American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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These were Marines who wanted to be snipers; after their deployment,
they were hoping to ship out to the Marine sniper school.
Every morning would start with about twenty minutes of what we
called “fires”—mortars, artillery, bombs, missiles, rockets—it amounted
to a hell of a lot of ordnance being dumped on key enemy positions.
The fire would take out ammo caches or dumps, or soften up
spots where we thought we’d have a lot of resistance. Black funnels of
smoke would rise in the distance, caches hit by the bombings; the
ground and air would rumble with secondary explosions.
At first, we were behind the Marine advance. But it didn’t take
long before I realized we could do a better job by getting ahead of the
squad on the ground. It gave us a better position, allowing us to surprise
any insurgents who tried rallying to the ground unit.
It also gave us a hell of a lot more action. So we started taking
houses to use as hides.
Once the bottom of the house was cleared, I’d run up the stairs
from the top floor to the roof, emerging in the small shack that typically
sheltered the entrance to the roof. Sure the roof was clear, I’d
move over to the wall at the edge, get my bearings, and set up a position.
Usually there would be something on the roof I could use—a
chair or rugs—to make things more comfortable; if not, there was always
something downstairs. I’d switched back to the Mk-11, realizing
that most of my shots would be relatively close, because of the way the
city was laid out. The weapon was more convenient than the Win Mag,
and at these ranges just as deadly.
Meanwhile, the Marines on the ground would work down the
street, usually side to side, clearing the houses. Once they reached a