American Sniper

by Chris Kyle

  PHOTOGRAPH SECTION

  Stick ’em up, Yankee . . .

  Young hunters and their prey. My brother (left) is still one of my best friends.

  I’ve been a cowboy pretty much from birth. Look at those fine boots I wore as a four-year-old.

  Here I am in junior high, practicing with my Ithaca pump shotgun. Ironically, I’ve never been much of a shot with a scattergun.

  You’re not a real cowboy until you learn to lasso . . .

  And I eventually got to where I was halfway decent at it.

  It’s a rough way to make a living, but I’ll always be a cowboy at heart.

  All kitted up with my Mk-12 sniper rifle, the gun I was carrying when I rescued the trapped Marines and reporters in Fallujah.

  Fallujah in ’04. Here I am with my .300 WinMag and some of the snipers I worked with. One was a SEAL, the others were Marines. (You can tell their service by the camis.)

  The sniper hide we used when covering the Marines staging for the assault on Fallujah. Note the baby crib turned on its side.

  Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz hands me the Grateful Nation Award from JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. JINSA gave me the award in 2005 in recognition of my service and achievements in Fallujah.

  Charlie Platoon of SEAL Team 3 during the Ramadi deployment. The only faces that are shown are Marc Lee’s (left), Ryan Job’s (middle), and mine (right). ST3’s patch.

  Marc Lee leading the platoon on patrol in Ramadi. With the help of the Marines, we were able to use the river to launch several ops against insurgents.

  We made our own logo, reminiscent of the Punisher character. We spray-painted it on our vests and much of our gear. Like him, we were righting wrongs. Photograph courtesy of 5.11

  Here I am with the boys in ’06, just back from an op with my Mk-11 sniper rifle in my right hand.

  Set up on a roof in Ramadi. The tent provided me a bit of relief from the sun.

  Another sniping position I used in the same battle.

  We chose roofs in Ramadi that provided us with good vantage points. Sometimes, though, the job called for more than a sniper rifle—that black smoke in the background is an enemy position obliterated by a tank.

  Marc Lee.

  After Marc died, we created a patch to honor his memory. We will never forget.

  Ryan Job.

  A close-up of my Lapua .338, the gun I made my longest kill with. You can see my “dope” card—the placard on the side contains the come-ups (adjustments) needed for long-range targets. My 2,100-yard shot exceeded the card’s range, and I had to eyeball it.

  When not on the gun myself, I like to help others improve their skills. This was taken during my last deployment, while instructing a little class for some Army snipers.

  Leading a training session for Craft International, the company I started after leaving the Navy. We make our sessions as realistic as possible for the operators and law enforcement officers we teach. Photograph courtesy of 5.11

  Here I am on a helo training course for Craft. I don’t mind helicopters—it’s heights I can’t stand. Photograph courtesy of 5.11

  Our company logo and slogan (“Despite what your momma told you . . . violence does solve problems”) honor my SEAL brethren, especially my fallen comrades. I’ll never forget them.

  Me and Taya, the love of my life and better half. Photograph courtesy of Heather Hurt/Calluna Photography

  My son and I check out a C-17.

  8

  FAMILY CONFLICTS

  TAYA:

  We went out to the tarmac to wait for the plane when it came in. There were a few wives and children. I came out with our baby and I felt so excited. I was over the moon.

  I remember turning to one of the women I was with and saying, “Isn’t this great? Isn’t this exciting? I can’t stand it.”

  She said, “Ehhh.”

  I thought to myself, well, maybe I’m still new to it.

  Later on, she and her husband, a SEAL in Chris’s platoon, got divorced.

  BONDING

  I’D LEFT THE STATES SOME SEVEN MONTHS BEFORE, ONLY TEN days after my son was born. I loved him, but as I mentioned earlier, we hadn’t really had a chance to bond. Newborns are just a bundle of needs—feed them, clean them, get them to rest. Now he had a personality. He was crawling. He was more of a person. I’d seen him growing up in the photos Taya had sent me, but this was more intense.

