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

That doesn’t sound too smart,
I thought. 
If we come in from
ev ery direction, we’ll be shooting each other.
Usually our

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ambushes are planned in an L-shape to avoid that.
I looked at the chief. The chief looked at me. Suddenly, his
serious expression gave way to a shit-ass grin.
With that, the rest of the platoon bum-rushed me.
I hit the floor a second later. They cuffed me to a chair, and then
began my kangaroo court.
There were a lot of charges against me. The first was the fact
that I had let it be known that I wanted to become a sniper.
“This new guy is ungrateful!” thundered the prosecutor. “He
does not want to do his job. He thinks he is better than the rest of
us.”
I tried to protest, but the judge—none other than the chief
himself—quickly ruled me out of order. I turned to my defense
attorney.
“What do you expect?” he said. “He’s only got a third-grade
edu-Kay-shun.”
“Guilty!” declared the judge. “Next charge!”
“Your Honor, the defendant is disrespectful,” 
said the
prosecutor. “He told the CO to
....
off.”
“Objection!” said my lawyer. “He told the 
OIC
to
....
off.”
The CO is the commanding officer of the Team; the OIC is the
officer in charge of the platoon. A pretty big difference, except in
this case.
“Guilty! Next charge!”
For every offense I was found guilty of—which meant anything

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and everything they could make up—I had to take a drink of Jack
Daniels and Coke, followed by a shooter of Jack.
They got me pretty wasted before we even got to the felonies.
At some point, they stripped me down and put ice down my
drawers. Finally I passed out.
Then they spray-painted me, and for good measure, drew
Playboy bunnies on my chest and back with a marker. Just the sort
of body art you want for your honeymoon.
At some point, my friends apparently became concerned about
my health. So they taped me to a spine board completely naked,
took me outside, and stood me up in the snow. They left me for a
while until I regained some amount of consciousness. By then I was
jackhammering hard enough to put a hole through a bunker roof.
They gave me an IV—the saline helps cut down the alcohol in your
system—and finally took me back to the hotel, still taped to the
spine board.
All I remember from the rest of the night is being lifted up a
bunch of stairs, apparently to my motel room. There must have
been a few spectators, because the boys were yelling, “Nothing to
see here, nothing to see!” as they carried me in.
T
aya washed off most of the paint and the bunnies when I met up
with her the next day. But a few were still visible under my shirt. I
kept my jacket tightly buttoned for the ceremony.
By then, the swelling in my face was almost completely gone.

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The stitches in my eyebrow (from a friendly fight among teammates
a few weeks early) were healing nicely. The cut on my lip (from a
training exercise) was also healing pretty well. It’s probably not
every bride’s dream to have a spray-painted, beat-up groom, but
Taya seemed happy enough.
The amount of time we had for our honeymoon, though, was a
sore point. The Team was gracious enough to give me three days to
get hitched and honeymoon. As a new guy, I was appreciative of
the brief leave. My new wife wasn’t quite as understanding, and
made that clear. Nonetheless, we married and honeymooned
quickly. Then I got back to work.

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