American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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in front of my eyes, and could see again. I hadn’t been rendered blind
at all, but in the confusion I couldn’t tell what was going on.
A few seconds later, I got hit in the back with a heavy round. The
bullet pushed me straight to the ground. Fortunately, the round hit
one of the plates in my body armor.
Still, it left me dazed. Meanwhile, we were surrounded. We called
to each other and organized a retreat to a marketplace we’d passed on
the way in. We started laying down fire and moving together.
By this time, the blocks around us looked like the worst scenes in
Black Hawk Down. It seemed like every insurgent, maybe every occupant,
wanted a piece of the idiot Americans who’d foolishly blundered
into Sadr City.
We couldn’t get into the building we retreated to. By now we’d
called for QRF—a quick response force, a fancy name for the cavalry.
We needed backup and extraction—“HELP” in capital letters.
A group of Army Strykers came in. Strykers are heavily armed personnel
carriers, and they were firing everything they had. There were
plenty of targets—upward of a hundred insurgents lined the roofs on
the surrounding streets, trying to get us. When they saw the Strykers,
they changed their aim, trying to take out the Army’s big personnel
carriers. There they were overmatched. It started looking like a video
game—guys were falling off the rooftops.
“Motherfucker, thank you,” I said aloud when the vehicles reached
our building. I swear I could hear a cavalry horn somewhere in the
background.
They dropped their ramps and we ran inside.
“Did you see how many motherfuckers were up there” said one of
the crewmen as the vehicle sped back to the base.