  He was my son.

  We’d lie on the floor in our pajamas and play together. He’d crawl all over me and I’d boost him up and carry him all around. Even the simplest things—like him touching my face—were a joy.

  But the transition from war to home was still a shock. One day, we’d been fighting. The next, we’d crossed the river to al-Taqaddum Airbase (known to us as TQ) and started back for the States.

  War one day; peace the next.

  Every time you come home, it’s weird. Especially in California. The simplest things can upset you. Take traffic. You’re driving on the road, everything’s crowded, it’s craziness. You’re still thinking IEDs—you see a piece of trash and you swerve. You drive aggressively toward other drivers, because that’s the way you do it in Iraq.

  I would shut myself in for about a week. I think that’s where Taya and I started having problems.

  BEING PARENTS FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE HAD THE DISAGREEMENTS everyone has about children. Co-sleeping, for instance—Taya had my son sleep with her in a co-sleeper in the bed while I was gone. When I came home, I wanted to change that. We disagreed quite a bit on that. I thought he should be in his own crib in his own room. Taya saw it as depriving her of her closeness with him. She thought we should transition him gradually.

  That wasn’t how I saw it at all. I felt children should sleep in their own beds and rooms.

  I know now that issues like that are common, but there was added stress. She’d been raising him completely on her own for months now, and I was intruding on her routines and ways of doing things. They were incredibly close, which I thought was great. But I wanted to be with them, too. I wasn’t trying to come between them, just add myself back into the family.

  As it happened, none of that was a big deal for my son; he slept just fine. And he still has a very special relationship with his mom.

  LIFE AT HOME HAD ITS INTERESTING MOMENTS, THOUGH THE drama was very different. Our neighbors and close friends were completely respectful of my need for time to decompress. Once that was over, they put together a little welcome-home barbecue.

  They’d all been great while I was gone. The people across the street arranged to have someone cut our grass, which was huge to us financially and helped Taya with the heavy load she carried while I was gone. It seemed like a little thing, but it was big to me.

  Now that I was home, of course, it was my job to take care of things like that. We had a small, itty-bitty backyard; it took all of five minutes to cut the grass back there. But on one side of the yard were climbing roses that climbed up these potato bush trees we had. The bushes had little purple flowers on them year-round.

  The combination looked really pretty. But the roses had thorns in them that could pierce an armored vest. Every time I’d mow the yard and come around the corner, I’d get snagged by them.

  One day, those roses just went too far, tearing at my side. I decided to take care of them once and for all: I picked up my lawnmower, held it up about chest-high, and trimmed the mothers (the roses and the trees) down.

  “What! Are you kidding me?” yelled Taya. “Are you trimming the bushes with a lawnmower?”

  Hey, it worked. They never snagged me again.

  I did do some genuinely goofy stuff. Having fun and making other people smile and laugh has always been something I like to do. One day, I saw our backyard neighbor through our kitchen window, so I stood on a chair and knocked on the window to get her attention. I proceeded to moon her. (Her husband happened to be a Navy pilot, so I’m sure she was fam
iliar with such things.)

  Taya rolled her eyes. She was amused, I think, though she wouldn’t admit it.

  “Who does that?” she said to me.

  “She laughed, didn’t she?” I said.

  “You are thirty years old,” she said. “Who does that?”

  There’s a side of me that loves to pull pranks on people, to get them to laugh. You can’t just do regular stuff—I want them to have a good time. Belly laughs. The more extreme the better. April Fools’ Day is a particularly tough time for my family and friends, though more because of Taya’s pranks than my own. I guess we both like to have a good laugh.

  ON THE DARKER SIDE, I WAS EXTREMELY HOT-HEADED. I HAVE always had a temper, even before becoming a SEAL. But it was more explosive now. If someone cut me off—not a very rare occurrence in California—I could get crazy. I might try and run them off the road, or even stop and whup their ass.

  I had to work at calming down.

  OF COURSE, HAVING A REPUTATION AS A SEAL DOES HAVE ITS advantages.

