American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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My attitude was: if my justification is I thought my target would
do something bad, then I wasn’t justified. He had to be doing
something bad.
Even with that standard, there were plenty of targets. I was averaging
two and three a day, occasionally less, sometimes much more,
with no end in sight.
A squat water tower rose above the rooftops a few blocks from one of
the roofs where we were perched. It looked like a wide yellow tomato.
We’d already moved a few blocks past the tower when a Marine
decided to climb up and retrieve the Iraqi flag flying from the grid
work. As he climbed, the insurgents who had lain low during the earlier
attack began firing on him. Within seconds, he was shot up and
trapped.
We backtracked over, moving along the streets and across the
rooftops until we found the men shooting at him. When we had the
area cleared, we sent up one of our guys to retrieve the flag. After we
got it down, we sent it to the Marine in the hospital.
RUNAWAY SHOWS HIS COLORS
Not long afterward, a guy I’ll call Runaway and I were on the street
when we had contact with Iraqi insurgents. We ducked into a shallow
setback in the wall next to the street, waiting for the hail of bullets to
die down.
“We’ll work our way back,” I told Runaway. “You go first. I’ll cover
you.”
“Good.”