Chris Kyle - American Sniper

Four of our guys accompanied his body back home. Meanwhile, since we were on stand-down and not doing anything, I tried to go see Ryan in Germany, where he was being treated. Tony or someone else in the head shed arranged to get me on a flight, but by the time everything was set up, Ryan was already being shipped back to the States for treatment.

Brad, who’d been evac’d earlier because of the frag wound in his knee, met Ryan in Germany and went back to the States with him. It was lucky in a way—Ryan had one of us to be with him and help him deal with everything he had to face.

We all spent a lot of time in our rooms.

Ramadi had been hot and heavy, with an op tempo that was pretty severe, worse even than Fallujah. We’d spend several days, even a week out, with barely a break in between. Some of us were starting to get a little burned out even before our guys got hit.

We stayed in our rooms, replacing bodily fluids, keeping to ourselves mostly.

I spent a lot of time praying to God.

I’m not the kind of person who makes a big show out of religion. I believe, but I don’t necessarily get down on my knees or sing real loud in church. But I find some comfort in faith, and I found it in those days after my friends had been shot up.

Ever since I had gone through BUD/S, I’d carried a Bible with me. I hadn’t read it all that much, but it had always been with me. Now I opened it and read some of the passages. I skipped around, read a bit, skipped around some more.

With all hell breaking loose around me, it felt better to know I was part of something bigger.

My emotions shot up when I heard that Ryan had survived. But my overriding reaction was: Why wasn’t it me?

Why did this have to happen to a new guy?

I’d seen a lot of action; I’d had my achievements. I had my war. I should have been the one sidelined. I should have been the one blinded.

Ryan would never see the look on his family’s face when he came home. He’d never see how much sweeter everything is when you get back—see how much better America looks when you’ve been gone from it for a while.

You forget how beautiful life is, if you don’t get a chance to see things like that. He never would.

And no matter what anybody told me, I felt responsible for that.

We’d been in that war for four years, through countless hairy situations, and no SEAL had ever died. It had looked like the action in Ramadi, and all Iraq, was starting to wind down, and now we’d been hit terribly hard.

We thought we would be shut down, even though our deployment still had a couple of months to run. We all knew the politics—my first two commanders had been ultra-cautious pussies, who got ahead because of it. So we were afraid that the war was over for us.

Plus, we were seven men short, cut nearly in half. Marc was dead. Brad and Ryan were out because of their wounds. Four guys had gone home to escort Marc’s body home.

Aweek after losing our guys, the CO came around to talk to us. We gathered in the chow hall at Shark Base and listened as he talked. It wasn’t a long speech.

“It’s up to you,” he said. “If you want to take it easy now, I understand. But if you want to go out, you have my blessing.”

“Fuck yeah,” we all said. “We want to go out.”

I sure did.

Half of a platoon joined us from a quieter area to help fill us out. We also got some guys who had graduated training but hadn’t been assigned to a platoon yet. Real new guys. The idea was to give them a little exposure to the war, a little taste of what they were getting into before they trained up for the main event. We were pretty careful with them—we didn’t allow them to go out on ops.

Being SEALs, they were chomping at the bit, but we held them back, treating them like gofers at first: Hey, go line the Hummers up so we can go. It was a protection thing; after all we’d just been through, we didn’t want them getting hurt out in the field.

We did have to haze them, of course. This one poor fella, we shaved his head and his eyebrows, then spray-glued the hair back on his face.

While we were in the middle of that, another new guy walked into the outer room.

“You don’t want to go in there,” warned one of our officers.

The new guy peeked in and saw his buddy getting pummeled.

“I gotta.”

“You don’t want to go in there,” repeated the officer. “It’s not going to end well.”

“I have to. He’s my buddy.”

“Your funeral,” said the officer, or words to that effect.

New guy number two ran into the room. We respected the fact that he was coming to his friend’s rescue, and showered him with affection. Then we shaved him, too, taped them together, and stood them in the corner.

Just for a few minutes.

We also hazed a new-guy officer. He got about what everyone got, but didn’t take it too well.

He didn’t like the idea of being mishandled by some dirty enlisted men.

Rank is a funny concept in the Teams. It’s not disrespected exactly, but it’s clearly not the full measure of the man.

In BUD/S, officers and enlisted are all treated the same: like shit. Once you make it through and join the Teams, you’re a new guy. Again, all new guys are treated the same: like shit.

Most officers take it fairly well, though obviously there are exceptions. The truth is, the Teams are run by the senior enlisted. A guy who’s a chief has twelve to sixteen years of experience. An officer joining a platoon has far less, not just in SEALs but in the Navy as well. Most of the time he just doesn’t know shit. Even an OIC might have only four or five years’ experience.

That’s the way the system works. If he’s lucky, an officer might get as many as three platoons; after that, he’s promoted to task unit commander (or something similar) and no longer works directly in the field. Even to get there, much of what he’s done has been admin work and things like de-confliction (making sure a unit doesn’t get fired on by another one). Those are important tasks, but they’re not quite the same as hands-on combat. When it comes to door-kicking or setting up a sniper hide, the officer’s experience generally doesn’t run too deep.

There are exceptions, of course. I worked with some great officers with good experience, but as a general rule, an officer’s knowledge of down-and-dirty combat is just nowhere near the same as the guy with many years of combat under his belt. I used to tease LT that when we did a DA, he would be in the stack, ready to go in, not with a rifle but his tactical computer.

Hazing helps remind everybody where the experience lies—and who you better look to when the shit hits the fan. It also shows the people who have been around a little bit what to expect from the new guys. Compare and contrast: who do you want on your back, the guy who ran in to save his buddy or the officer who shed tears because he was being mistreated by some dirty enlisted men?

Hazing humbles all the new guys, reminding them that they don’t know shit yet. In the case of an officer, that dose of humility can go a long way.

I’ve had good officers. But all the great ones were humble.

We worked back into things slowly, starting with brief overwatches with the Army. Our missions would last for an overnight or two in Injun country. A tank got hit by an IED, and we went out and pulled security on it until it could be recovered. The work was a little lighter, easier than it had been. We didn’t go as far from the COPs, which meant that we didn’t draw as much fire.