Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper

by Gunnery Sgt. Jack

  On April 15, at four o’clock in the afternoon, Baghdad SWAT was sent to the Central Bank of Baghdad, which was being robbed once again and was ablaze when we arrived. A platoon from India Company cordoned off the area; then our assault force plunged through the smoke to clear the huge building. I climbed atop my Humvee, which had become my standard support position, and was searching window by window and door by door when I picked up some movement on the second story of a neighboring building, near a ladder. A guy with an AK-47 was creeping up on our guys in the swirling smoke that had made him almost invisible. “Almost” isn’t good enough. I set up on him at only 168 yards through the rolling cloud and dropped him cold with two quick shots.

  We recovered over ten million dinars and around a million U.S. dollars from the bank’s vault that day, filling up Amtrac after Amtrac with money, which we hauled back to the Main headquarters compound. A million bucks, there for the taking. It had been a bank robbery, the bank was a catastrophe, and young Marines were actually sitting on piles of enough cash to make them rich, but we were all so focused on fighting and staying alive that I still believe not a one of us scoffed up so much as a dollar bill. The money ended up back at the American Embassy in Kuwait. We think.

  Epilogue

  Welcome Home

  The nuttiness finally ended on April 19, when we handed off central Baghdad to the Army’s 1st Armored Division and began our long trip south. Destination: Kuwait, then home. I had mixed feelings about leaving the combat zone, because the silence and lack of communication from my wife had become deafening, and the day that I would have to deal with the situation was drawing close. It had been hard enough to hold my focus when a mission was going on, but now that we were in a safe, isolated rear area, I had plenty of time for unwanted and unwelcome reflection about what was happening at home.

  The battalion rolled back through towns where we had once spilled blood and lost friends killed and wounded. Our first stop was the awful Iraqi town of Ad Diwaniyah, the same shithole that we had so thoroughly messed up only a few short weeks before. The place was just as disgusting as we remembered, and we sat there for weeks, from April 24 until the end of May, waiting and rotting.

  Our momentum was spent, and boredom, not the fedayeen, became the enemy. The jolt of coming to such a screeching, complete halt after combat left us with mental whiplash and morale contusions. At least in Baghdad we had sodas and decent food, and we could look at the cool women and check out an empty palace now and again, but now even those minor pleasures were gone. In retrospect, cop duty with Baghdad SWAT was better than anything Ad Diwaniyah had to offer.

  The Main headquarters was set up in what once had been some sort of Iraqi military boot camp, a spread of dusty one-story buildings that had motivational sayings painted on the walls in Arabic. Dirt covered everything, and our boots kicked through piles of spent cartridge shells as we cleared workspaces and dove into the usual blizzard of postcombat paperwork to account for all of our gear and caught up on the administrative details. Unfortunately, that did not take very long, and although we resumed training to keep the boys sharp, we could not run them twenty-four hours a day in broiling desert heat.

  Our sanitary needs overwhelmed the available facilities, since our toilets were wooden benches with holes in them, perched above trenches dug by a backhoe. When the trench was filled with human waste, it was covered, and the stalls were shifted to a new trench. In the unbearable heat, the stink was awful, and the latrines attracted about a million flies that feasted on exposed flesh.

  The tight cohesion that the battalion had forged in combat started to evaporate, and fights, arguments, and world-class bitching left many of us on edge. The auxiliary units that had been attached to us for the combat phase, such as the Bravo tanks, the engineers, and the Amtracs, were all sent back to their original units, so those bonds of brotherhood were broken, although not forgotten.

