit—maybe a half-hour—and brought up food to us on the rooftop where we’d set up.

  Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans for ten—all in a large box.

  Together. No separate boxes, no compartments. All in one pile.

  Also no plates, no forks, no knives, no spoons.

  We dipped our hands in and ate with our fingers. That was Thanksgiving.

  Compared to the MREs we’d been eating, it was awesome.

  ATTACKING THE MARSH

  I STAYED WITH LIMA FOR ROUGHLY A WEEK, THEN WENT BACK to Kilo. It was terrible to hear who’d been hit and who they’d lost in the time I’d been gone.

  WITH THE ASSAULT ABOUT FINISHED, WE WERE GIVEN A NEW task: set up a cordon to make sure no insurgents were able to get back in. Our sector was over by the Euphrates, on the western side of the town. From this point on, I was a sniper again. And figuring that my shots would now mostly be at longer range, I went back to the .300 Win Mag.

  We set up in a two-story house overlooking the river a few hundred yards down from Blackwater Bridge. There was a marshy area immediately across the river, completely overgrown with weeds and everything. It was near a hospital the insurgents had converted into a headquarters before our assault, and even now the area seemed to be a magnet for savages.

  Every night, we’d have someone trying to probe in from there. Every night I would get my shots off, taking out one or two or sometimes more.

  The new Iraqi army had a camp nearby. Those idiots took it in their head to send a few shots our way as well. Every day. We hung a VF panel over our position—an indicator showing we were friendly—and the shots kept coming. We radioed their command. The shots kept coming. We called back and cussed out their command. The shots kept coming. We tried everything to get them to stop, short of calling in a bomb strike.

  RUNAWAY’S RETURN

  RUNAWAY JOINED ME AGAIN AT KILO. I HAD COOLED OFF BY now and more or less kept it civil, though my feelings toward him hadn’t changed.

  Nor, I guess, had Runaway. It was pathetic.

  He was up on the roof with us one night when we started taking shots from insurgents somewhere.

  I ducked behind the four-foot perimeter wall. Once the gunfire subsided, I glanced over the roof and looked to see where the shots had come from. It was too dark, though.

  More shots were fired. Everybody ducked again. I went down just a little, hoping to see a muzzle flash in the dark when the next shot came over. I couldn’t see anything.

  “Come on,” I said. “They’re not accurate. Where are they firing from?”

  No answer from Runaway.

  “Runaway, look for the muzzle flash,” I said.

  I didn’t hear a response. Two or three more shots followed, without me being able to figure out where they’d come from. Finally, I turned around to ask if he had seen anything.

  Runaway was nowhere to be found. He’d gone downstairs—for all I know, the only thing that stopped him was the blocked door where the Marines were pulling security.

  “I could get killed up there,” he said when I caught up with him.

  I left him downstairs, telling him to send up one of the Marines pulling security in his place. At least I knew that guy wouldn’t run.

  RUNAWAY WAS EVENTUALLY TRANSFERRED SOMEWHERE where he wouldn’t go into combat. He had lost his nerve. He should have pulled himself out of there. That would have been embarrassing, but how much worse could it have been? He had to spend his time convincing everyone else that he wasn’t really a pussy, when the evidence was there for everyone to see.

  Being the great warrior he was, Runaway declared to the Marines that SEALs and snipers were being wasted on sniper overwatch.

  “SEALs shouldn’t be here. This isn’t a spec op mission,” he told them. But the problem wasn’t just the SEALs, as he soon made clear. “Those Iraqis are going to regroup and overrun us.”

  His prediction turned out to be just a little off. But hey, he
has a bright future as a military planner.

  THE MARSH

  OUR REAL PROBLEM WAS WITH THE INSURGENTS USING THE marsh across the river as cover. The river coast was dotted with countless little islands with trees and brush. Here and there an old foundation or a pile of dredged dirt and rock poked up between the bushes.

  Insurgents would pop up from the vegetation, take their shots, then squirrel back into the brush where you couldn’t see them. The vegetation was so thick they could get pretty close not just to the river but to us—often within a hundred yards without being seen. Even the Iraqis could hit something from that distance.

  Making things even more complicated, a herd of water buffalo lived in the swamp, and they’d tromp through every so often. You’d hear something or see the grass move and not know whether it was an insurgent or an animal.

  We tried getting creative, requesting a napalm hit on the marsh to burn down the vegetation.

  That idea was vetoed.

  As the nights went on, I realized the number of insurgents was growing. It became obvious that I was being probed. Eventually, the insurgents might be able to get enough men together that I couldn’t kill them all.

  Not that I wouldn’t have had fun trying.

  THE MARINES BROUGHT IN A FAC (FORWARD AIR CONTROLLER), to call in air support against the insurgents. The fellow they sent over was a Marine aviator, a pilot, working on a ground rotation. He tried a few times to vector in air attacks, but the requests were always denied higher up the chain of command.

  At the time, I was told that there had been so much devastation in the city that they didn’t want any more collateral damage. I don’t see how blowing up a bunch of weeds and muck would make Fallujah look any worse than it already did, but then I’m just a SEAL and obviously don’t understand those sorts of complicated issues.