American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History (31 page)

Great way to fight a war—be prepared to defend yourself for winning.

What a pain in the ass. I’d joke that it wasn’t worth shooting someone. (On the other hand, that’s one way I know exactly how many people I “officially” killed.)

C
LEAR
C
ONSCIENCE

S
ometimes it seemed like God was holding them back until I got on the gun.

“Hey, wake up.”

I opened my eyes and looked up from my spot on the floor.

“Let’s rotate,” said Jay, my LPO. He’d been on the gun for about four hours while I’d been catching a nap.

“All right.”

I unfolded myself from the ground and moved over to the gun.

“So? What’s been going on?” I asked. Whenever someone came on the gun, the person he was relieving would brief him quickly, describing who’d been in the neighborhood, etc.

“Nothing,” said Jay. “I haven’t seen anyone.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

We swapped positions. Jay pulled his ball cap down to catch some sleep.

I put my eye near the sight, scanning. Not ten seconds later, an insurgent walked fat into the crosshairs, AK out. I watched him move tactically toward an American position for a few seconds, confirming that he was within the ROEs.

Then I shot him.

“I fuckin’ hate you,” grumbled Jay from the floor nearby. He didn’t bother moving his ball cap, let alone get up.

I
never had any doubts about the people I shot. My guys would tease me:
Yeah, I know Chris. He’s got a little gun cut on the end of his scope. Everybody he sees is in the ROEs.

But the truth was, my targets were always obvious, and I, of course, had plenty of witnesses every time I shot.

The way things were, you couldn’t chance making a mistake. You’d be crucified if you didn’t strictly obey the ROEs.

Back in Fallujah, there was an incident involving Marines clearing a house. A unit had gone into a house, stepping over some bodies as they moved to clear the rooms. Unfortunately, one of the bastards on the ground wasn’t dead. After the Marines were in the house, he rolled over and pulled the pin on a grenade. It exploded, killing or wounding some of the Marines.

From then on, the Marines started putting a round in anybody they saw as they entered a house. At some point, a newsman with a camera recorded this; the video became public and the Marines got in trouble. Charges were either dropped or never actually filed, since the initial investigation explained the circumstances. Still, even the potential for charges was something you were always aware of.

The worst thing that you could ever do for that war was having all these media people embedded in the units. Most Americans can’t take the reality of war, and the reports they sent back didn’t help us at all.

The leadership wanted to have the backing of the public for the war. But really, who cares?

The way I figure it, if you send us to do a job, let us do it. That’s why you have admirals and generals—let them supervise us, not some fat-ass congressman sitting in a leather chair smoking a cigar back in DC in an air-conditioned office, telling me when and where I can and cannot shoot someone.

How would they know? They’ve never even been in a combat situation.

And once you decide to send us, let me do my job. War is war.

Tell me: Do you want us to conquer our enemy? Annihilate them? Or are we heading over to serve them tea and cookies?

Tell the military the end result you want, and you’ll get it. But don’t try and tell us how to do it. All those rules about when and under what circumstances an enemy combatant could be killed didn’t just make our jobs harder, they put our lives in danger.

The ROEs got so convoluted and fucked-up because politicians were interfering in the process. The rules are drawn up by lawyers who are trying to protect the admirals and generals from the politicians; they’re not written by people who are worried about the guys on the ground getting shot.

F
or some reason, a lot of people back home—not all people—didn’t accept that we were at war. They didn’t accept that war means death, violent death most times. A lot of people, not just politicians, wanted to impose ridiculous fantasies on us, hold us to some standard of behavior that no human being could maintain.

I’m not saying war crimes should be committed. I
am
saying that warriors need to be let loose to fight war without their hands tied behind their backs.

According to the ROEs I followed in Iraq, if someone came into my house, shot my wife, my kids, and then threw his gun down, I was supposed to NOT shoot him. I was supposed to take him gently into custody.

Would you?

You can argue that my success proves the ROEs worked. But I feel that I could have been more effective, probably protected more people and helped bring the war to a quicker conclusion without them.

I
t seemed the only news stories we read were about atrocities or how impossible it was going to be to pacify Ramadi.

Guess what? We killed all those bad guys, and what happened? The Iraqi tribal leaders
finally
realized we meant business, and they
finally
banded together not just to govern themselves, but to kick the insurgents out. It took force, it took violence of action, to create a situation where there could be peace.