  Most of the lieutenants hung out by Casey’s truck, which became unofficially known as the “Bus Stop,” for we were confident that sooner or later the Marine Corps would remember we were parked out here in the middle of hell and move us on over to Kuwait. The Bus Stop was an oasis for anyone who cared to stop by, and we sat around, hour after hour, day after day, swapping lies and rumors, betting on the date when we would leave, reading magazines and eating candy bars sent from home. We gave a lot of shit to Daniel Tracy, my communications guy, because he had not gotten killed in Baghdad as he had so often predicted. Instead, Daniel and the rest of the guys in our trucks came out of the war as tough combat veterans. The five pigeons that had gone along with the battalion as early warnings for chemical attacks had also all managed to survive the heat, wind, and bullets of the entire conflict. Their cages had been opened before we left Baghdad, and the birds flew away to a well-earned freedom.

  Nobody wanted any more damned MREs. We would rather get sick from eating too many Snickers bars than rip open another MRE pouch. Care packages were gold, and time stood still. A virus swept the camp, causing vomiting and severe, stomach-cramping diarrhea that forced the Marines to use those damned toilets even more. Some guys caught it two or three times, but my own immune system proved to be tougher than the bugs, and I didn’t get sick at all.

  Every day was the same, and almost every hour somebody at the Bus Stop would stand out in the road, shield his eyes against the sun, and actually look for a bus, but then sit back down and say, “Nothing yet.”

  Our battalion—the Bull, the mighty 3/4—had endured a cauldron of combat. From the starting line of this war until the very finish, we were in it, and the eighteen- and nineteen-year-old boys who made up the heart of the battalion had grown even more than the veterans. John Koopman of the Chronicle wrote, “These Marines saw a lot of combat. They fought as much as any unit in Iraq, and more than most.”

  We had battled in Basra, created the deadly efficient Afak Drill, fought hard in Al Budayr, Ad Diwaniyah, and Al Kut, charged across the bridge over the Diyala Canal, and gone straight into Baghdad itself, where we pulled down the statue. Our battalion had a piece of almost every major battle the Marines fought in Iraq. And, as Casey put it, “We cracked the skulls of anyone who tried to fuck with us.” We had lost six good Marines dead, and we held a memorial service on Easter Sunday before a line of six helmets on six rifles that were bayoneted into the Iraqi dirt. More than twenty men were wounded.

  Whether we would achieve military victory in Iraq had never been a question for me, and it had come much easier than I had anticipated. When I had factored in the possible use of weapons of mass destruction, I once guessed that our attacking Coalition force might sustain up to ten thousand casualties. Instead, although we were saddened by the loss of our comrades, the overall casualties for the war were extremely light, and the campaign was extraordinarily short.

  We had accomplished what we had come to do, which was to liberate the people of Iraq.

  Proof that the Iraqis were free from the yoke of Saddam Hussein was dramatically visible when we watched throngs of Shi’ite pilgrims heading to the Muslim holy sites, making their first religious pilgrimage, or hajj, in more than two decades. They were of a different faith, but we were proud to have removed the dictator who had forbidden them to make that sacred journey.

  I am by nature an optimist. It was obvious from the chaos we found during our first day in Baghdad that the transition from war to peace would be neither quick nor smooth. It will take years, but I believe that at the end a strong and peaceful democracy will take root in that ancient land.

  At the end of May, we transferred back to Kuwait. “Tomorrow” observed Casey, “we will be sleeping back in that sacred nation-state, which is just as dirty as this one.”

  There is an eternal question: What do you do with the warriors once the fighting is done? When the warrior returns to the rear, things change, and although I had been through this phenomenon many times, Casey had not. We had been together out where the killing was done and were suddenly back at a ba
se where the administrative offices were air-conditioned to beat the desert heat, the troops had movies to alleviate the boredom, and there was more good food than you could possibly eat. These peculiar places are ruled by the REMFs, the universal derogatory military acronym for rear-echelon motherfuckers, and Casey had not been out of his truck for fifteen minutes before some pretentious senior officer curtly ordered him to straighten his uniform. He was taken aback by the order but dutifully adjusted his cammies, realizing he was walking on alien turf. He also wondered where that officer had been when the bullets were flying.

