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

T
HE 
B
AD 
G
UYS
T
he enemies we were fighting were savage and well-armed. In just
one house, the Marines found roughly two dozen guns, including
machine guns and sniper rifles, along with homemade rocket stands
and a mortar base.
That was just one house on a long block. It was a nice house, in
fact—it had air conditioning, elaborate chandeliers, and fancy
Western furniture. It made a good place to rest while we took a
break one afternoon.
The houses were all searched carefully, but the weapons were
usually pretty easy to find. The Marines would go inside and see a
grenade launcher propped against a china cabinet—with rockets
stacked next to the teacups below. At one house, Marines found
dive tanks—apparently the insurgent who had been staying at the

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house used them to sneak across the river and make an attack.
Russian equipment was also common. Most of it was very old—
in one house there were rifle grenades that could have been made
during World War II. We found binoculars with old Communist
hammer-and-sickle emblems. And IEDs, including some cemented
into walls, were everywhere.
A
lot of people who have written about the battles in Fallujah
mention how fanatical the insurgents were. They 
were 
fanatical, but
it wasn’t just religion that was driving them. A good many were
pretty doped up.
Later on in the campaign, we took a hospital they’d been using
at the outskirts of the city. There we found cooked spoons, drug
works, and other evidence of how they prepared themselves. I’m
not an expert, but it looked to me that they would cook up heroin
and inject it before a battle. Other things I’ve heard said they would
use prescription drugs and basically anything they could get to help
get their courage up.
You could see that sometimes when you shot them. Some could
take several bullets without seeming to feel it. They were driven by
more than just religion and adrenaline, even more than blood lust.
They were already halfway to Paradise, in their minds at least.