American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History (13 page)

What always seemed interesting to me was how well we communicated without using words, even on an op. They’d turn around and wave me up or back, whatever. If you’re a professional, you don’t need to be told what to do. You read off of each other and react.

G
EARED
U
P

P
eople are always asking me what sort of gear I carried in Iraq. The answer is: it depended. I adjusted my gear slightly from deployment to deployment. Here’s how I usually went out:

Pistols

T
he standard SEAL-issued pistol was a SIG Sauer P226, chambered for 9-mm ammo. While that is an excellent weapon, I felt I needed more knockdown power than nine millimeters could provide, and later started carrying my own personal weapon in place of the P226. Let’s face it—if you’re using a pistol in combat, the shit has already hit the fan. You may not have the time for perfect shot placement. The bigger rounds may not kill your enemy, but they’re more likely to put him down when you hit him.

In 2004, I brought over a Springfield TRP Operator, which used a .45-caliber round. It had a 1911 body style, with custom grips and a rail system that let me add a light and laser combo. Black, it had a bull barrel and was an excellent gun—until it took a frag for me in Fallujah.

I was actually able to get it repaired—those Springfields are tough. Still, not wanting to press my luck, I replaced it with a SIG P220. The P220 looked pretty much exactly like the P226, but was chambered for .45 caliber.

Carrying My Pistol

O
n my first two deployments, I had a drop-leg holster. (A drop-leg sits against the upper thigh, within easy reach of the pistol hand.) The problem with that type of holster is that it tends to move around. During combat, or even if you’re simply bouncing around, the rig slides over on your leg. So after the first two deployments, I went to a hip holster. That way, my gun was always where I expected it to be.

Med Gear

E
veryone always carried their own “blowout kit,” a small set of medical supplies. You always carried the bare necessities to treat a gunshot wound—bandages for different wounds, IV, clotting medicine. It had to be readily accessible—you didn’t want the person helping you have to search for it. I put mine in my right-hand cargo pocket on my leg, under the holster. If I’d ever been shot, my buddies could have cut out the bottom of the cargo pocket and pulled out the kit. Most guys did it that way.

When you treat somebody in the field before the corpsman or a medic gets there, you always use the wounded man’s kit. If you use your kit, who’s to say you’ll have it for the next guy—or yourself—if you need it?

Body Armor and Rig

D
uring the first deployment, my SEAL body armor had the MOLLE system attached to it. (MOLLE stands for Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment, a fancy acronym for a web system where different pouches and gear can be attached, allowing you to customize your webbing. The word
MOLLE
itself is a trademark for the system developed and manufactured by Natick Labs. However, a lot of people use the word to describe any similar system.)

On the deployments that followed, I had separate body armor with a separate Rhodesian rig. (Rhodesian describes a vest that allows you to set up a MOLLE or MOLLE-like rig. Again, the overall principle is that you can customize the way you carry your stuff.)

Having a separate vest allowed me to take my gear off and lay it down, while still wearing my body armor. This made it more comfortable to lie down and still be able to grab everything I needed. When I was going to be on the sniper rifle, lying behind it and peering through the scope, I would unclip the strap and lay out the vest. This made my ammo, which I had in the pouches, easier to access. Meanwhile, the vest was still attached to my shoulders; it would come with me and fall into place when I got up.

(One note about the body armor—Navy-issued body armor has been known to fall apart. In light of that fact, my wife’s parents very generously bought me some Dragon Skin armor after my third deployment. It’s super-heavy, but it’s extremely good armor, the best you can get.)

I
wore a GPS on my wrist, with a backup in my vest and even a backup old-fashioned compass. I went through a couple of pairs of goggles per deployment; they had miniature fans inside to keep air circulating so they wouldn’t fog up. And, of course, I had a pocketknife—I got a Microtech after graduating BUD/S—and Emerson and Benchmade fixed blades, depending on the deployment.

Among other equipment we’d carry would be a square of a VS-17 panel, used to alert pilots to a friendly position so they wouldn’t fire on us. In theory, at least.

Initially, I tried to keep everything off my waist, even going so far as to carry my extra pistol mags in another drop-leg on my other side. (I cinched it up high so I could still access the pocket on my left leg.)

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.

O
n 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.

G
ET
U
P,
K
YLE

A
bout 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.

A
N
A
RMED
C
AMP

F
rom 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.)

W
hile 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 Fallujah 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.