American Sniper: The Autobiography Of The Most Lethal Sniper In U.S. Military History Part 63

As the day went on, we started taking fire from AKs and rocket-propelled grenades. The conflict ratcheted up quickly. The RPGs began tearing holes in the loose concrete or adobe walls, breaking through and starting fires.

We decided it was time to leave and called for extraction:

Send the RG-33s! (RG-33s are big bulletproof vehicles designed to withstand IEDs and equipped with a machine-gun turret on the top.)

We waited, continuing the firefight and ducking the insurgents' growing spray of bullets. Finally, the relief force reported that it was five hundred yards away, on the other side of the soccer field.

That was as close as they were getting.

A pair of Army Hummers blew through the village and appeared at the doors, but they couldn't take all of us. The rest of us started to run for the RG-33s.

Someone threw a smoke grenade, I guess with the thought that it would cover our retreat. All it really did was make it impossible for us to see. (The grenades should be used to screen movement; you run behind the smoke. In this case, we had to run through it.) We ran from the house, through the cloud of smoke, ducking bullets and dodging into the open field.

It was like a scene from a movie. Bullets sprayed and plinked into the dirt.

The guy next to me fell. I thought he'd been hit. I stopped, but before I could grab him, he jumped to his feet-he'd only tripped.

"I'm good! I'm good!" he yelled.

Together we continued toward the trucks, bullets and turf flying everywhere. Finally, we reached the trucks. I jumped into the back of one of the RG-33s. As I caught my breath, bullets splashed against one of the bulletproof windows on the side, spiderwebbing the gla.s.s.

A few days later, I was westward-bound, back to Delta Platoon. The transfer I'd asked for earlier was granted.

The timing was good. Things were starting to get to me. The stress had been building. Little did I know it was going to get a lot worse, even as the fighting got a lot less.

CHIEF PETTY OFFICER KYLE

By now, my guys had left al-Qa'im and were at a place called Rawah, also out west near the Syrian border. Once again they'd been put to work building barracks and the rest.

I got lucky; I missed the construction work. But there wasn't much going on when I arrived, either.

I was just in time for a long-range desert patrol out on the border. We drove out there for a few days hardly seeing a person, let alone insurgents. There had been reports of smuggling across the desert, but if it was going on, it wasn't going on where we were.

Meanwhile, it was hot. It was 120 degrees at least, and we were driving in Hummers that had no air-conditioning. I grew up in Texas, so I know warm; this was worse. And it was constant; you couldn't get away from it. It hardly cooled off at night-it might fall to 115. Rolling down the windows meant taking a risk if there was an IED. Almost worse was the sand, which would just blow right in and cover you.

I decided I preferred the sand and IED danger to the heat. I rolled down the windows.

Driving, all you saw was desert. Occasionally, there would be a nomad settlement or a tiny village.

We linked up with our sister platoon, then the next day we stopped at a Marine base. My chief went in and did some business; a little while later he came out and found me.

"Hey," he told me, grinning. "Guess what-you just made chief."

I had taken the chief's exam back in the States before we deployed.

In the Navy, you usually have to take a written test to get promoted. But I'd lucked out. I got a field promotion to E5 during my second deployment and made E6 thanks to a special merit program before my third deployment. Both came without taking written tests.

(In both cases I had been doing a lot of extra work within the Team, and had made a reputation on the battlefield. Those were the important factors in awarding the new ranks.)

That didn't fly for the chief's exam. I took the written test and barely pa.s.sed.

I should explain a bit more about written tests and promotions. I'm not unusually adverse or allergic to tests, at least no more than anyone else. But the tests for SEALs added an extra burden.

At the time, in order to get promoted, you had to take an exam in your job area-not as a SEAL, but in whatever area you had selected before being a SEAL. In my case, that would have meant being evaluated in the intelligence area.

Obviously, I wasn't in a position to know anything about that area. I was a SEAL, not an intelligence a.n.a.lyst. I didn't have a clue what sort of equipment and procedures intel used to get their jobs done.

Considering the accuracy of the intel we usually got, I would have guessed dartboard, maybe. Or just a fine pair of dice.

In order to get promoted, I would have had to study for the test, which would have involved going to a secure reading area, a special room where top-secret material can be reviewed. Of course, I would have had to do this in my spare time.

There weren't any secure reading areas in Fallujah or Ramadi where I fought. And the literature in the latrines and heads wouldn't have cut it.

(The tests are now in the area of special operations, and pertain to things SEALs actually do. The exams are incredibly detailed, but at least it has to do with our job.)

Becoming a chief was a little different. This test was on things SEALs should know.

That hurdle cleared, my case had to be reviewed by a board and then go through further administrative review by the upper echelon. The board review process included all these chief petty officers and master chiefs sitting down and reviewing a package of my accomplishments. The package is supposed to be a long dossier of everything you've done as a SEAL. (Minus the bar fights.)

The only thing in my package was my service record. But that had not been updated since I graduated BUD/S. My Silver Stars and Bronze Medals weren't even in there.

I wasn't crazy about becoming a chief. I was happy where I was. As chief, I would have all sorts of administrative duties, and I wouldn't get as much action. Yes, it was more money for our family, but I wasn't thinking about that.

Chief Primo was on the review board back at our base in the States. He was sitting next to one of the chiefs when they began reviewing my case.

"Who the h.e.l.l is this dips.h.i.+t?" said the other chief when he saw my thin folder. "Who does he think he is?"

"Why don't you and I go to lunch?" said Primo.

He agreed. The other chief came back with a different att.i.tude.

"You owe me a Subway sandwich, f.u.c.ker," Primo told me when I saw him later on. Then he told me the story.

I owe him all that and more. The promotion came through, and, to be honest, being chief wasn't near as bad as I thought it would be.

Truth is, I never cared all that much about rank. I never tried to be one of the highest-ranking guys. Or even, back in high school, to be one of the students with the highest average.

I'd do my homework in the truck in the morning. When they stuck me in the Honor Society, I made sure my grades dipped just enough the next semester to get kicked out. Then I brought them up again so my parents wouldn't get on me.

Maybe the rank thing had to do with the fact that I preferred being a leader on the ground, rather than an administrator in a back room. I didn't want to have to sit at a computer, plan everything, then tell everyone about it. I wanted to do my thing, which was being a sniper-get into combat, kill the enemy. I wanted to be the best at what I wanted to do.

I think a lot of people had trouble with that att.i.tude. They naturally thought that anyone who was good should have a very high rank. I guess I'd seen enough people with high rank who weren't good not to be swayed.

TOO MUCH THINKING

"On the road again ..."