L
EUKEMIA

“O
ur daughter is sick. Her white blood cell count is very low.”

I held the phone a little tighter as Taya continued to talk. My little girl had been sick with infections and jaundice for a while. Her liver didn’t seem to be able to keep up with the disease. Now the doctors were asking for more tests, and things looked real bad. They weren’t saying it was cancer or leukemia but they weren’t saying it wasn’t. They were going to test her to confirm their worst fears.

Taya tried to sound positive and downplay the problems. I could tell just from the tone of her voice that things were more serious than she would admit, until finally I got the entire truth from her.

I am not entirely sure what all she said, but what I heard was, leukemia.
Cancer.

My little girl was going to die.

A cloud of helplessness descended over me. I was thousands of miles away from her, and there was nothing I could do to help. Even if I’d been there, I couldn’t cure her.

My wife sounded so sad and alone on the phone.

The stress of the deployment had started to get to me well before that phone call in September 2006. The loss of Marc and Ryan’s extreme injuries had taken a toll. My blood pressure had shot up and I couldn’t sleep. Hearing the news about my daughter pushed me to my breaking point. I wasn’t much good for anyone.

Fortunately, we were already winding down our deployment. And as soon as I mentioned my little girl’s condition to my command, they started making travel arrangements to get me home. Our doctor put through the paperwork for a Red Cross letter. That’s a statement that indicates a service member’s family needs him for an emergency back home. Once that letter arrived, my commanders made it happen.

I
almost didn’t get out. Ramadi was such a hot zone that there weren’t a whole lot of opportunities for flights. There were no helos in or out. Even the convoys were still getting hit by insurgent attacks. Worried about me and knowing I couldn’t afford to wait too long, my boys loaded up the Humvees. They set me in the middle, and drove me out of the city to TQ airfield.

When we got there, I nearly choked up handing over my body armor and my M-4.

My guys were going back to war and I was flying home. That sucked. I felt like I was letting them down, shirking my duty.

It was a conflict—family and country, family and brothers in arms—that I never really resolved. I’d had even more kills in Ramadi than in Fallujah. Not only did I finish with more kills than anyone else on that deployment, but my overall total made me the most prolific American sniper of all time—to use the fancy official language.

And yet I still felt like a quitter, a guy who didn’t do enough.

12

Hard Times

H
OME

I
caught a military charter, first to Kuwait, then to the States. I was in civilian clothes, and with my longer hair and beard, I got hassled a bit, since no one could figure out why someone on active duty was authorized to travel in civilian clothes.

Which, looking back, is kind of amusing.

I got off the plane in Atlanta, then had to go back through security to continue on. It had taken me a few days to make it this far, and when I took my boots off, I swear half a dozen people in line nearby keeled over. I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten through security quite as fast.

Taya:

He would never tell me how dangerous things were, but I got to the point where I felt like I could read him. And when he told me that his guys were taking him out in a convoy, just the way he told me about it made me fear not only for them but for him. I asked a couple questions and the careful responses told me how dangerous his extract was going to be.

I felt very strongly that the more people I had praying for him, the better his chances. So I asked if I could tell his parents to pray for him.

He said yes.

Then I asked if I could tell them why, about the fact that he was coming home and the danger in the city, and he said no.

So, I didn’t.

I asked people for prayer, alluded to danger, and gave no further details other than to ask them to trust me. I knew it would be a tough pill to swallow for those few I was asking. But I felt strongly that people needed to pray—and at the same time that I had to adhere to my husband’s desires about what was to be shared. I know it wasn’t popular, but I felt the need for prayer overrode my need for popularity.

When he got home, it seemed to me Chris was so stressed he was numb to everything.

It was hard for him to pinpoint how he felt about anything. He was just wiped out and overwhelmed.

I felt sad for everything he’d been through. And I felt terribly torn about needing him. I did need him, tremendously. But at the same time, I had to get along without him so much that I developed an attitude that I didn’t need him, or at least that I shouldn’t need him.

I guess it may not make any sense to anyone else, but I felt this strange mixture of feelings, all across the spectrum. I was so mad at him for leaving the kids and me on our own. I wanted him home but I was mad, too.

I was coming off months of anxiety for his safety and frustration that he chose to keep going back. I wanted to count on him, but I couldn’t. His Team could, and total strangers who happened to be in the military could, but the kids and I certainly could not.

