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

G
UARDIANS
 
AND
 D
EVILS
N
inety-six Americans were killed during the battle of Ramadi;
countless more were wounded and had to be taken from the
battlefield. I was lucky not to be one of them, though there were so
many close calls I began to think I had a guardian angel.
One time we were in a building and we were hosed down by the

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insurgents outside. I was out in the hallway, and as the shooting died
down, I went into one of the rooms to check on some of my guys.
As I came in, I jerked straight back, falling backward as a shot
came in through the window at my head.
The bullet flew just over me as I fell.
Why I went down like that, how I saw that bullet coming at me
—I have no idea. It was almost as if someone had slowed time
down and pushed me straight back.
Did I have a guardian angel?
No idea.
“
....
, Chris is dead,” said one of my boys as I lay on my 
back.
“Damn,” said the other.
“No, no,” I yelled, still flat on the floor. “I’m good, I’m good.
I’m okay.”
I checked for holes a few dozen times, but there were none.
All good.
I
EDs were much more common in Ramadi than they had been in
Fallujah. The insurgents had learned a lot about setting them since
the beginning of the war, and they tended to be pretty powerful—
strong enough to lift a Bradley off the ground, as I’d found out
earlier in Baghdad.
The EOD guys who worked with us were not SEALs, but we
came to trust them as much as if they were. We’d stick them on the
back of the train when we went into a building, then call them

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forward if we saw something suspicious. At that point, their job was
to identify the booby-trap; if it was a bomb, and we were in a
house, we would have gotten the hell out of there fast.
That never happened to us, but there was one time when we
were in a house and some insurgents managed to plant an IED right
outside the front door. They had stacked two 105-mm shells,
waiting for us to come out. Fortunately, our EOD guy spotted it
before we moved out. We were able to sledgehammer our way out
through a second-story wall and escape across a low roof.