Agreed... caffeine, nicotine, etc. are usually avoided by serious riflemen. Still, this deserves a "72 Virgins Dating Service" bump. :-)
Posted on 09/11/2004 6:49:48 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
Specialist James Wilks, 25, from Fort Worth, Texas, sits in the searing sun outside his barrack block in Camp Eagle, smoking a menthol cigarette. Beyond the blast walls, sentry towers and barbed wire lies Sadr City, a Baghdad suburb where throughout the summer fighters loyal to a radical Shia Muslim cleric have fought running battles with the American troops based here. A day earlier, fighting had flared again in the narrow, rubbish-strewn alleyways that for months have been Wilks's hunting ground. Wilks is a sniper and is proud of the three 'kills' he has notched up in the first six months of his year's tour of duty. The first came in early April, during an assault on a position held by Shia militiamen.
'It was night and low visibility,' Wilks said. 'But I saw a guy with an AK-47 lit up by the porch light in a doorway about 400 metres away. I watched him through the sights. He looked like just another Iraqi. I hit him low in the stomach and dropped him.'
The second kill was in July. Camp Eagle has been hit by more than 700 mortar rounds, usually fired at night.
From the roof of the barracks block, Wilks picked out a group of men behaving suspiciously nearly 700 metres away.
'We watched them for an hour. When I was sure one guy had a weapon on his back, I squeezed a shot off and he went down.'
Killing from long distance is 'weird', says Wilks, who joined the army after six years as a poorly paid waiter. 'It's not like in a firefight, when it is really scary and you don't think about it. When you are looking down the scope and no one knows you are there, it gives you a sense of power. You get an adrenalin rush, though I'm not sure if it is in a good way.'
Wilks's comrades are proud of his success. Almost all the men of the First Cavalry's Task Force 12 have seen combat. Scores have been injured and several killed. Long routine patrols are broken by moments of intense fear and excitement when units come under attack.
The Observer joined an eight-hour patrol along Route Predator, a key road leading into Sadr City that has been the site of regular bomb attacks and ambushes.
Apart from some wayward mortar shells early on, the patrol was uneventful - though the following one suffered two killed and three injured when two roadside bombs exploded. Sergeant Herman Groombridge, 35, and his men drive slowly up and down the pitted tarmac.
Groombridge points out a mosque from where gunmen opened fire a few weeks earlier. Jesus Sales, a 21-year-old who joined the army to pay for college fees, is the unit's reserve sniper. He shot a man a few weeks earlier: 'I didn't feel anything weird. I just felt satisfied.'
Wilks is equally phlegmatic: 'Sometimes I feel like I should feel guilty, but I don't. Everyone I shot deserved it. It doesn't bother me.'
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
Oh, gracious, he smokes! They share this "evil" with us in the first sentence.
Is the pope Catholic?
Does a bear defecate in the woods?
Don't forget they get the "72" virgins...........yeah right
BTTT
..if it is the reporter should be punished.
Hopefully this swine's picture has been added to the little black books as a "target of opportunity" the next time he's seen with the enemy.
"too dangerous and deadly for the average grunt..."
I figure they give soldiers guns and tell 'em to kill people with them, they ought to give them whatever ammo does the trick. I dunno about sniper applications unless they're going to make 'em in at least .308.
But what I meant by Great Unwashed was citizens. *I* want some of these!!
Is there any difference between THESE and DUST ROUNDS?
kinda funny, didn't think snipers would be smokers, for several good reasons. I dunno, the story, well, smells funny.
These are designed to pierce armour, yet fragment badly (to phe point of looking like an explosive round) if or when they hit flesh. What's a dust round?
Good catch...that little comment went right passed me!!
Something not quite right!!!!
Agreed... caffeine, nicotine, etc. are usually avoided by serious riflemen. Still, this deserves a "72 Virgins Dating Service" bump. :-)
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