It wasn’t his fault. He would have been in two places at once if he could have been, but he couldn’t. But when he had to choose, he didn’t choose us.

All the while, I loved him and I tried to support him and show him love in every way possible. I felt five hundred emotions, all at the same time.

I guess I had had an undercurrent of anger that whole deployment. We’d have conversations where we talked and he realized something was wrong. He’d ask what was bothering me and I’d deny it. And then finally he’d press and I would say, “I’m mad at you for going back. But I don’t want to hate you, and I don’t want to be mad. I know you could be killed tomorrow. I don’t want you to be distracted by this. I don’t want to have this conversation.”

Now finally he was back, and all of my emotions just exploded inside me, happiness and anger all mixed together.

G
ETTING
B
ETTER

T
he doctors performed all sorts of tests on my little girl. Some of them really pissed me off.

I remember especially when they took blood, which they had to do a lot. They’d hold her upside down and prick her foot; a lot of times it wouldn’t bleed and they’d have to do it again and again. She’d be crying the whole time.

These were long days, but eventually the docs figured out that my daughter didn’t have leukemia. While there was jaundice and some other complications, they were able to get control of the infections that had made her sick. She got better.

One of the things that was incredibly frustrating was her reaction to me. She seemed to cry every time I held her. She wanted Mommy. Taya said that she reacted that way to all men—whenever she heard a male voice, she would cry.

Whatever the reason, it hurt me badly. Here I had come all this way and truly loved her, and she rejected me.

Things were better with my son, who remembered me and now was older and more ready to play. But once again, the normal troubles that parents have with their kids and with each other were compounded by the separation and stress we’d all just gone through.

Little things could really be annoying. I expected my son to look me in the eye when I was scolding him. Taya was bothered by this, because she felt he wasn’t accustomed to me or my tone and it was too much to ask a two-year-old to look me in the eye in that situation. But my feeling was just the opposite. It was the right thing for him to do. He wasn’t being corrected by a stranger. He was being disciplined by someone who loved him. There’s a certain two-way road of respect there. You look me in the eye, I look you in the eye—we understand each other.

Taya would say, “Wait a minute. You’ve been gone for how long? And now you want to come home and be part of this family and make the rules? No sir, because you’re leaving again in another month to go back on training.”

We were both right, from our perspectives. The problem was trying to see the other’s, and then live with it.

I
wasn’t perfect. I was wrong on a few things. I had to learn how to be a dad. I had my idea of how parenting should be, but it wasn’t based on any reality. Over time, my ideas changed.

Somewhat. I still expect my kids to look me in the eye when I’m talking to them. And vice versa. And Taya agrees.

M
IKE
M
ONSOOR

I
’d been home for roughly two weeks when a SEAL friend of mine called and asked what was up.

“Nothing much,” I told him.

“Well, who did y’all lose?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“I don’t know who it was, but I heard you lost another.”

“Damn.”

I got off the phone and started calling everyone I knew. I finally got a hold of someone who knew the details, though he couldn’t talk about them at the moment, because the family had not been informed yet. He said he’d call me back in a few hours.

They were long hours.

Finally I found out Mike Monsoor, a member of our sister platoon, had been killed saving the lives of some of his fellow platoon members in Ramadi. The group had set up an overwatch in a house there; an insurgent got close enough to toss a grenade.

Obviously, I wasn’t there, but this is the description of what happened from the official summary of action:

The grenade hit him in the chest and bounced onto the deck [here, the Navy term for floor]. He immediately leapt to his feet and yelled “grenade” to alert his teammates of impending danger, but they could not evacuate the sniper hide-sight in time to escape harm. Without hesitation and showing no regard for his own life, he threw himself onto the grenade, smothering it to protect his teammates who were lying in close proximity. The grenade detonated as he came down on top of it, mortally wounding him.

Petty Officer Monsoor’s actions could not have been more selfless or clearly intentional. Of the three SEALs on that rooftop corner, he had the only avenue of escape away from the blast, and if he had so chosen, he could have easily escaped. Instead, Monsoor chose to protect his comrades by the sacrifice of his own life. By his courageous and selfless actions, he saved the lives of his two fellow SEALs.

He was later awarded the Medal of Honor.

A lot of memories about Mikey came back as soon as I found out he’d died. I hadn’t known him all that well, because he was in the other platoon, but I was there for his hazing.

