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

G
ET
 M
Y
 G
UN
A
s always, there were moments of high anxiety mixed with bizarre
events and random comic relief.
One day at the tail end of an op, I hustled back to the Bradley
with the rest of the guys. Just as I reached the vehicle, I realized my
sniper rifle had been left behind—I’d put it down in one of the
rooms, then forgotten to bring it with me when I’d left.
Yeah. Stupid.
I reversed course. LT, one of my officers, was just running up.
“Hey, we gotta go back,” I said. “My gun’s in the house.”
“Let’s do it,” said LT, following me.

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We turned around and raced back to the house. Meanwhile,
insurgents were sweeping toward it—so close we could hear them.
We cleared the courtyard, sure we would run into them.
Fortunately, there was no one there. I grabbed the rifle and we
raced back to the Bradleys, about two seconds ahead of a grenade
attack. The ramp shut and the explosions sounded.
“What the hell?” demanded the officer in charge as the vehicle
drove off.
LT smirked.
“I’ll explain later,” he said.
I’m not sure he ever did.
V
ICTORY
I
t took about a month to get the barriers up. As the Army reached
its objective, the insurgents started to give up.
It was probably a combination of them realizing the wall was
going to be finished whether they liked it or not, and the fact that we
had killed so many of the bastards that they couldn’t mount much of
an attack. Where thirty or forty insurgents would gather with AKs
and RPGs to fire on a single fence crew at the beginning of the op,
toward the end the bad guys were putting together attacks with two
or three men. Gradually, they faded into the slums around us.
Muqtada al-Sadr, meanwhile, decided it was time for him to try
and negotiate a peace with the Iraqi government. He declared a

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ceasefire and started talking to the government.
Imagine that.
Taya:
People always told me I didn’t really know Chris or
what he was doing, because he was a SEAL. I remember
going to an accountant one time. He said he knew some
SEALs and those guys told him no one ever really knew
where they went.
“My husband’s on a training trip,” I said. “I know
where he is.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Well, yes I do. I just talked to him.”
“But you don’t know really what they’re doing.
They’re SEALs.”
“I—”
“You can never know.”
“I know my husband.”
“You just can’t know. They’re trained to lie.”
People would say that a lot. It irritated me when it
was someone I didn’t know well. The people I did know
well respected that I might not know every detail but I
knew what I needed to know.

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