by Chris Kyle
Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have been a problem. But a few days earlier we had noticed a pattern: mopeds would ride past a COP a few minutes before and after an attack, obviously scouting the place and then getting intel on the attack. We requested to be cleared hot to shoot anyone on a moped. The request was denied.
The lawyers or someone in the chain of command probably thought I was blowing them off when they heard about my double shot. The JAG—Judge Advocate General, kind of like a military version of a prosecuting attorney—came out and investigated.
Fortunately, there were plenty of witnesses to what had happened. But I still had to answer all the JAG’s questions.
Meanwhile, the insurgents kept using mopeds and gathering intelligence. We watched them closely, and destroyed every parked moped we came across in houses and yards, but that was the most we could do.
Maybe legal expected us to wave and smile for the cameras.
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN TOUGH TO GO AND JUST BLATANTLY shoot people in Iraq. For one thing, there were always plenty of witnesses around. For another, every time I killed someone in Ramadi I had to write a shooter’s statement on it.
No joke.
This was a report, separate from after-action reports, related only to the shots I took and kills I recorded. The information had to be very specific.
I had a little notebook with me, and I’d record the day, the time, details about the person, what he was doing, the round I used, how many shots I took, how far away the target was, and who witnessed the shot. All that went into the report, along with any other special circumstances.
The head shed claimed it was to protect me in case there was ever an investigation for an unjustified kill, but what I think I was really doing was covering the butts of people much further up the chain of command.
We kept a running tally of how many insurgents we shot, even during the worst firefights. One of our officers was always tasked with getting his own details on the shooting; he, in turn, would relay it back by radio. There were plenty of times when I was still engaging insurgents and giving details to LT or another officer at the same time. It got to be such a pain in the ass that one time when the officer came to ask the details on my shot, I told him it was a kid waving at me. It was just a sick joke I made. It was my way of saying, “Fuck off.”
The red tape of war.
I’M NOT SURE HOW WIDESPREAD THE SHOOTER STATEMENTS were. For me, the process began during my second deployment when I was working on Haifa Street. In that case, someone else filled them out for me.
I’m pretty sure it was all CYA—cover your ass, or, in this case, cover the top guy’s ass.
We were slaughtering the enemy. In Ramadi, with our kill total becoming astronomical, the statements became mandatory and elaborate. I’d guess that the CO or someone on his staff saw the numbers and said that the lawyers might question what was going on, so let’s protect ourselves.
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.)
CLEAR CONSCIENCE
SOMETIMES 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.
FOR 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.
IT 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.
LEUKEMIA
“OUR 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
HOME
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.
GETTING BETTER
THE 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 i
n 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.
MIKE MONSOOR
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.
