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

T
HANKSGIVING
I
thought about the casualties I’d seen, and the fact that I could be
the next one carried out. But I wasn’t going to quit. I wasn’t going
to stop going into houses or stop supporting them from the roofs. I
couldn’t let down these young Marines I was with.
I told myself: 
I’m a SEAL. I’m supposed to be tougher and
better. I’m not going to give up on them.
It wasn’t that I thought I was tougher or better than they were. It
was that I knew that was the way people looked at us. And I didn’t
want to let those people down. I didn’t want to fail in their eyes—or
in mine.
That’s the line of thinking that’s beaten into us: 
We’re the best
of the best. We’re invincible.
I don’t know if I’m the best of the best. But I did know that if I
quit, I wouldn’t be.

---

And I certainly did feel invincible. I had to be: I’d made it
through all sorts of shit without getting killed . . . so far.
T
hanksgiving shot past while we were in the middle of the battle.
I remember getting my Thanksgiving meal. They halted the
assault for a little bit—maybe a half-hour—and brought up food to
us on the rooftop where we’d set up.
Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans for ten—all in a
large box.
Together. No separate boxes, no compartments. All in one pile.
Also no plates, no forks, no knives, no spoons.
We dipped our hands in and ate with our fingers. That was
Thanksgiving.
Compared to the MREs we’d been eating, it was awesome.
A
TTACKING THE 
M
ARSH
I
stayed with Lima for roughly a week, then went back to Kilo. It
was terrible to hear who’d been hit and who they’d lost in the time
I’d been gone.
W
ith the assault about finished, we were given a new task: set up a
cordon to make sure no insurgents were able to get back in. Our
sector was over by the Euphrates, on the western side of the town.
From this point on, I was a sniper again. And figuring that my shots

---

would now mostly be at longer range, I went back to the .300 Win
Mag.
We set up in a two-story house overlooking the river a few
hundred yards down from Blackwater Bridge. There was a marshy
area immediately across the river, completely overgrown with
weeds and everything. It was near a hospital the insurgents had
converted into a headquarters before our assault, and even now the
area seemed to be a magnet for savages.
Every night, we’d have someone trying to probe in from there.
Every night I would get my shots off, taking out one or two or
sometimes more.
The new Iraqi army had a camp nearby. Those idiots took it in
their head to send a few shots our way as well. Every day. We hung
a VF panel over our position—an indicator showing we were
friendly—and the shots kept coming. We radioed their command.
The shots kept coming. We called back and cussed out their
command. The shots kept coming. We tried everything to get them
to stop, short of calling in a bomb strike.