Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper by Gunnery Sgt. Jack, Capt. Casey Kuhlman, Donald A. Davis Coughlin
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fabled Euphrates and Tigris rivers empty into those savannas and then race down the Shatt al-Arab waterway to reach the Persian Gulf. The Caliph Omar, an adviser to the Prophet Mohammed, founded Basra in A.D . 636, and according to legend, it was home port to Sinbad the Sailor. It is even mentioned in
The Arabian Nights.
Here and there, a few Iraqis emerged from low-walled mud huts in isolated hamlets of three or four buildings and waved, just as their Mesopotamian ancestors had greeted other invaders over the centuries. The Persians had come through in 539 B.C ., and Alexander the Great and his Greeks in 331 B.C ., then Muslim Arabs in A.D . 636, the Mongols out of Central Asia in 1258, the Ottoman Turks about three hundred years after that, the British four hundred years later, and the U.S.-led coalition back in 1991. Throw in the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, and Hittites, and the invasion routes into Iraq are littered with the graves of armies.
Modern-day Basra’s claim to fame was the nearby Rumaylah oil fields, where a thousand wells sprouted like grim desert flowers, plus refineries that had the potential of producing about 140,000 barrelsa day. Postwar planning envisioned using the revenue from that oil to pay for rebuilding Iraq.
The city, with a population of almost 1.4 million, was Iraq’s major port; it had an international airport, and rail lines reached out from it to other cities in the region. As an oil and petrochemicals center, a transportation hub, and the second-largest city in Iraq, Basra was the biggest target outside of Baghdad itself.
Our job was to blunt any attempt to reinforce the defense of the oil fields. While we slammed the 51st, and possibly the Medina, other U.S. and British Marines were assigned to take the vast tract of oil wells. We sailed on, through lowlands that steadily became more populated; dirt roads careered every which way, and long pipelines reached across the sand. The place looked like a Texas oil patch.
“All Darkside units, this is Darkside Six! Gas-Gas-Gas!”
McCoy’s chemical detection alarm had been triggered, and his radio call again had us grabbing our masks. Although we had neither heard nor seen anything unusual, we were on the turf of the infamous Ali Hassan al-Majid, the merciless butcher known to the outside world as “Chemical Ali.” Square-faced, with a Brillo-pad mustache, Ali was the first cousin of Saddam Hussein and the maniac responsible for killing tens of thousands of Iraqis, having murdered Kurds in the north and Shi’ites in the south with equal enthusiasm. He coldly laid waste to 280 villages with deadly gas, with the intention of killing every man, woman, child, plant, and animal in them. Ali was now the governor of southern Iraq, and we knew that if anyone would launch the most poisonous substances known to man against us, Chemical Ali was the guy.
The warning turned out to be another false alarm, but it was a sobering reminder that this was no joyride.
We had encountered only some occasional mischief from the Iraqis so far, and by the time the distant skyline of Basra rose out of the flat landscape, the intelligence guys had determined that the fearsome Medina Division was nowhere about. Then things began to get serious.
Rocket-propelled grenades swooshed past the lead tanks, and minor fighting sprang up with some enemy soldiers who were trying to blow up an oil well. They did not last long under withering fire from the armored column.
We soon what we found what we had come for, the 51st Mech, and we set about destroying it. Our Abrams tanks opened up with their 120 mm main guns on enemy tanks, which returned fire, and the Amtracs and artillery were engaging whatever they could find. The deep-throated anvil chorus of explosions was joined by the stutter of heavy machine guns and the thump of grenades. Cobra helicopters viciously roared in with rockets and guns to attack targets we could not see.
The sky was black with
The Arabian Nights.
Here and there, a few Iraqis emerged from low-walled mud huts in isolated hamlets of three or four buildings and waved, just as their Mesopotamian ancestors had greeted other invaders over the centuries. The Persians had come through in 539 B.C ., and Alexander the Great and his Greeks in 331 B.C ., then Muslim Arabs in A.D . 636, the Mongols out of Central Asia in 1258, the Ottoman Turks about three hundred years after that, the British four hundred years later, and the U.S.-led coalition back in 1991. Throw in the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, and Hittites, and the invasion routes into Iraq are littered with the graves of armies.
Modern-day Basra’s claim to fame was the nearby Rumaylah oil fields, where a thousand wells sprouted like grim desert flowers, plus refineries that had the potential of producing about 140,000 barrelsa day. Postwar planning envisioned using the revenue from that oil to pay for rebuilding Iraq.
The city, with a population of almost 1.4 million, was Iraq’s major port; it had an international airport, and rail lines reached out from it to other cities in the region. As an oil and petrochemicals center, a transportation hub, and the second-largest city in Iraq, Basra was the biggest target outside of Baghdad itself.
Our job was to blunt any attempt to reinforce the defense of the oil fields. While we slammed the 51st, and possibly the Medina, other U.S. and British Marines were assigned to take the vast tract of oil wells. We sailed on, through lowlands that steadily became more populated; dirt roads careered every which way, and long pipelines reached across the sand. The place looked like a Texas oil patch.
“All Darkside units, this is Darkside Six! Gas-Gas-Gas!”
McCoy’s chemical detection alarm had been triggered, and his radio call again had us grabbing our masks. Although we had neither heard nor seen anything unusual, we were on the turf of the infamous Ali Hassan al-Majid, the merciless butcher known to the outside world as “Chemical Ali.” Square-faced, with a Brillo-pad mustache, Ali was the first cousin of Saddam Hussein and the maniac responsible for killing tens of thousands of Iraqis, having murdered Kurds in the north and Shi’ites in the south with equal enthusiasm. He coldly laid waste to 280 villages with deadly gas, with the intention of killing every man, woman, child, plant, and animal in them. Ali was now the governor of southern Iraq, and we knew that if anyone would launch the most poisonous substances known to man against us, Chemical Ali was the guy.
The warning turned out to be another false alarm, but it was a sobering reminder that this was no joyride.
We had encountered only some occasional mischief from the Iraqis so far, and by the time the distant skyline of Basra rose out of the flat landscape, the intelligence guys had determined that the fearsome Medina Division was nowhere about. Then things began to get serious.
Rocket-propelled grenades swooshed past the lead tanks, and minor fighting sprang up with some enemy soldiers who were trying to blow up an oil well. They did not last long under withering fire from the armored column.
We soon what we found what we had come for, the 51st Mech, and we set about destroying it. Our Abrams tanks opened up with their 120 mm main guns on enemy tanks, which returned fire, and the Amtracs and artillery were engaging whatever they could find. The deep-throated anvil chorus of explosions was joined by the stutter of heavy machine guns and the thump of grenades. Cobra helicopters viciously roared in with rockets and guns to attack targets we could not see.
The sky was black with
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