The Reaper: Autobiography of One of the Deadliest Special Ops Snipers by Gary Brozek, Nicholas Irving Page B
Authors: Gary Brozek, Nicholas Irving
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instructor smacked me on my ass and that’s all I remember of the first few seconds. I jumped out and I remember feeling almost like getting hit by a truck, I guess, this wall of wind, just pushing me. I kept my eyes open and I was screaming out what I learned in Airborne school, counting out 1000, 2000, 3000, and on 4000 my parachute opened, I could hear the rubber bands that keep the static line held together just starting to pop.
And then I heard this boom, this push, this jolt that slowed me down. I looked up. My blood was pumping so hard at this point. I was huffing and puffing, screaming a little bit just out of excitement. I looked up, checked my parachute, and as I was coming down I completely forgot everything I’d learned: don’t look down, keep your eyes on the horizon so you don’t anticipate the fall and overextend your legs and they break on landing. So, I was coming down and I could hear the wind blowing, and I was going pretty fast and landed exactly the way we weren’t supposed to. I fell. I hit my feet, went straight to my ass, and tumbled on my head. I started getting dragged by my parachute. I took it off and looked up at the plane and was, like, Wow. I just jumped out of that thing.
That was an amazing feeling. Scared and excited. It was the whole mixture of feelings, just overwhelming. It was crazy. I couldn’t wait to go back up and do it again as long as I was not the first guy.
That excitement didn’t last long. The second jump was cool. After my third jump, I got worried about how many times a human could do this repeatedly before something bad happened. That’s when the fear factor set in and I’ve hated jumping ever since.
I can reveal that now, but at the time I had to keep those feelings hidden from the other guys. Airborne school was interesting because you had people from all the branches, different special operations people, all there to qualify. There were a few other Ranger candidates in my chalk but we didn’t really speak to each other much. We sized each other up, but even then I sensed that there was no point in being too friendly with them. First, you would most likely end up in different units, and second, this was wartime and people were getting killed. If you didn’t get too close to anybody, you wouldn’t hurt as much if something bad happened to them.
It’s funny now to think that after Airborne, I was sent to Ranger Indoctrination Program (RIP). At the time “indoctrination” didn’t mean much to me, but later I thought about how that word can mean something kind of like being brainwashed. Now it’s called Ranger Assessment and Selection Program (RASP), and that’s more fitting, I think. There wasn’t much brainwashing going on when I went through it. It was mostly just a physical beating—long, long runs and marches of up to fifteen miles, three to four days without sleep, very little food. It’s that crucible moment when you find out for yourself if you’ve got what it takes. My dad always used to say that the truth will out—in other words, you can’t hide from who you really are and you will at some point reveal yourself.
And from the first moment you enter RIP, you’re being tested. That first day I had to run a half mile carrying all my gear, a hundred pounds of it, and knowing that if I fell behind even just a bit I might be bounced out of the program. I looked like a soup sandwich at the end, but I wasn’t one of the 60 or so guys out of our class of 180 who didn’t make it to the end of day two. I don’t know where I found the strength, but I made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to quit. If my shins flared up or my body otherwise broke down and they tossed me out, that was one thing. Quitting was not an option.
I knew that even though I was lagging behind a lot of guys in running, since my short legs weren’t meant for the distance thing, I was confident that I had other skills.
The first time I fired a weapon, I was eight
And then I heard this boom, this push, this jolt that slowed me down. I looked up. My blood was pumping so hard at this point. I was huffing and puffing, screaming a little bit just out of excitement. I looked up, checked my parachute, and as I was coming down I completely forgot everything I’d learned: don’t look down, keep your eyes on the horizon so you don’t anticipate the fall and overextend your legs and they break on landing. So, I was coming down and I could hear the wind blowing, and I was going pretty fast and landed exactly the way we weren’t supposed to. I fell. I hit my feet, went straight to my ass, and tumbled on my head. I started getting dragged by my parachute. I took it off and looked up at the plane and was, like, Wow. I just jumped out of that thing.
That was an amazing feeling. Scared and excited. It was the whole mixture of feelings, just overwhelming. It was crazy. I couldn’t wait to go back up and do it again as long as I was not the first guy.
That excitement didn’t last long. The second jump was cool. After my third jump, I got worried about how many times a human could do this repeatedly before something bad happened. That’s when the fear factor set in and I’ve hated jumping ever since.
I can reveal that now, but at the time I had to keep those feelings hidden from the other guys. Airborne school was interesting because you had people from all the branches, different special operations people, all there to qualify. There were a few other Ranger candidates in my chalk but we didn’t really speak to each other much. We sized each other up, but even then I sensed that there was no point in being too friendly with them. First, you would most likely end up in different units, and second, this was wartime and people were getting killed. If you didn’t get too close to anybody, you wouldn’t hurt as much if something bad happened to them.
It’s funny now to think that after Airborne, I was sent to Ranger Indoctrination Program (RIP). At the time “indoctrination” didn’t mean much to me, but later I thought about how that word can mean something kind of like being brainwashed. Now it’s called Ranger Assessment and Selection Program (RASP), and that’s more fitting, I think. There wasn’t much brainwashing going on when I went through it. It was mostly just a physical beating—long, long runs and marches of up to fifteen miles, three to four days without sleep, very little food. It’s that crucible moment when you find out for yourself if you’ve got what it takes. My dad always used to say that the truth will out—in other words, you can’t hide from who you really are and you will at some point reveal yourself.
And from the first moment you enter RIP, you’re being tested. That first day I had to run a half mile carrying all my gear, a hundred pounds of it, and knowing that if I fell behind even just a bit I might be bounced out of the program. I looked like a soup sandwich at the end, but I wasn’t one of the 60 or so guys out of our class of 180 who didn’t make it to the end of day two. I don’t know where I found the strength, but I made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to quit. If my shins flared up or my body otherwise broke down and they tossed me out, that was one thing. Quitting was not an option.
I knew that even though I was lagging behind a lot of guys in running, since my short legs weren’t meant for the distance thing, I was confident that I had other skills.
The first time I fired a weapon, I was eight
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