Modern American Snipers

by Chris Martin

  After taking control of a four-story building to set up an overwatch for an Army infantry platoon, one of the Punishers—60 gunner Ryan “Biggles” Job—was gravely injured. Joking only moments earlier, the sniper team came under heavy fire and a bullet ricocheted off Job’s rifle and struck his face.

  After transporting Job back to Shark Base but fearing he had been mortally wounded, CHARLIE immediately went back out into the field in search of payback. Instead, they had taken the bait and stepped into a trap. Another of Kyle’s closest friends, Marc Lee, was ambushed—shot through the head and killed in action.

  Though left blind, Job survived his wounds. However, he died years later due to complications from surgery.

  * * *

  Though Kyle had honestly believed he had a guardian angel watching over him, what the SEAL perhaps failed to recognize was that he was the guardian angel for so many others.

  While outsiders sometimes look at snipers with morbid fascination, the shooters frequently see themselves as instruments of preserving life more than taking it.

  Kyle served as a prime example of this motivation—perhaps better described as a compulsion. He channeled his dysfunction into something heroic and was both reckless and unrelenting in his efforts to save his fellow servicemen. He was merciless in their protection and repeatedly disregarded his own safety repeatedly to defend American troops.

  Thomas “Drago” Dzieran grew up in Poland and spent time locked up in the Russian gulag before immigrating to the United States. There he became a SEAL while in his thirties and served from ’91 to 2011.

  Drago, who describes himself as “just American,” reflected on Kyle’s ability to use his extreme lethality in order to save the lives of others. He said, “We all know Chris’s prowess as a SEAL, as an operator. But there is one aspect of Chris that seems to me is somewhat overlooked. Chris saved lives. People need to understand this.

  “Chris saved lives while we were conducting our operations. When we were patrolling neighborhoods, he was the angel watching over our shoulders, watching over our heads, making sure that nobody could sneak up on us and take a shot at us. I see him as a great protector of coalition forces.”

  Black Team sniper Howard Wasdin understands the drive to protect. In the opening of his memoir, SEAL Team Six, Wasdin quoted Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock himself to get this mentality across.

  Hathcock once said, “I like shooting, and I love hunting. But I never did enjoy killing anybody. It’s my job. If I don’t get those bastards, then they’re gonna kill a lot of these kids dressed up like Marines.”

  Wasdin said, “People don’t become a SEAL because they want to prove they’re tough guys or say look at me I’ve got this trident on my chest. People get in because they have a special kind of love for their country that most people can’t fathom.

  “Before any op I ever went on, I never asked anyone’s race, color, sexual preference … you know, all those things that divide groups. The only thing I ever asked was, ‘Are these people Americans who need our help?’ or ‘Is this going to help the United States of America?’ And if that was the case, okay, sign me up, I’m ready to go and I’m definitely ready to die if necessary.”

  Wasdin spoke directly about Kyle’s contributions: “Anybody that looks at that man’s career … anybody that really gets it knows it’s not just about putting notches on your rifle butt. It’s about that love and that compassion. I heard that before you kill somebody, you’re not supposed to think of what you’re killing; you’re supposed to think of what you’re allowing to live. If you think of it in those terms, every time Chris pulled that trigger, he was not only allowing other Americans to live who could have potentially been killed by one of those booger-eaters, he was allowing the American way of life to go on.”

  * * *

  Kyle never did show any signs of disturbance or regret when contemplating the scores of men he killed—his conscience was clear as polished glass. However, he was endlessly haunted by those he was unable to save.

  Following his breakthrough first deployment as a sniper in which he registered nearly one hundred kills, Kyle opened up to Larry Yatch after the two became close while together in New Orleans.

  Yatch expressed an overriding sense of frustration with his career to that point. Their shared combat early in the Iraq War had been demoralizing. And even as he was precommissioning Support Activity One, Yatch strove for more.

  The officer explained, “At that point I felt like I needed to get to the next thing; I needed to go to Dam Neck [SEAL Team Six]. If I could go to Dam Neck maybe I could finally do what a SEAL does and feel like I’m accomplished or that I’ve proven myself.”

