American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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Along the way, someone later found a little purple hippo. Of
course, it had to go to the guy who had the hippo face. And Ryan became
Biggles the Desert Hippo.
Ryan being Ryan, he turned it all around. It wasn’t a joke on him;
it was his joke. Biggles the Desert Hippo, best 60 gunner on the planet.
He carried that hippo everywhere, even into battle. You just had to
love the guy.
THE PUNISHERS
Our platoon had its own nickname, one that went beyond Cadillac.
We called ourselves the Punishers.
For those of you who are not familiar with the character, the
Punisher debuted in a Marvel comic book series in the 1970s. He’s a
real bad-ass who rights wrongs, delivering vigilante justice. A movie by
the same name had just come out; the Punisher wore a shirt with a
stylized white skull.
Our comms guy suggested it before the deployment. We all
thought what the Punisher did was cool: He righted wrongs. He killed
bad guys. He made wrongdoers fear him.
That’s what we were all about. So we adapted his symbol—a
skull—and made it our own, with some modifications. We spraypainted
it on our Hummers and body armor, and our helmets and all
our guns. And we spray-painted it on every building or wall we could.
We wanted people to know, We’re here and we want to fuck with you.
It was our version of psyops.
You see us We’re the people kicking your ass. Fear us. Because
we will kill you, motherfucker.