American Sniper

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 passed.

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 analyst. 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 hell is this dipshit?” 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 attitude.

“You owe me a Subway sandwich, fucker,” 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 attitude. 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…”

Willie Nelson cranked through the speaker system of our Hummer as we set out for our base the next day. Music was about the only diversion we had out here, outside of the occasional stop in a village to talk to the locals. Besides the old-school country my buddy behind the wheel preferred, I listened to a bit of Toby Keith and Slipknot, country and heavy metal vying for attention.

I’m a big believer in the psychological impact of music. I’ve seen it work on the battlefield. If you’re going into combat, you want to be pumped up. You don’t want to be stupid crazy, but you do want to be psyched. Music can help take the fear away. We’d listen to Papa Roach, Dope, Drowning Pool—anything that amped us up. (They’re all in heavy rotation on my workout mix now.)

But nothing could amp me up on the way back to base. It was a long, hot ride. Even though I’d just gotten some good news about my promotion, I was in a dark mood, bored on the one hand, and tense on the other.

Back at base, things were incredibly slow. Nothing was going on. And it started to get to me.

As long as I had been in action, the idea of my being vulnerable, being mortal, had been something I could