  Then came the news about some of the awards that we expected to be distributed for the action in Iraq. Casey was more than satisfied to receive a Navy Achievement Medal with V for valor, and I was to receive another Bronze Star, also with the distinction of a V. But we were apoplectic to learn that Officer Bob, our ineffectual leader who couldn’t find his way around the block, would receive not only a Navy Commendation Medal but also a bump-up promotion to command a rifle company. I was pissed off beyond belief, and at that moment, Casey stopped caring.

  He knew he was on a fast track with the Corps, and in fact he was promoted, to the rank of captain, but I was not surprised when he said he would be getting out. After combat, it is hard to endure the peacetime bullshit, and he told me there were other things he wanted to do. Soon after his return to civilian life, he was accepted at a prestigious university’s law school. I cannot imagine this guy, whom I had depended upon for my very survival and who had been my partner in battle, going to work in a coat and tie. After having been tested in combat, he returned to the civilian world viewing life differently and would no longer accept things at face value. The wide-eyed wonder and jumpy innocence I had first seen in him were gone, and today he is much quieter, calmer, and more thoughtful. There was no longer the burning need to prove himself, and Casey departed from the Corps cleanly, with memories but without longing.

  I left Kuwait with a thirty-man advance party from the battalion, aboard an aircraft loaded with Marines from various units, and while they celebrated their flight back to the world, I dreaded what lay ahead. I smiled and kept my emotions to myself, all the way to California.

  I had telephoned my wife from Kuwait and finally caught up with her when I managed to get the call patched through to her classroom. Instead of excitement, the conversation was impersonal and cold. Oh, how you doin? … The girls are good.

  By the time we boarded the plane, I was resigned to the inevitable. As I winged across the broad Atlantic Ocean, and then across the entire United States, her words from that brief conversation slammed my brain. We need to talk.

  In thirty hours, we jumped from a desert in Kuwait to another in California and landed at March Air Force Base. Then seven buses took us on a two-hour ride over to 29 Palms, and the long odyssey finally delivered us to the Marine base. Highway 62 was ablaze with bright lights, yellow ribbons, and hundreds of signs, WELCOME HOME! WELCOME BACK!

  We checked our weapons into the armory and then were bused to the official greeting ceremonies in the parking lot behind the base gymnasium. Spotlights turned the place to bright daylight, and several dozen tired, happy, and thankful men dashed from the buses into the waiting arms of families and friends, while a band crashed out the “Marine Hymn.” There were hugs and kisses and enough tears to wash away the Kuwaiti dust that still clung to their uniforms.

  I searched the crowd but did not see my wife, who was in the midst of the throng, almost as if she were hiding. Ashley was on her hip, but eight-year-old Cassie was nowhere in sight. Trying to hug Kim was like holding a stuffed animal, cushy but totally without feeling. “Hi,” she said, but there was no joy in her voice. Then Ashley jumped into my arms, and her smiles and kisses lit me up. I had not seen my family since January, months ago. My wife said Cassie had chosen to sleep over at the home of a friend.

  The drive from the base to our house, through the thickets of WELCOME BACK signs on street corners, took twenty minutes, and the conversation was almost solely between Ashley and me. I was tired and filthy from the trip and took a good shower, then put Ashley to bed and reluctantly went to the living room to talk with my wife. The tension was thick enough to cut with a knife. I knew what was coming, and I would rather have been facing an armed enemy soldier.

  She was in the living room, standing with her arms crossed, but not truly in a confrontational manner. She was just delivering a decision that had already been made, and as the clock chimed ten o’clock, she said with great finality, “I want a divorce. I’ve already seen a lawyer and filled out the papers.” There were no tears. “Go by his office and sign them, so you don’t get served at work,” she added, and then she walked down the hall and went to bed. I sat down on the sofa in the living room, stunned but unsurprised. Welcome home.