  At my sister-in-law’s wedding, the preacher and I got to talking. At some point, she—the preacher was a lady—noticed a bulge in my jacket.

  “You have a gun?” she asked.

  “Yes, I do,” I said, explaining that I was in the military.

  She may or may not have known that I was a SEAL—I didn’t tell her, but word tends to get around—but when she was ready to start the ceremony and couldn’t get anyone in the crowd to be quiet and get into place, she came over to me, patted me on the back, and said, “Can you get everyone to sit down?”

  “Yes, I can,” I told her.

  I barely had to raise my voice to get that little ceremony going.

  TAYA:

  People talk about physical love and need when someone comes home from a long absence: “I want to rip your clothes off.” That sort of thing.

  I felt that way in theory, but the reality was always a little different.

  I needed to get to know him again. It was strange. There’s so much anticipation. You miss them so much when they deploy, and you want them to be home, but then when they are, things aren’t perfect. And you feel as if they should be. Depending on the deployment and what I’d been through, I also had emotions ranging from sadness to anxiety to anger.

  When he came back after this deployment, I felt almost shy. I was a new mother and had been doing things on my own for months. We were both changing and growing in totally separate worlds. He had no firsthand knowledge of mine and I had no firsthand knowledge of his.

  I also felt bad for Chris. He was wondering what was wrong. There was distance between us that neither one of us could really fix, or even talk about.

  BREAKING AND ENTERING

  WE HAD A LONG BREAK FROM WAR, BUT WE WERE BUSY THE whole time, retraining and, in some cases, learning new skills. I went to a school run by FBI agents and CIA and NSA officers. They taught me how to do things like pick locks and steal cars. I loved it. The fact that it was in New Orleans didn’t hurt, either.

  Learning how to blend in and go undercover, I cultivated my inner jazz musician and grew a goatee. Lock-picking was a revelation. We worked on a variety of locks, and by the end of the class I don’t think there was a lock that could have kept me or anyone else in our class at bay. Stealing cars was a little harder, but I got pretty good at that, too.

  We were trained to wear cameras and eavesdropping devices without getting caught. To prove that we could, we had to get the devices into a strip club and return with (video) evidence that we’d been there.

  The sacrifices you make for your country . . .

  I stole a car off Bourbon Street as part of my final. (I had to put it back when we were done; as far as I know, the owner was none the wiser.) Unfortunately, these are all perishable skills—I can still pick a lock, but it’ll take me longer now. I’ll have to brush up if I ever decide to go crooked.

  AMONG OUR MORE NORMAL ROTATIONS WAS A RECERTIFICATION class for parachuting.

  Jumping out of planes—or, I should say, landing safely after jumping out of planes—is an important skill, but it’s a dangerous one. Hell, I’ve heard it said the Army figures in combat, if they get 70 percent of the guys in a unit to land safely enough to rally and fight, they’re doing well.

  Think about that. A thousand guys—three hundred don’t make it. Not a big deal to the Army.

  Oh-kay.

  I went to Fort Benning to train with the Army right after I first became a SEAL. I guess I should have realized what I was in for on the first day of school, when a soldier just ahead of me refused to jump. We all stood there waiting—and thinking—while the instructors tended to him.

  I’m afraid of heights as it is, and this didn’t build my confidence. Holy shit, I wondered, what’s he seeing that I’m not?

  Being a SEAL, I had to make a good showing—or at least not look like a wimp. Once he was taken out of the way, I closed my eyes and plunged ahead.

  It was on one of those early static jumps (jumps where the cord is automatically pulled for you, a procedure usually used for beginners) that I made the mistake of looking up to check my canopy as I left the plane.

  They tell you not to do that. I was wondering why when the chute deployed. My tremendous sense of relief that I had a canopy and wasn’t going to die was mitigated by the rope burns on both sides of my face.

  The reason they tell you not to look up is so that you don’t get hit by the risers as they fly by your head when the chute opens. Some things you learn the hard way.

  And then there are night jumps. You can’t see the land coming. You know you have to roll into PLFs—parachute landing falls—but when?