  However, he was shocked to discover echoes of those same sentiments expressed by Kyle.

  “What about you?”

  “I feel like a failure. Guys got hurt that I couldn’t protect. There were all these times I wasn’t able to—”

  “Man, what the hell are you talking about? Of anyone, you’re one of the few of us that can actually say you did something.…”

  “He said it wasn’t about the success,” Yatch recalled. “It wasn’t about the kills. It wasn’t about killing bad guys. It was about all the Marines, the Army guys, and his own SEALs that he couldn’t keep from being killed or injured.

  “He wasn’t a taker of life. He was a giver of life. He judged his worth not on the number of people that he killed. He didn’t even judge it on the number of people that he saved. He saw it as his duty to save everyone. He judged his worth on the number of people he was not able to save. And that’s why it ate at him on being unsuccessful—on being a failure.”

  The conversation altered the direction of Yatch’s career. He realized that even if Chris Kyle—the SEAL he could point to who had lived up to what it means to be a SEAL and executed it beyond any other—could not be satisfied with his accomplishments, that was something he needed to accept about himself as well.

  “Chris not only changed the tide of battles and saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives, he took thousands of enemy combatants off the battlefield,” Yatch said. “Yeah, there’s two or three hundred actual dead but there’s also four to five for every one that gets killed, between dealing with their dead or just going, ‘You know what? I’m not going to do this anymore because I just saw my friend’s head explode.’ Chris had taken thousands off the battlefield within a couple month period and that changed the tide of battle. He was the only person who could have done that—it’s not like he was in a jet dropping a bomb that anyone could have dropped.

  “And yet he viewed himself as a failure. That gave me the permission to accept that I will never be fulfilled and that’s okay. I had to accept that and stop worrying about it.

  “He was not unique among SEALs—but he was one of the best among SEALs. He was a great sniper. There are many other snipers who can and would have done what he did. He just did it better. Every SEAL has a mentality of feeling like a failure even though there’s perfect execution. He just took it to the extreme.”

  * * *

  By the conclusion of the Battle of Ramadi more than a hundred coalition and Iraqi troops had been killed with multiple more wounded. Estimates placed the number of insurgents dead at 750 or more.

  Ramadi was made considerably safer in the process, and the battle showed hints of a larger shift in the conflict. While the sectarian civil war had once appeared to be an unstoppable, self-perpetuating tidal wave of bloodshed, an “awakening” of sorts was taking place that would play a pivotal role in reestablishing some semblance of order in the war-torn nation.

  The Anbar Awakening first came about in 2005 as the Sunni nationalists found themselves increasingly at odds with their alleged associates—the foreign radical Sunnis of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Realizing they had been coopted by AQI and their motivations were not actually, intrinsically linked, the Sunni militias turned on their allies.

  The movement picked up momentum as the Battle of Ramadi raged, fueled b
y what was seen as an attempt by the AQI terrorists to pivot the might of coalition forces toward the indigenous Sunni tribes.

  SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser had provided a disproportionate contribution to the victory as well, winding up the most decorated unit in CJSOTF-AP.

  In addition to the achievements of Kyle and CHARLIE platoon—along with the untold success of the nameless SEAL snipers who performed at a similar level during the battle—one SEAL was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

  Michael Monsoor, a member of Kyle’s sister platoon, had previously earned a Silver Star dragging a wounded comrade to safety, along with a Bronze Star.

  On September 29, 2006, he threw himself on a grenade to save the lives of two SEAL snipers who were holding down overwatch for a Delta platoon assault element. Monsoor, who was pulling security duty for the snipers, was the only man positioned to escape the hide site but instead he chose to sacrifice himself to save them.

  11

  The Bullet Does Not Lie

  With JSOC’s Find-Fix-Finish-Exploit-Analyze war plan in full effect, Delta Force took a bloody fight to al-Qaeda’s doorsteps—literally—with nearly immeasurable violence and intensity, night after night, for months on end.

