American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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furniture. It made a good place to rest while we took a break one
afternoon.
The houses were all searched carefully, but the weapons were usually
pretty easy to find. The Marines would go inside and see a grenade
launcher propped against a china cabinet—with rockets stacked next
to the teacups below. At one house, Marines found dive tanks—apparently
the insurgent who had been staying at the house used them to
sneak across the river and make an attack.
Russian equipment was also common. Most of it was very old—in
one house there were rifle grenades that could have been made during
World War II. We found binoculars with old Communist hammerand-sickle
emblems. And IEDs, including some cemented into walls,
were everywhere.
A lot of people who have written about the battles in Fallujah mention
how fanatical the insurgents were. They were fanatical, but it wasn’t
just religion that was driving them. A good many were pretty doped
up.
Later on in the campaign, we took a hospital they’d been using at
the outskirts of the city. There we found cooked spoons, drug works,
and other evidence of how they prepared themselves. I’m not an expert,
but it looked to me that they would cook up heroin and inject it
before a battle. Other things I’ve heard said they would use prescription
drugs and basically anything they could get to help get their courage
up.
You could see that sometimes when you shot them. Some could
take several bullets without seeming to feel it. They were driven by