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

L
EUKEMIA
“O
ur 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

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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

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language.
And yet I still felt like a quitter, a guy who didn’t do enough.

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