animal, cushy but totally without feeling. “Hi,” she said, but there was no joy in her voice. Then Ashley jumped into my arms, and her smiles and kisses lit me up. I had not seen my family since January, months ago. My wife said Cassie had chosen to sleep over at the home of a friend.
The drive from the base to our house, through the thickets of WELCOME BACK signs on street corners, took twenty minutes, and the conversation was almost solely between Ashley and me. I was tired and filthy from the trip and took a good shower, then put Ashley to bed and reluctantly went to the living room to talk with my wife. The tension was thick enough to cut with a knife. I knew what was coming, and I would rather have been facing an armed enemy soldier.
She was in the living room, standing with her arms crossed, but not truly in a confrontational manner. She was just delivering a decision that had already been made, and as the clock chimed ten o’clock, she said with great finality, “I want a divorce. I’ve already seen a lawyer and filled out the papers.” There were no tears. “Go by his office and sign them, so you don’t get served at work,” she added, and then she walked down the hall and went to bed. I sat down on the sofa in the living room, stunned but unsurprised. Welcome home.
I had spent hours-days-in Kuwait and Iraq reviewing what I might do if this happened, and during the slow, painful midnight hours, I had to make some important decisions that would guide the remainder of my life.
First, I wanted custody of my girls. Kim agreed easily enough, as long as she was allowed to be with them frequently. Again, no surprise there.
The other major decision flowed from that first one. I was coming up on twenty years in the Marines and had worn the uniform for my entire adult life. The decision to join, made as something of a lark while I was in college, had been the best thing I had ever done, and I would not change a thing about my career.
“Your job is over in the Corps,” I told myself that night. “It’s time to put in for retirement.”
I announced my decision the next day, and it shocked everyone who knew me, but when I explained my reason, no one disagreed. A new breed of warriors, many of whom I had helped train, will continue the traditions and the fights to protect our country, but only I can be the father to my kids. I am, and always will be, a Marine, but the title “Dad” comes first.
There was the inevitable feeling that something was unfinished.
I always considered myself to be foremost a sniper, even before considering myself a Marine. Being a sniper is a peculiar profession that can soak up your entire existence, and I was lucky to have been taught not only how to shoot but also how to deal with the stress of being a professional. I had learned not to let the job overwhelm the personal side of who I really was.
I take immense satisfaction in having demonstrated a new way for snipers to go about their business. We no longer have to just sit in a hole in the ground for days, hiding and waiting for a target to saunter by. Give us wheels and protection and we can become terribly efficient hunters who can alter the course of a battle with a few shots from the front edge of the fighting. Out front is where we belong.
But the war was done before I could finish proving the Mobile Sniper Strike Team concept. We had made a difference, and our work of employing precise fire in a mobile war eventually will force doctrinal changes. Future war tacticians will have a new, effective, and very deadly toy in their arsenal, and my boys created it. Hopefully, the new generation will pick up on what we did and improve it to a point where snipers cannot be ignored in battle planning. So was my point proven? Yes. One hundred percent.
I never took pleasure in killing people. Only a crazy person would. Instead, I was glad to have faced and survived many dangerous confrontations without ever showing an ounce of fear. Anyone who says he has no fear in a life-or-death fight is either nuts or lying or both. But my time to deal with the fear always came after the battle, when I would find some private place to maybe shake a little bit and sort it all out in my mind.
I maintained a stable mental plateau by being totally convinced that I had done the right thing and that I had saved a lot of people by killing the enemy. It is much better to think of lives saved than human beings killed.
The curious always ask, “How many people have you killed?” My answer is “I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter.”
I spent a professional lifetime as a sniper, and the numbers can accumulate swiftly. Who in his right mind would insist on wanting credit for every single human life he had snuffed out? Yes, I have dozens and dozens of confirmed kills, and more that were never logged. A respected reporter once wrote that I might be the best sniper in the entire Marine Corps, but every sniper I’ve ever known can be the “best” at any given moment.
None of us would ever make such a claim on our own; to do so would be unseemly, and bragging is only for the bullshit artists, not for real snipers. Our job is not about singular glory, which is why we wear no special badges, but about the mission, and the body count is totally meaningless. Put a good sniper within a target-rich environment like a nest of untrained terrorists, and no “record” will stand for long. A sniper must have absolute confidence in his shooting ability and believe that no one is better, or he is going to screw up in a gunfight when people are depending on him. If you don’t believe that you can walk on water, you have no business carrying a sniper rifle.
The “acquaintances” I saw drop in the scope of my rifle after I killed them will still come by to visit for a few moments in my dreams, but I hope not for much longer. Perhaps all of us can now find some peace and rest.
The realization of what my choice to leave the Corps meant only came to me fully when the battalion was double-tapped for another assignment back to Iraq in 2004 and drew the awful duty of fighting in hotbeds of terrorism such as around the city of Fallujah. They went to war without me, and as I read the names of more friends who were killed or wounded, I felt awful about not being there to cover them.
But for me, it is over. I have passed my rifle and scope to others who are also gifted in this arcane and secret craft, and there is no one left for me to shoot.
As I finished writing this book at the end of 2004, both of my kids were still asking if I was going back to the war. “No,” I told them. “Daddy’s wars are over.” But I knew they would believe that only when my uniform came off for the last time, when I retired in early 2005.
I will never fight again.
INDEX
AAVs (Amtracs; amphibious assault vehicles), 59, 84, 93, 107, 118, 124, 136, 140, 165, 183-84
as ambulances, 169
description of, 68
ABC television network, 273-75
Abrams M1A1 tank, 59, 68, 80, 98-99, 107, 124, 168, 177, 196, 257
main guns of, 84
suicide bombing of, 181, 225
as target, 88, 115
Abu Ghraib prison, 189
AC/DC band, 68
“Achmed,” 151, 154, 158-60
Ad Diwaniyah (Iraq)
Marines’ original fight through, 113, 117, 141, 149-57, 163
stop at, on way home, 283-88
advance regimental quartering party, 4th Marine, 68-70, 99, 103, 164, 181, 236, 288
Afak (Iraq), 124-33, 140, 149
Afak Drill, the, 141
Afghanistan, 48-49
AKM automatic rifle, 241
Al Aziziyah (Iraq), 181, 187
