American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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for long stretches. It added a lot of weight to my head while I was on
the gun, making it harder to stay focused as the watch went on.
I’d seen that bullets, even from pistols, could easily go through a
helmet, so I didn’t have much incentive to deal with the discomfort.
The general exception to this was at night. I’d wear the helmet so I had
a place to attach my night vision to.
Otherwise, I usually wore a ball cap: a platoon cap with a Cadillac
symbol adapted as our unit logo. (While officially we were Charlie Platoon,
we usually took on alternate names with the same letter or sound
at the beginning: Charlie becomes Cadillac, etc.)
Why a ball cap
Ninety percent of being cool is looking cool. And you look so much
cooler wearing a ball cap.
Besides my Cadillac cap, I had another favorite—a cap from a New
York fire company that had lost some of its men during 9/11. My dad
had gotten it for me during a visit, after the attacks, to the “Lions
Den,” a historic city firehouse. There he met members of Engine 23;
when the firemen heard that his son was going to war, they insisted he
take the hat.
“Just tell him to get some payback,” they said.
If they’re reading this, I hope they know that I did.
On my wrist, I’d wear a G-Shock watch. The black watch and its rubber
wristband have replaced Rolex Submariners as standard SEAL
equipment. (A friend of mine, who thought it was a shame the tradition
died, recently got me one. I still feel a little strange wearing a
Rolex, but it is a throwback to the frogmen who came before me.)