I remember us holding him down so his head could be shaved. He didn’t like that at all; I may still have some bruises.

I
drove a van to pick up some of the guys from the airport and helped arrange Mikey’s wake.

SEAL funerals are kind of like Irish wakes, except there’s a lot more drinking. Which begs the question, how much beer do you need for a SEAL wake? That is classified information, but rest assured it is more than a metric ass-ton.

I stood on the tarmac in dress blues as the plane came in. My arm went up in a stiff salute as the coffin came down the ramp, then, with the other pallbearers, I carried it slowly to the waiting hearse.

We attracted a bit of a crowd at the airport. People nearby who realized what was going on stopped and stared silently, paying their respects. It was touching; they were honoring a fellow countryman even though they didn’t know him. I was moved at the sight, a last honor for our fallen comrade, a silent recognition of the importance of his sacrifice.

T
he only thing that says we’re SEALs are the SEAL tridents we wear, the metal insignia that show we’re members. If you don’t have that on your chest, you’re just another Navy puke.

It’s become a sign of respect to take it off and hammer it onto the coffin of your fallen brother at the funeral. You’re showing the guy that you’ll never forget, that he remains part of you for the rest of your life.

As the guys from Delta Platoon lined up to pound their tridents into Mikey’s coffin, I backed off, head bowed. It happened that Marc Lee’s tombstone was just a few yards from where Monsoor was going to be buried. I’d missed Marc’s funeral because I’d still been overseas, and still hadn’t had a chance to pay my respects. Now it suddenly seemed appropriate to put my trident on his tombstone.

I walked over silently and laid it down, wishing my friend one last good-bye.

O
ne of the things that made that funeral bittersweet was the fact that Ryan was released from the hospital in time to attend it. It was great to see him, even though he was now permanently blind.

Before passing out from blood loss after he’d been shot, Ryan had been able to see. But as his brain swelled with internal bleeding, bone or bullet fragments that were in his eye severed his optic nerves. There was no hope for restoring sight.

When I saw him, I asked him why he’d insisted on walking out of the building under his own power. It struck me as a remarkably brave thing—characteristic of him. Ryan told me he knew that our procedures called for at least two guys to go down with him if he couldn’t move on his own. He didn’t want to take more guys out of the fight.

I think he thought he could have gotten back on his own. And probably he would have if we’d let him. He might even have picked up a gun and tried to continue the fight.

Ryan left the service because of his injury, but we remained close. They say friendships forged in war are strong ones. Ours would prove that truism.

P
UNCHING
O
UT
S
CRUFF
F
ACE

A
fter the funeral we went to a local bar for the wake proper.

As always, there were a bunch of different things going on at our favorite nightspot, including a small party for some older SEALs and UDT members who were celebrating the anniversary of their graduation. Among them was a celebrity I’ll call Scruff Face.

Scruff served in the military; most people seem to believe he was a SEAL. As far as I know, he was in the service during the Vietnam conflict but not actually in the war.

I was sitting there with Ryan and told him that Scruff was holding court with some of his buddies.

“I’d really like to meet him,” Ryan said.

“Sure.” I got up and went over to Scruff and introduced myself. “Mr. Scruff Face, I have a young SEAL over here who’s just come back from Iraq. He’s been injured but he’d really like to meet you.”

Well, Scruff kind of blew us off. Still, Ryan really wanted to meet him, so I brought him over. Scruff acted like he couldn’t be bothered.

All right.

We went back over to our side of the bar and had a few more drinks. In the meantime, Scruff started running his mouth about the war and everything and anything he could connect to it. President Bush was an asshole. We were only over there because Bush wanted to show up his father. We were doing the wrong thing, killing men and women and children and murdering.

And on and on. Scruff said he hates America and that’s why he moved to Baja California. 9/11 was a conspiracy.

And on and on some more.

The guys were getting upset. Finally, I went over and tried to get him to cool it.

“We’re all here in mourning,” I told him. “Can you just cool it? Keep it down.”

“You deserve to lose a few,” he told me.

Then he bowed up as if to belt me one.

I was uncharacteristically level-headed at that moment.

“Look,” I told him, “why don’t we just step away from each other and go on our way?”

Scruff bowed up again. This time he swung.

Being level-headed and calm can last only so long. I laid him out.