American Sniper
Page 38
Truth is, I hadn’t been at the site since September 12, 2001, the day after the bombing. Like most New Yorkers, I knew people who died and families who lost loved ones there. Other people were much more closely affected, certainly, but the place nonetheless filled me with dread. I’d been down in the Wall Street area plenty of times during the decade since the attack, but always managed to avoid the site.
I thought of making an excuse to either beg out of the visit or deflect Chris’s request; there were plenty of interviews he had to do, and really, he should have gotten some rest. But 9/11 was the reason he had done so much for our country, and it wouldn’t have been right to keep him from the site.
So we went.
The area thronged with people. I don’t know that I’d ever felt claustrophobic before, especially in New York where I mostly grew up, but I certainly did there. Inside the temporary museum, Chris walked slowly through the exhibits, examining everything, every picture, every artifact.
All I could do was remember the way the debris still choked the air on 9/12, and the odd way the skyline looked as I walked down from Canal Street. After about two minutes, I went outside for fresh air, my coat open even though it was a cold January day.
Chris came out about a half hour later. He was pensive after he finished. He glanced at me and suggested we have a beer.
“Absolutely,” I told him, and I led him a few blocks away to a small place I knew.
He didn’t ask me about 9/11 or what I felt. That wasn’t his way. He just sat there, unobtrusive, ready to help if needed but otherwise just being a presence—kind of on emotional overwatch, I guess, to use a metaphor from his days as a SEAL sniper.
My claustrophobia passed pretty quickly. In fact, I can’t say that I felt it again until the early Sunday morning when I heard he’d died.
The visit to the World Trade Center site affected Chris as well as me. He didn’t say anything about it. He didn’t have to—it was written in capital letters on his face. I don’t think he knew one person who died there, but he somehow felt for each one. He loved making jokes about us “Yankees,” even after I pointed out that, properly speaking, New Yorkers are not Yankees at all. But he lived that famous line from Donne about no man being an island. On some level he wanted to save all humanity, or at least all of his fellow countrymen.
That’s an odd thing to say about a warrior, let alone one whose renown comes from the number of kills he made. But it’s the truth, and it’s the odd paradox that defines Chris Kyle and his so-called legend. It’s the same paradox at the heart of all wars. In order to save people, Chris had to kill others. He had to turn his world black and white so he could make a difference. In the process, he temporarily lost part of himself.
Maybe not lost. Definitely not lost. But he stowed it behind so many walls that it was hard to reach.
Taya and his children helped him rediscover it. You can read about some of the process in the book. The one thing I would add is that it was still an ongoing struggle when we were working. In fact, the book made things a hell of a lot harder for him. It took him back, and not in a good way.
Sometimes I didn’t realize quite how hard the whole process was for him. I wish I could have made remembering easier. We spent a lot of time together and I got used to reading his moods, but there were points when I was just oblivious to his pain, when I wasn’t observant enough to just hang back and sit there on quiet overwatch. Maybe I needed to push to get it all out, to get the book done. Maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention.
Chris never complained. Not once. And when the crowds started coming for the signings, he stayed and shook every hand. He had a kind word and often a joke for everyone. Privately, he hated the fuss. I know for a fact he would have preferred being out hunting or playing with the kids. But he still had a smile for every man, woman, and child who met him on the tours, and a thank-you for every fellow veteran, whether he saw them in the bookstore or the local CVS.
I’ll let the others talk about Chris’s good works and his impact on their lives. There’s plenty to talk about. He’s left a big hole in all our lives. I’m not sure why or even how a Texas cowboy and a guy from New York ever got along, but somehow we did. I blame it on Chris: I don’t think there’s a person alive he couldn’t get along with.
Chris’s funeral was one of the saddest days of my life. But somehow, looking back on it, I don’t remember the sadness that much. What I remember are the crowds I saw on the way down in my car from his hometown to the state cemetery. I expected there would be plenty of people along the roads near Dallas where he lived. There were. But the crowds were just as strong the whole way down, for some two hundred or so miles. People bunched up on the overpasses, gathered on the highway shoulders, held flags on the side roads.
That’s what I remember of that sad day, and when I think about it, I smile—thousands of people really understood who Chris was even if they never met him, and paid tribute to that. It was an extraordinary thing.
And in the same way, the most enduring image from the burial service isn’t the moving march of bagpipers, the pounding of the SEALs’ Tridents on his coffin, or even the final moment at the end when his coffin stood by itself in the deserted cemetery. As moving as these images were, the sight that is burned into my memory is the long line of faces peering over the fence behind us, people from around the city, the state, and the country, regular folks offering one last thank-you to a man who gave his all to his country, his God, and his family.
There was not a space left on the fence line. It was as if all Texas, and all America, had come out to perform one last silent, emotional overwatch for a regular guy, a neighbor, a friend, who just happened to be a hero.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Taya Kyle has been carrying on her husband Chris’s legacy in a variety of ways, from speaking on behalf of veterans, to guiding completion of his posthumous bestseller American Gun: A History of the U.S. in Ten Firearms, to continuing his work with a host of charitable organizations. She has established the Web site www.ChrisKyleFrog.com and maintains the official Chris Kyle Facebook page, www.Facebook.com/ChrisKyleFrog. Please visit these sites to learn how you can help Chris’s spirit of service live on—as well as for news on charity events, veterans’ organizations, American Sniper movie updates, Taya’s speaking schedule, new projects, and much more. Thank you for your ongoing support. God bless!
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
SEAL TEAM 3 CHIEF CHRIS KYLE (1974–2013) served four combat tours in Operation Iraqi Freedom and elsewhere. For his bravery in battle, he was awarded two Silver Stars, five Bronze Stars with Valor, two Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals, one Navy and Marine Corps Commendation, and numerous other citations. In 2005 he received the Grateful Nation Award, given by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Following his combat deployments, he became chief instructor for training Naval Special Warfare Sniper and Counter-Sniper teams, and he authored the Naval Special Warfare Sniper Doctrine, the first Navy SEAL sniper manual.
Kyle is also the author of the New York Times bestseller American Gun: A History of the U.S. in Ten Firearms. He lived with his family in Texas, where he devoted much of his spare time to supporting veterans.
JIM DEFELICE is the author of Omar Bradley: General at War, the first in-depth critical biography of America’s last five-star general. He also writes a number of acclaimed military thrillers, including the Rogue Warrior series with Richard Marcinko, founder of SEAL Team 6, and the novels in the Dreamland series with Dale Brown.
SCOTT MCEWEN is a trial lawyer in San Diego.
www.ChrisKyleFrog.com
www.Facebook.com/ChrisKyleFrog
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ALSO BY CHRIS KYLE
American Gun
CREDITS
COVER DESIGN BY JAMES IACOBELLI AND RICHARD L. AQUAN
COVER PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF 5.11
COPYRIGHT<
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Map of Iraq courtesy of the UN Cartographic Section.
AMERICAN SNIPER. Copyright © 2012, 2013 by CT Legacy, LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-229079-3
EPub Edition OCTOBER 2013 ISBN 9780062306708
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