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

U
NDER THE 
R
UBBLE

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O
ne day I came down from a roof to take a break and headed out
into the backyard of the house with another SEAL sniper. I pulled
open the bipod on my rifle and set it down.
All of a sudden there was an explosion right across from us,
maybe ten feet away. I ducked, then turned and saw the cement
block wall crumbling. Just beyond it were two insurgents, AKs
slung over their shoulders. They looked as stunned as we must
have; they, too, had been taking a break when a stray rocket hit or
maybe some sort of IED went off.
It felt like an old western duel—whoever got to their pistol the
quickest was going to live.
I grabbed mine and started shooting. My buddy did the same.
We hit them, but the slugs didn’t drop them. They turned the
corner and ran through the house where they’d been, then cut out
into the street.
As soon as they cleared the house, the Marines pulling security
on the road shot them down.
A
t one point early in the battle an RPG hit the building I was
working from.
It was an afternoon when I’d set up back from a window on the
top floor. The Marines on the ground had started to take fire on the
street ahead. I began covering them, taking down targets one by
one. The Iraqis started firing back at me, fortunately not too
accurately, which was usually the way they shot.

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Then an RPG hit the side of the house. The wall took the brunt
of the explosion, which was good news and bad news. On the plus
side, it saved me from getting blasted. But the explosion also took
down a good chunk of the wall. It crashed onto my legs, slamming
my knees into the concrete and temporarily pinning me there.
It hurt like hell. I kicked some of the rubble off and kept firing at
the bastards down the block.
“Everybody okay?” yelled one of the other boys I was with.
“I’m good, I’m good,” I yelled back. But my legs were
screaming the opposite. They hurt like a son of a bitch.
The insurgents pulled back, then things stoked up again. That
was the way it would go—a lull, followed by an intense exchange,
then another lull.
When the firefight finally stopped, I got up and climbed out of
the room. Downstairs, one of the boys pointed at my legs.
“You’re limping,” he said.
“
....
’ wall came down on me.”
He glanced upward. There was a good-sized hole in the house
where the wall had been. Until that point, no one had realized that
I’d been in the room where the RPG had hit.
I
limped for a while after that. A long while—I eventually had to
have surgery on both knees, though I kept putting it off for a couple
of years.
I didn’t go to a doctor. You go to a doctor and you get pulled

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out. I knew I could get by.