  I tell myself, the first time I feel something I’m going to roll.

  The first . . . time . . . the f-i-r-s-t . . . !!

  I think I banged my head every time I jumped at night.

  I WILL SAY I PREFERRED FREEFALL TO STATIC JUMPING. I’M not saying I enjoyed it, just that I liked it a lot better. Kind of like picking the firing squad over being hanged.

  In freefall, you came down a lot slower and had much more control. I know there are all these videos of people doing stunts and tricks and having a grand ol’ time doing HALO (high altitude, low opening) jumps. There are none of me. I watch my wrist altimeter the whole time. That chord is pulled the split-second I hit the right altitude.

  ON MY LAST JUMP WITH THE ARMY, ANOTHER JUMPER CAME right under me as we descended. When that happens, the lower canopy can “steal” the air beneath you. The result is . . . you fall faster than you were falling.

  The consequences can be pretty dramatic, depending on the circumstances. In this case, I was seventy feet from the ground. I ended up falling from there, and having a couple of tree branches and the ground beat the crap out of me. I walked away with some bumps and bruises and a few broken ribs.

  Fortunately, it was the last jump of the school. My ribs and I soldiered on, glad to be done.

  OF COURSE, AS BAD AS PARACHUTING IS, IT BEATS SPY-RIGGING. Spy-rigging may look cool, but one wrong move and you can spin off in Mexico. Or Canada. Or maybe even China.

  Strangely, though, I like helos. During this workup, my platoon worked with MH-6 Little Birds. Those are very small, very fast scout-and-attack helicopters adapted for Special Operations work. Our versions had benches fitted to each side; three SEALs can sit on each bench.

  I loved them.

  True, I was scared to death getting on the damn thing. But once the pilot took off and we were in the air, I was hooked. It was a tremendous adrenaline rush—you’re low and fast. It’s awesome. The momentum of the aircraft keeps you in place; you don’t even feel any wind buffeting.

  And hell—if you fall, you’ll never feel a thing.

  THE PILOTS WHO COMMANDED THOSE AIRCRAFT ARE AMONG the best in the world. They were all members of the 160th SOAR—the Special Operations air wing, handpicked to work with spec warfare personnel. There’s a difference, and it’s noticeable.

&nb
sp; When you’re fast-roping from a chopper with a “regular” pilot, you may find yourself at the wrong altitude, too high for the rope to reach the ground. At that point, it’s too late to do anything about it except grunt or groan as you hit the ground. A lot of pilots also have trouble holding station—staying put long enough for you to get in the right spot on the ground.

  Not so with the guys from SOAR. Right place, first time, every time. That rope drops, it’s where it belongs.

  MARCUS

  THE FOURTH OF JULY 2005 WAS A BEAUTIFUL CALIFORNIA day: perfect weather, not a cloud in the sky. My wife and I took our son and drove out to a friend’s house in the foothills outside of town. There we spread a blanket and gathered in the tailgate of my Yukon to watch the fireworks display put on at an Indian reservation in the valley. It was a perfect spot—we could see down as the fireworks came up to us, and the effect was spectacular.

  I’ve always loved celebrating the Fourth of July. I love the symbolism, meaning of the day, and of course the fireworks and the barbecues. It’s just a wonderful time.

  But that day, as I sat back and watched the red, white, and blue sparkles, sadness suddenly spread over me. I fell into a deep black hole.

  “This sucks,” I muttered as the fireworks exploded.

  I wasn’t critiquing the show. I had just realized that I might never see my friend Marcus Luttrell again. I hated to be unable to do anything to help my friend, who was facing God only knew what kind of trouble.

  We’d gotten word a few days before that he was missing. I’d also heard through the SEAL grapevine that the three guys he was with were dead. They’d been ambushed by the Taliban in Afghanistan; surrounded by hundreds of Taliban fighters, they fought ferociously. Another sixteen men in a rescue party were killed when the Chinook they were flying in was shot down. (You can and should read the details in Marcus’s book, Lone Survivor.)