Chris Kyle - American Sniper

I’ve always loved celebrating the Fourth of July. I love the symbolism, meaning of the day, and of course the fireworks and the barbecues. It’s just a wonderful time.

But that day, as I sat back and watched the red, white, and blue sparkles, sadness suddenly spread over me. I fell into a deep black hole.

“This sucks,” I muttered as the fireworks exploded.

I wasn’t critiquing the show. I had just realized that I might never see my friend Marcus Luttrell again. I hated to be unable to do anything to help my friend, who was facing God only knew what kind of trouble.

We’d gotten word a few days before that he was missing. I’d also heard through the SEAL grapevine that the three guys he was with were dead. They’d been ambushed by the Taliban in Afghanistan; surrounded by hundreds of Taliban fighters, they fought ferociously. Another sixteen men in a rescue party were killed when the Chinook they were flying in was shot down. (You can and should read the details in Marcus’s book, Lone Survivor .)

To that point, losing a friend in combat seemed if not impossible, at least distant and unlikely. It may seem strange to say, given everything I’d been through, but at that point we were feeling pretty sure of ourselves. Cocky, maybe. You just get to a point where you think you’re such a superior fighter that you can’t be hurt.

Our platoon had come through the war without any serious injuries. In some respects, training seemed more dangerous.

There had been accidents in training. Not long before, we were doing ship takedowns when one of our platoon members fell while going up the side. He landed on two other guys in the boat. All three had to go to the hospital; one of the men he landed on broke his neck.

We don’t focus on the dangers. The families, though, are a different story. They’re always very aware of the dangers. The wives and girlfriends often take turns sitting in the hospital with the families of people who are injured. Inevitably, they realize they could be sitting there for their own husband or boyfriend.

Iremained torn up about Marcus for the rest of the night, in my own private black hole. I stayed there for a few days.

Work, of course, continued. One day, my chief popped his head into the room and signaled me to join him outside.

“Hey, they found Marcus,” he said as soon as we were alone.

“Great.”

“He’s fucked up.”

“So what? He’s going to make it.” Anyone who knew Marcus knew that was true. The man cannot be kept down.

“Yeah, you’re right,” said my chief. “But he’s pretty tore up, beat up. It’ll be hard.”

It was hard, but Marcus was up to it. In fact, despite health issues that continue to dog him, he would deploy again not long after leaving the hospital.

Because of what I’d done in Fallujah, I was pulled out a few times to talk to head shed types about how I thought snipers should be deployed. I was now a Subject Matter Expert—an SME in militarese .

I hated it.

Some people might find it flattering to be talking to a bunch of high-ranking officers, but I just wanted to do my job. It was torture sitting in the room, trying to explain what the war was like.

They’d ask me questions like, “What kind of gear should we have?” Not unreasonable, I guess, but all I could think of was: God, you guys are really all pretty stupid. This is basic stuff you should have figured out long ago.

I would tell them what I thought, how we should train up snipers, how we should use them. I suggested more training about urban overwatches and creating hides in buildings, things I’d learned more or less as I went. I gave them ideas about sending snipers into an area before the assault, so they could provide intel to the assault teams before they arrived. I made suggestions on how to make snipers more active and aggressive. I suggested that snipers take shots over the heads of an assault team during training, so the teams could get used to working with them.

I told the brass about gear issues—the dust cover of the M-11, for example, and suppressors that jiggled at the end of the barrel, hurting the accuracy of the rifle.

It was all extremely obvious to me, but not to them.

Asked for my opinion, I’d give it. But most times they didn’t really want it. They wanted me to validate some decision they’d already made or some thought they’d already had. I’d tell them about a given piece of gear I thought we should have; they’d answer that they’d already bought a thousand of something else. I’d offer them a strategy I’d used successfully in Fallujah; they’d quote me chapter and verse on why it wouldn’t work.

Taya:

We had a lot of confrontations while he was home. His enlistment was coming up, and I didn’t want him to re-up.

I felt he had done his duty to the country, even more than anyone could ask. And I felt that we needed him.

I’ve always believed that your responsibility is to God, family, and country—in that order. He disagreed—he put country ahead of family.

And yet he wasn’t completely obstinate. He always said, “If you tell me not to reenlist, I won’t.”

But I couldn’t do that. I told him, “I can’t tell you what to do. You’ll just hate me and resent me all your life.

“But I will tell you this,” I said. “If you do reenlist, then I will know exactly where we stand. It will change things. I won’t want it to, but I know in my heart it will.”

When he reenlisted anyway, I thought, Okay. Now I know. Being a SEAL is more important to him than being a father or a husband.

While we were training up for our next deployment, the platoon got a group of new guys. A few of them stood out—Dauber and Tommy, for example, who were both snipers and corpsmen. But I think the new guy who made the biggest impression was Ryan Job. And the reason was that he did not look like a SEAL; on the contrary, Ryan looked like a big lump.

I was floored that they let this guy come to the Team. Here we all were, buff, in great shape. And here was a round, soft-looking guy.

I went up to Ryan and got in his face. “What’s your problem, fat fuck? You think you’re a SEAL ?”

We all gave him shit. One of my officers—we’ll call him LT—knew him from BUD/S and stuck up for him, but LT was a new guy himself, so that didn’t carry too much weight. Being a new guy, we would have beat Ryan’s ass anyway, but his weight made things a lot worse for him. We actively tried to make him quit.

But Ryan (whose last name was pronounced “jobe,” rhyming with “ear lobe”) wasn’t a quitter. You couldn’t compare his determination with anyone else’s. That kid started working out like a maniac. He lost weight and got into better shape.

More importantly, anything we told him to do, he did. He was such a hard worker, so sincere, and so damn funny, that at some point we just went, I love you. You are the man. Because no matter how he looked, he truly was a SEAL. And a damn good one.

We tested him, believe me. We’d find the biggest man in the platoon and make him carry him. He did it. We’d have him take the hardest jobs in training; he did them without complaint. And he’d crack us up in the process. He had these great facial expressions. He could point his upper lip, screw his eyes around and then twist in a certain way, and you’d lose it.

Naturally, this ability led to a certain amount of fun. For us, at least.

One time we told him to go do the face to our chief.