American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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dozen men fighting behind cover could hold up a unit advance for
quite a while, depending on the circumstances. Once the insurgents
were met with a lot of force, however, you could count on about half
squirting out the back or wherever to get away.
We’d had the Carl Gustav with us earlier, but as far as I know, this
was the first time we’d actually killed anyone with it, and it may have
been the first time any SEAL unit did so. It was certainly the first time
we used it against a building. Once word spread, of course, everyone
wanted to use them.
Technically, the Carl Gustav was developed to combat armor, but
as we found out, it was pretty potent against buildings. In fact, it was
perfect in Ramadi—it just blew right through reinforced concrete and
took out whoever was inside. The overpressure from the explosion
wiped out the interior.
We had different rounds for the gun. (Remember, it’s actually
considered a recoilless rifle rather than a rocket launcher.) A lot of
times, the insurgents would hide behind embankments and other barriers,
well protected. In that case, you could set an air-burst round to
explode over them. The air burst was a lot worse than anything that
detonated on the ground.
The Gustav is relatively easy to use. You have to wear double earprotection
and be careful where you stood when it’s fired, but the results
are awesome. Everyone in the platoon wanted to use it after a
while—I swear there were fights over who was going to launch it.
When you’re in a profession where your job is to kill people, you start
getting creative about doing it.