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

T
ARGET
-R
ICH
I
ended up getting seven insurgents that day, and more the next.
We were in a target-rich environment.
Because of the way the streets were laid out and the number of
insurgents, we were getting close shots—a number were as close as
200 yards. My longest during this time was only about 880; the
average was around 400.
The city around us was schizophrenic. You’d have ordinary
civilians going about their business, selling things, going to market,
whatever. And then you’d have guys with guns trying to sneak up
on the side streets and attack the soldiers putting up the wall. After
we began engaging the insurgents, we would become the targets
ourselves. Everyone would know where we were, and the bad guys
would come out of their slug holes and try and take us down.
It got to the point where I had so many kills that I stepped back
to let the other guys have a few. I started giving them the best spots
in the buildings we took over. Even so, I had plenty of chances to
shoot.
One day we took over this house and, after letting my guys
choose their places, there were no more windows to fire from. So I
took a sledgehammer and broke a hole in the wall. It took me quite

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a while to get it right.
When I finally set up my place, I had about a three-hundred-
yard view. Just as I got on my gun, three insurgents came out right
across the street, fifteen yards away.
I killed all of them. I rolled over and said to one of the officers
who’d come over, “You want a turn?”
A
fter a few days, we figured out that the attacks were
concentrating when the work crews reached an intersection. It
made sense: the insurgents wanted to attack from a place where
they could easily run off.
We learned to bump up and watch the side streets. Then we
started pounding these guys when they showed up.
F
allujah was bad. Ramadi was worse. Sadr City was the worst.
The overwatches would last two or three days. We’d leave for a
day, recharge, then go back out. It was balls-to-the-wall firefights
every time.
The insurgents brought more than just their AKs to a fight. We
were getting rocketed every fight. We responded by calling in air
cover, Hellfires and what-have-you.
The surveillance network overhead had been greatly improved
over the past several years, and the U.S. was able to make pretty
good use of it when it came to targeting Predators and other assets.
But in our case, the bastards were right out in the open, extremely

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easy to spot. And very plentiful.
T
here were claims by the Iraqi government at one point that we
were killing civilians. That was pure bullshit. While just about every
battle was going down, Army intelligence analysts were intercepting
insurgent cell phone communications that were giving a blow-by-
blow account.
“They just killed so-and-so,” ran one conversation. “We need
more mortarmen and snipers. . . . They killed fifteen today.”
We had only counted thirteen down in that battle—I guess we
should have taken two out of the “maybe” column and put them in
the “definite” category.