Through a sniper’s eyes: Book explores ‘one of the most tedious and important missions of the war‘ - Entertainment, Books - Navy Times

Through a sniper’s eyes: Book explores ‘one of the most tedious and important missions of the war‘

Gina Cavallaro is a witness to the damage a sniper can cause:

“An American soldier who was standing by my side in Ramadi on March 20, 2005, was mortally wounded by an enemy sniper’s bullet.”

In a 12-page preface that is a model of storytelling structure, Cavallaro recalls hearing a single gunshot and turning “to see young [Spc. Francesco Martinez] lying flat on his back on the ground in front of me.”

“I felt a wash of horror crawl across my flesh and screamed out his name from some new, alien place deep inside my dry throat.”

Martinez, 20, had been assigned to “keep an eye” on Cavallaro, a Military Times reporter. “When he died, we had known each other for four days,” she writes. More than five years later, she remembers.

She and Matt Larsen, who served as a sniper in the Army and the Marine Corps, offer a collection of stories based on interviews with service members who undertake “one of the most tedious and important missions of the war: Lying in wait for hours or days to take out the men who bury in the roadways the bombs that have killed the majority of U.S. troops.”

What do these troops say?

The work

Army Staff Sgt. Rodney Medley: “Everybody watches all these TV shows and movies and thinks that … somebody comes and tells you, ‘Hey, this is the guy I want you to kill,’ and it’s not anything like that. You go out, you sit somewhere you think there’s going to be some suspicious activity going on and you collect a lot of battlefield information and report it.”

The mindset

Marine Cpl. Neal Brace: “You have to have the dirtiest, dirtiest mind because you have to be able to get into the enemy’s head and think about ... what he would do ... to kill Marines.”

The first kill

Brace: “I started laughing, kind of like, I couldn’t believe how easy it was ... then 10 minutes later I killed another guy, and I guess it was just kind of overwhelming.”

The conditions

Army Staff Sgt. Timothy L. Kellner: “I’ve expended days’ worth of energy to get to a position. I’m soaked in two-day-old sweat, covered in mud, or worse. I haven’t eaten a real meal in days, have to hold a piss for hours sometimes.”

Hold that thought.

Part of a sniper’s job is how to find a “secret observation post or hide site” so hidden that “no one on it would ever expect you to be there.” What about the hide site inside the sniper’s brain? A book that penetrates a sniper’s mind as sharply as a bullet penetrates a target would be a welcome one. The authors show they have the skill to write such a follow-up report.

Related reading

• Read an excerpt from ‘Sniper: American Single-Shot Warriors in Iraq and Afghanistan’