Jack Coughlin: Shooter

© 2005

Gunnery Sgt. Jack Coughlin, USMC, and Capt. Casey Kuhlman, USMCR

with Donald A. Davis

This book contains the personal stories of two individuals, but it took magnificent efforts from many people to complete. We owe great debts to them all.

First, we would like to thank our agent, Jim Hornfischer, who believed in the project, and in us, from the minute we sent him the proposal. Without his sage advice, steady hand, and extraordinary knowledge of the book world, this project would never have been created. He is our agent for a career. Thank you.

Our writer, Don Davis, molded our original manuscript into a wonderful story. More than that, Don gave us graduate degrees in both writing and in the business of writing. Thanks to you and Robin for your professionalism and way with words.

There are many people at St. Martin’s Press to thank. John Murphy also believed in the book from the beginning and maneuvered it through some tough publishing wickets. Our editor, Charlie Spicer, was magnificent in offering cogent editorial insights and showed us the proper path when things got tough. Joe Cleemann, Joe Rinaldi, Henry Kaufman, India Cooper, Keith Hayes, and many others all worked hard to turn our dreams into reality.

Our brothers in the United States Marine Corps deserve special salutes. To list all of their names would require an encyclopedia, but let it be said that the authors had the honor to stand on the shoulders of giants. We admire you all.

As our former commander, Colonel Bryan McCoy, taught us, you can never achieve great things without believing in what you are trying to accomplish. Darkside Six made believers out of us. Special thanks also go to Sergeant Major Dave Howell, Major Matt Baker, and Major Martin “Crawdad” Wetteraurer. And thanks to our small team of warriors who stayed with us as we roamed around Iraq and kept our asses alive-Daniel Tracy, Jerry Marsh, Luis Castillo, Dustin Campbell, Clint Newbern, and the Panda Bear, Orlando Fuentes. We are eternally indebted to all of you. Rest in peace, Mark Evnin.

To the men of the Bull, you can walk with the pride of knowing that you carried on the Raider legacy. To our peers, our mentors, and those that followed us in the most magical organization we have ever experienced, the Marine Corps, thank you for teaching us, for being our brothers, and for fighting alongside us. And to the scouts and snipers, you are special.

Most of all, we want to express our love and gratitude to our families and close friends, and we end this with personal notes of dedication to them.

On the Coughlin side-Cassie and Ashley, you know that you are the lights of my life, and Daddy loves you. Mom, you can rest now. Fm done. I love you. To my sisters Karen, Susan, Kathy, and Mary-beth, you are the best. Darrell and Willie, thanks. Tina and Neil, there in my time of need as always, I love you both. To Boom Boom, the Sox did it, only a year too late for you. I love you, bro. Dad, I love and miss you every day, and I try to be as good a father as you were to me.

On the Kuhlman side-I send this book to my parents, who supported me while I transformed from a kid to a Marine and back again, and to my brother, Brian: the writer, the therapist, the student. To Joe, Dave, and Jared, my fan club and, more important, my friends.

And to the Corps, and all the Marines who are still serving-keep the faith, and Semper Fi!

– Jack Coughlin and Casey Kuhlman

At another time, on another battlefield, my radio call sign had been “Gabriel,” because the archangel and I have a lot in common. Legend says Gabriel’s trumpet will sound the last judgment. I do the same sort of thing with my rifle.

In 1993, I was the sergeant in charge of a Marine sniper section with Task Force Somalia, and on the evening of January 6, General Jack Klimp barked, “Gabriel, the 10th Mountain CP [command post] says they are under attack. Grab a couple of your boys and go check it out.” I took a three-vehicle convoy bristling with machine guns through the north gate of the Mogadishu stadium, turned right for about thirty yards, then hung a sharp left on the 21 October Road, the main drag through the tattered capital of the famine-gripped country. Resting between my knees was a M82A1A Special Application Scoped Rifle (SASR), a.50 caliber beast of a weapon that weighs more than twenty-eight pounds and fires an armor-piercing incendiary tracer bullet that can punch a big hole through a sheet of steel, and an even bigger hole through flimsy flesh.

Dusk had not yet settled over the city, so the temperature still simmered in the nineties, and children who resembled the walking dead begged for food as we passed. Some three hundred thousand people had already starved to death in Somalia, and many more would die as long as the feuding warlords chose to violently expand their fiefdoms rather than feed and protect their people. When I saw flies crawl on the face of a dead child, it was easy to hate the vicious fighters who were causing such slaughter.

We called the ragtag militia “Skinnies” and “Sammies.” It is natural for a Marine to denigrate the enemy, because it helps dehumanize them. The Germans were “Krauts” in the big wars, the North Koreans and Chinese were “gooks” in Korea, and in Vietnam the enemy was “Charlie.” We had to call them something and didn’t want to think of them as real people, for that might make us hesitate for a fatal moment. The old saying “Know your enemy” does not apply in such cases, for some things are better left unknown.

I had alerted my boys to be ready for a fight because once out of the stadium we never knew if someone would shoot at us. There were always snaps of random gunfire sparking around Mogadishu, but the entire route to the command post of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, about a hundred yards off the 21 October, was quiet. The gates of the walled compound swung open as we approached, and we were welcomed by a colonel who apparently had been expecting the whole damned Marine Corps to come charging over the hill. Instead, they got me and about ten other guys.

The 10th Mountain, a strong division with thousands of combat troops, was spread out all over and beyond Mogadishu and had left only a few security troops to protect their headquarters, in the heart of a city that seethed with unrest. Nevertheless, other than some chipped plaster on the outside walls, I saw no sign that any dangerous firefight had taken place.

The colonel didn’t know he was dealing with a Marine sergeant, since we never wore rank insignia in combat situations, so he treated me as an equal. He escorted me up to the third floor of the command post building, and I put up a hand to shield my eyes from the glaring sunlight. Only six hundred yards away were three long warehouses that our intelligence sources said were packed to the rafters with weapons of the warlords. As long as the guns stayed inside, there was no problem, but if the militiamen decided to come out and play, they would be more than this group of cooks, bakers, and candlestick makers could handle.

A lot of people were hurrying around those warehouses, busy movement with nothing getting done, for they were not taking things in and out. Every so often, they would steal a glance over at us. Although there had been no more than the occasional harassing shot so far, I believed that these guys were doing more than just passing through the area and that the situation had the potential to worsen. I told the colonel Fd be right back, and my Marines and I sped back to the stadium, racing to beat the approaching darkness.