  In 2005, many viewed the Iraq War as unwinnable. Besides an endless stream of reinforcements on either side of the civil war that could be drawn from the local populace, there was a continuous flood of foreign fighters into Iraq who came simply to wage jihad against the Americans.

  JSOC embraced the impossible challenge. The plan was not so much to disrupt al-Qaeda’s multithreaded networks as it was to disintegrate them, cutting down the amorphous organization quicker than it could be repopulated.

  However, the brutal reality is what that required could not be accomplished without considerable sacrifice. The most highly trained warfighters the nation had ever produced put their lives on the line repeatedly—some operators exceeded one thousand combat operations—in order to execute the radically ambitious campaign.

  And despite their overwhelming advantage in terms of training and technology, sooner or later, significant losses were inevitable. And Delta Force paid a heavy toll indeed for its collective heroism.

  A former 3/75 Ranger who was in country at the time said, “East Iraq was going crazy in 2005. And CAG got their ass handed to them one deployment.”

  The situation was so dire that DEVGRU assaulters were redirected from Afghanistan to help augment Delta troops and serve as substitute Unit assaulters. Meanwhile, the British SAS put together a collection to donate to the widows and orphans of Unit KIA.

  It’s been reported that the Unit’s casualty rate was near 20 percent during this time, with more than half being wounded in action.

  Every successive “eagle down” represented the loss of an epic warrior. Each loss was as damaging as the last … and the next.

  But one in particular seemed to reverberate with an added sense of despair. And it bit painfully deep inside both the 75th Ranger Regiment’s 3rd Battalion and Delta’s B Squadron recce troop.

  * * *

  Robert Horrigan—who had played such a pivotal role in Operation Anaconda in early 2002—was widely considered the quintessential Delta Force recce operator.

  He was a gifted tracker, remarkably fit, and mentally unbreakable. His endurance and dedication were legendary in the community, but so too was his kind, gregarious nature—a laid-back Texas boy who actively sought to help others in order ease their burden.

  While Horrigan was on his eighth combat deployment in 2005 with nearly two decades of SOF experience under his belt, those years merely represented the finishing touches of an education that had taken place his entire life.

  Born in Maine before moving to the Austin area, he grew up in the woods, hunting and fishing alongside his identical twin brother, John.

  That’s not an uncommon tale among SOF snipers; an inordinate number were shooting rifles and developing their fieldcraft instincts years before they ever joined the service.

  Former DEVGRU sniper Craig Sawyer, who grew up in southern Texas himself, explained, “I think it’s just part of the culture, growing up hunting and target shooting out in the woods. I guess just being raised in that culture, you’re more familiar dealing with all that stuff. Your rifle almost becomes part of you, you know? With the urban hits and quick raids—in and out—it’s not such a big deal with the NVGs and lasers and all that. But when you do the slow, deliberate recons and the more traditional sniper roles, those field skills really come out.”

  Delta sniper Don Hollenbaugh, another country boy from a small town, said, “Maybe because you’re bored as a kid, you need some exhilaration in your life. ‘I’m going to do something unique.’ And snipers, all they are is hunters. They’re just hunting a different cat.”

  As teenagers, the Horrigan brothers even formed their own juvenile “paramilitary” force—the Manchaca Liberation Organization—with some high school friends for the fun it. The MLO was mostly harmless; they would get decked out in fatigues and face paint and hone their budding tracking skills—and successfully avoid the police when a frightened neighbor woman would call 911. They were also just a bit devious. Two years running the MLO pulled off a clandestine operation at Crockett High School in Austin, Texas, rappelling into a courtyard and chopping down the Christmas tree with the declaration “MLO was here.” And again, they avoided capture as the principal desperately sought the identities of the culprits.

  After graduating high school in 1984, Bob and John Horrigan joined the Army where they would serve alongside one another in A Company of the 75th Ranger Regiment’s 3rd Battalion, under the command of a young officer by the name of Stanley McChrystal.

  In 1991, Horrigan joined Special Forces as an 18B (Weapons Sergeant) with the 7th Special Forces Group’s ODA 721.

