American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U. S. Military History

S
HATT AL-
A
RAB
W
ith al-Faw secured, we rigged up two of our DPVs and hit the
road, driving north to Shatt al-Arab, the river that separates Iran
and Iraq as it flows out to the Gulf. Our job was to look for suicide
boats and mine layers that might be coming down the river to the
Gulf. We found an old border station abandoned by the Iraqis and
set up an observation post.

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set up an observation post.
Our ROEs when the war kicked off were pretty simple: 
If you
see anyone from about sixteen to sixty-five and they’re male,
shoot ’em. Kill every male you see.
That wasn’t the official language, but that was the idea. Now that
we were watching Iran, however, we were under strict orders 
not
to fire, at least not at Iran.
Every night someone on the other side of the river would stand
up and take a shot at us. We would dutifully call it in and ask for
permission to return fire. The answer was always a very distinct,
“NO!” Very loud and clear.
Looking back, this made a lot of sense. Our heaviest weapons
were a Carl Gustav and two 60s. The Iranians had plenty of
artillery, and they had the position dialed in. It wouldn’t have taken
anything for them to hit us. And, in fact, what they were probably
trying to do was suck us into a fight so they could kill us.
It did piss us off, though. Somebody shoots at you, you want to
shoot back.
After the high of the start of the war, our spirits sagged. We
were just sitting around doing nothing. One of the guys had a video
camera and we made a video poking fun at it. There wasn’t much
else to do. We found a few Iraqi weapons and gathered them in a
pile to be blown up. But that was it. The Iraqis weren’t sending
boats our way, and the Iranians would only fire a single shot then
duck and wait for us to react. About the most entertaining thing we
could do was wade into the water and piss in their direction.

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For a week we took turns on watch—two guys on, four guys off
—monitored the radio and watched the water. Finally, we were
relieved by another set of SEALs and headed back to Kuwait.