American Sniper

did, he saw something and opened his mouth to shout a warning.

He never got the words out. In that split second, a bullet passed right through his open mouth and flew out the back of his head. He dropped down in a pile on the steps.

We’d been set up. There was a savage on the roof of the house next door, looking down at the window from the roof there.

Training took over.

I scrambled up the steps, stepping over Marc’s body. I sent a hail of bullets through the window, flushing the neighboring roof. So did my teammates.

One of us got the insurgent. We didn’t stop to figure out who it was. We went on up to the roof, looking for more of our ambushers.

Dauber, meanwhile, stopped to check Marc. He was hurt pretty bad; Dauber knew there was no hope.

The tank captain came and got us. They were engaged the whole way, driving in under heavy contact. He brought two tanks and four Bradleys, and they went Winchester, firing all their ammo. It was shit-hot, a fierce hail of lead covering our retreat.

On the way back, I looked out the port on the back ramp of my Bradley. All I could see was black smoke and ruined buildings. They’d suckered us, and their entire neighborhood had paid the price.

For some reason, most of us thought Marc was going to live; we thought Ryan was going to die. It wasn’t until we got back to camp that we heard their fates were reversed.

Having lost two guys in the space of a few hours, our officers and Tony decided it was time for us to take a break. We went back to Shark Base and stood down. (Standing down means you’re out of action and unavailable for combat. In some ways, it’s like an official timeout to assess or reassess what you’re doing.)

It was August: hot, bloody, and black.

Taya:

Chris broke down when he called me with the news. I hadn’t heard anything about it until he called, and it took me by surprise.

I felt grateful that it wasn’t him, yet incredibly sad that it was any of them.

I tried to be as quiet as possible as he talked. I wanted just to listen. There have been very few times in his life, if ever, that I’ve seen Chris in that much pain.

There was nothing I could do, aside from telling his relatives for him.

We sat on the phone for a long time.

A few days later, I went to the funeral at the cemetery overlooking San Diego Bay.

It was so sad. There were so many young guys, so many young families…. It was emotional to be at other SEAL funerals, but this was even more so.

You feel so bad, you cannot imagine their pain. You pray for them and you thank God for your husband being spared. You thank God you are not the one in the front row.

People who’ve heard this story tell me my description gets bare, and my voice faraway. They say I use less words to describe what happened, give less detail, than I usually do.

I’m not conscious of it. The memory of losing my two boys burns hot and deep. To me, it’s as vivid as what is happening around me at this very moment. To me, it’s as deep and fresh a wound as if those bullets came into my own flesh this very moment.

Standing Down

We had a memorial service at Camp Ramadi for Marc Lee. SEALs from every part of Iraq came in for it. And I believe the entire Army unit we’d been working with showed up. They had a lot of concern for us; it was unbelievable. I was very moved.

They put us on the front row. We were his family.

Marc’s gear was right there, helmet and Mk-48. Our task unit commander gave a short but powerful speech; he teared up and I doubt there was a dry eye in the audience—or the camp, for that matter.

As the service ended, each unit left a token of appreciation—a unit patch or coin, something. The captain of the Army unit left a piece of brass from one of the rounds he’d fired getting us out.

Someone in our platoon put together a memorial video with some slides of him, and played it that night with the movie showing on a white sheet we had hung over a brick wall. We shared some drinks, and a lot of sadness.

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.

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