Part 46 (2/2)

He fell.

This went on for quite a while. Down the block, another insurgent with an AK tried to get a shot on my boys. I took him down-then took down the guy who came to get his gun, and the next one.

Target-rich environment?! h.e.l.l, there were piles of insurgents littering the road. They finally gave up and disappeared. Our guys continued to patrol. The jundis saw action that day; two of them died in a firefight.

It was tough to keep track of how many kills I got that day, but I believe the total was the highest I'd ever had in a single day.

We knew we were in good with the Army captain when he came over to us one day and said, ”Listen, y'all gotta do one thing for me. Before I get s.h.i.+pped out of here, I want to shoot my main tank gun one time. All right? So call me.”

It wasn't too long after that we got in a firefight and we got his unit on the radio. We called him over, and he got his tank in and he got his shot.

There were a lot more in the days that followed. By the time he left Ramadi, he'd shot it thirty-seven times.

PRAYERS AND BANDOLIERS

Before every op, a bunch of the platoon would gather and say a prayer. Marc Lee would lead it, usually speaking from the heart rather than reciting a memorized prayer.

I didn't pray every time going out, but I did thank G.o.d every night when I got back.

There was one other ritual when we returned: cigars.

A few of us would get together and smoke them at the end of an op. In Iraq, you can get Cubans; we smoked Romeo y Julieta No. 3s. We'd light up to top off the day.

In a way, we all thought we were invincible. In another way, we also accepted the fact that we could die.

I didn't focus on death, or spend much time thinking about it. It was more like an idea, lurking in the distance.

It was during this deployment that I invented a little wrist bandolier, a small bullet-holder that allowed me to easily reload without disturbing my gun setup.

I took a holder that had been designed to be strapped on a gun stock and cut it up. Then I arranged some cord through it and tied it to my left wrist.

Generally, when I fired, I would have my fist balled up under the gun to help me aim. That brought the bandolier close. I could fire, take my right hand, and grab more bullets, and keep my eye sighted through the scope at all times.

As lead sniper, I tried to help the new guys, telling them what details to look for. You could tell someone was an insurgent not just by the fact that he was armed but by the way he moved. I started giving advice I'd been given back at the beginning of Fallujah, a battle that by now seemed like a million years ago.

”Dauber, don't be afraid to pull the trigger,” I'd tell the younger sniper. ”If it's within the ROEs, you take him.”

A little bit of hesitation was common for the new guys. Maybe all Americans are a little hesitant to be the first to shoot, even when it's clear that we're under attack, or will be shortly.

Our enemy seemed to have no such problem. With a little experience, our guys didn't, either.

But you could never tell how a guy was going to perform under the stress of combat. Dauber did real well-real well. But I noticed that, for some snipers, the extra strain made them miss shots that they would have no trouble with in training. One guy in particular-an excellent guy and a good SEAL-went through a spell where he was missing quite a lot.

You just couldn't tell how someone was going to react.

Ramadi was infested with insurgents, but there was a large civilian population. Sometimes they'd wander into firefights. You'd wonder what the h.e.l.l they were thinking.

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