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American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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second C-section that women bounce back from. No one told me<br />

that part.)<br />

I felt weak. I was mad at myself that I wasn’t tougher. It<br />

just sucked.<br />

The distances east of Ramadi made the .300 Win Mag my rifle of<br />

choice, and I started taking it regularly on patrols. After the Army took<br />

the hospital, they continued taking fire and getting attacked. It didn’t<br />

take too long before they started getting mortar fire as well. So we<br />

bumped out, fighting the insurgents who were shooting at them, and<br />

looking for the mortar crews.<br />

One day, we set up in a two-story building a short distance from<br />

the hospital. The Army tried using special gear to figure out where the<br />

mortars were being fired from, and we chose the house because it was<br />

near the area they identified. But, for some reason, that day the insurgents<br />

decided to lie low.<br />

Maybe they were getting tired of dying.<br />

I decided to see if we could flush them out. I always carried an<br />

<strong>American</strong> flag inside my body armor. I took it out and strung some<br />

550 cord (general-purpose nylon rope sometimes called parachute<br />

cord) through the grommets. I tied the line to the lip on the roof, then<br />

threw it over the side so it draped down the side of the building.<br />

Within minutes, half a dozen insurgents stepped out with automatic<br />

machine guns and started shooting at my flag.<br />

We returned fire. Half of the enemy fell; the other half turned and<br />

ran.<br />

I still have the flag. They shot out two stars. Fair trade for their<br />

lives, by my accounting.

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