  I had spent hours—days—in Kuwait and Iraq reviewing what I might do if this happened, and during the slow, painful midnight hours, I had to make some important decisions that would guide the remainder of my life.

  First, I wanted custody of my girls. Kim agreed easily enough, as long as she was allowed to be with them frequently. Again, no surprise there.

  The other major decision flowed from that first one. I was coming up on twenty years in the Marines and had worn the uniform for my entire adult life. The decision to join, made as something of a lark while I was in college, had been the best thing I had ever done, and I would not change a thing about my career.

  “Your job is over in the Corps,” I told myself that night. “It’s time to put in for retirement.”

  I announced my decision the next day, and it shocked everyone who knew me, but when I explained my reason, no one disagreed. A new breed of warriors, many of whom I had helped train, will continue the traditions and the fights to protect our country, but only I can be the father to my kids. I am, and always will be, a Marine, but the title “Dad” comes first.

  There was the inevitable feeling that something was unfinished.

  I always considered myself to be foremost a sniper, even before considering myself a Marine. Being a sniper is a peculiar profession that can soak up your entire existence, and I was lucky to have been taught not only how to shoot but also how to deal with the stress of being a professional. I had learned not to let the job overwhelm the personal side of who I really was.

  I take immense satisfaction in having demonstrated a new way for snipers to go about their business. We no longer have to just sit in a hole in the ground for days, hiding and waiting for a target to saunter by. Give us wheels and protection and we can become terribly efficient hunters who can alter the course of a battle with a few shots from the front edge of the fighting. Out front is where we belong.

  But the war was done before I could finish proving the Mobile Sniper Strike Team concept. We had made a difference, and our work of employing precise fire in a mobile war eventually will force doctrinal changes. Future war tacticians will have a new, effective, and very deadly toy in their arsenal, and my boys created it. Hopefully, the new generation will pick up on what we did and improve it to a point where snipers cannot be ignored in battle planning. So was my point proven? Yes. One hundred percent.

  I never took pleasure in killing people. Only a crazy person would. Instead, I was glad to have faced and survived many dangerous confrontations without ever showing an ounce of fear. Anyone who says he has no fear in a life-or-death fight is either nuts or lying or both. But my time to deal with the fear always came after the battle, when I would find some private place to maybe shake a little bit and sort it all out in my mind.

  I maintained a stable mental plateau by being totally convinced that I had done the right thing and that I had saved a lot of people by killing the enemy. It is much better to think of lives saved than human beings killed.

  The curious always ask, “How many people have you killed?” My answer is “I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter.”

  I spent a professional lifetime as a sniper, and the numb
ers can accumulate swiftly. Who in his right mind would insist on wanting credit for every single human life he had snuffed out? Yes, I have dozens and dozens of confirmed kills, and more that were never logged. A respected reporter once wrote that I might be the best sniper in the entire Marine Corps, but every sniper I’ve ever known can be the “best” at any given moment.

  None of us would ever make such a claim on our own; to do so would be unseemly, and bragging is only for the bullshit artists, not for real snipers. Our job is not about singular glory, which is why we wear no special badges, but about the mission, and the body count is totally meaningless. Put a good sniper within a target-rich environment like a nest of untrained terrorists, and no “record” will stand for long. A sniper must have absolute confidence in his shooting ability and believe that no one is better, or he is going to screw up in a gunfight when people are depending on him. If you don’t believe that you can walk on water, you have no business carrying a sniper rifle.

  The “acquaintances” I saw drop in the scope of my rifle after I killed them will still come by to visit for a few moments in my dreams, but I hope not for much longer. Perhaps all of us can now find some peace and rest.

  The realization of what my choice to leave the Corps meant only came to me fully when the battalion was double-tapped for another assignment back to Iraq in 2004 and drew the awful duty of fighting in hotbeds of terrorism such as around the city of Fallujah. They went to war without me, and as I read the names of more friends who were killed or wounded, I felt awful about not being there to cover them.