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

T
ERPS

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F
allujah had been taken in an all-out assault, moving through the
city in a very organized fashion. While it had been successful, the
attack had also caused a lot of damage, which had supposedly hurt
support for the new Iraqi government.
You can argue whether that’s true or not—I sure would—but
the top American command didn’t want the same thing to happen in
Ramadi. So, while the Army worked on a plan for taking Ramadi
with minimal destruction, we went to war in the area nearby.
We started with DAs. We had four interpreters—terps, as we
called them—who helped us deal with the locals. At least one and
usually two would go out with us.
One terp we all really liked was Moose. He was a bad-ass.
He’d been working since the invasion in 2003. He was Jordanian,
and he was the only one of the terps we gave a gun. We knew he
would fight—he wanted to be an American so bad he would have
died for it. Every time we got contacted, he would be out there
shooting.
He wasn’t a great shot, but he could keep the enemy’s heads
down. Most importantly, he knew when he could and couldn’t
shoot—not as easy a call as it might seem.
T
here was this little village outside Shark Base we called Gay
Tway. It was infested with insurgents. We would open the gates,
walk out, and hit our target. There was one house we went to three
or four times. After the first time, they didn’t even bother putting the

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door back.
Why they kept going back to that house, I don’t know. But we
kept going back, too; we got to know the place pretty well.
It didn’t take too long before we started getting a lot of contact
in Gay Tway and the village of Viet Ram. An Army National Guard
unit covered that area, and we started working with them.