  Ten years later, he was already a seasoned member of Delta’s B Squadron recce troop and one of the men Lt. Col. Pete Blaber tasked with the most demanding and perilous missions in the wake of 9/11.

  Horrigan would execute hundreds of additional missions following Operation Anaconda, transitioning from calling down air strikes upon snowy mountain peaks of Afghanistan to leading fellow heroes in the vicious alley and hallway gunfights of Iraq.

  In June of 2005, Master Sergeant Horrigan was forty years old and only weeks away from returning home. Once back in the States, he was set to file his retirement papers, move back to Texas with his wife and daughter. There he would focus full-time on his passion as a bladesmith, making knives with his brother. He might even find the time to earn himself another Texas fishing state record or participate in some Iron Man Triathlons.

  However, until then, he was still doggedly in pursuit of Zarqawi. Living up to his advanced assaulter tag, Horrigan was the first man through the door of a building in Al Qaim—a known Zarqawi compound.

  As he burst through the room, he was shot and killed instantly. Another Delta operator, Michael L. McNulty (who also had an identical twin), was gunned down as well and would die hours later.

  Retired Unit assaulter Larry Vickers said, “Bob went in and the dude was hiding in a corner. It was the last building in a compound and the guy was there waiting for them. Bob went in and didn’t see him. The guy had zeroed in on him. They went in and the guy shot him and the other guy from the corner.

  “And the saddest thing of the whole deal is he was two weeks from coming home and starting his retirement paperwork. Everybody was disturbed that he got killed the way he did. That would have made it sad in any case but he was such a well-liked guy.”

  Horrigan was awarded his third Bronze Star posthumously. His loss was a crushing blow inside the Unit as he had helped to shape its newer generation of operators serving as an OTC instructor and had a wide base of admirers inside Delta Force, among both its younger and more experienced soldiers.

  Vickers added, “I don’t know a single person who didn’t like Bob Horrigan—extremely well-liked guy. Honestly, I don’
t know anybody who didn’t. He was a really just engaging guy. He just seemed like one of those guys who could click with anybody. He was thoroughly likeable and very well respected operator.”

  * * *

  Following the deaths of Horrigan and McNulty—which came just over two weeks after fellow Delta solider, Sergeant First Class Steven Langmark, was killed in action in Al Qaim—McChrystal formally requested the aid of the UKSF’s Task Force Black.

  The UKSF declined due to contrasting rules of engagement and ongoing detention and interrogation concerns. This was to the dismay of SAS commander Richard Williams, who wanted the Special Air Service and Special Boat Service to redirect their focus and join JSOC’s fight against AQI rather than continue to pick at the carcass of Hussein’s defeated Ba’athist regime.

  However, SBS’s M Squadron was thrown into the fire a month later when JSOC shared critical intelligence relating to an al-Qaeda network as its forces were already overcommitted elsewhere.

  In Operation Marlborough—which was executed jointly with the 75th Ranger Regiment and the ISA—SBS operators approached the target building both from the air and from the ground, with SBS snipers loaded in Puma helicopters in an aerial overwatch.

  Immediately, a suicide bomber ran out of the compound and detonated himself just outside the target. The explosion very nearly caused one of the Pumas to crash into the rooftops below. Another Puma spotted a suicide-vest-laden squirter attempting a mad dash out the back. However, a heliborne SBS sharpshooter took him down with clutch accuracy.

  The SBS assault team then proceeded to take down the objective, neutralizing a third suicide bomber inside.

  The UKSF would continue to work in an increasingly tight fashion with JSOC as the war went on, gradually enmeshing operations to the point that they were essentially de facto JSOC special mission units themselves.

  * * *

  The following year, B Squadron escalated the campaign to wipe out the elusive Zarqawi and acquire a measure of vengeance, blowing doors off hinges and clearing buildings with even greater intensity. Over a six-week span, Operation Arcadia resulted in the killing of more than a hundred AQI fighters. This push demonstrated the expansive powers JSOC had harnessed by 2006, fusing the intelligence obtained on site following each successive raid with that which was collected from the air, backed by the analysis of hundreds of hours of UAV footage.