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January 02, 2006
Report from the front lines
The Telegraph has an interesting article on the U.S. military's top sniper.
Gazing through the telescopic sight of his M24 rifle, Staff Sgt Jim Gilliland, leader of Shadow sniper team, fixed his eye on the Iraqi insurgent who had just killed an American soldier.
His quarry stood nonchalantly in the fourth-floor bay window of a hospital in battle-torn Ramadi, still clasping a long-barrelled Kalashnikov. Instinctively allowing for wind speed and bullet drop, Shadow's commander aimed 12 feet high.
A single shot hit the Iraqi in the chest and killed him instantly. It had been fired from a range of 1,250 metres, well beyond the capacity of the powerful Leupold sight, accurate to 1,000 metres.
"I believe it is the longest confirmed kill in Iraq with a 7.62mm rifle," said Staff Sgt Gilliland, 28, who hunted squirrels in Double Springs, Alabama from the age of five before progressing to deer - and then people.
"He was visible only from the waist up. It was a one in a million shot. I could probably shoot a whole box of ammunition and never hit him again."
Later that day, Staff Sgt Gilliland found out that the dead soldier was Staff Sgt Jason Benford, 30, a good friend.
The insurgent was one of between 55 and 65 he estimates that he has shot dead in less than five months, putting him within striking distance of sniper legends such as Carlos Hathcock, who recorded 93 confirmed kills in Vietnam. One of his men, Specialist Aaron Arnold, 22, of Medway, Ohio, has chalked up a similar tally.
"It was elating, but only afterwards," said Staff Sgt Gilliland, recalling the September 27 shot. "At the time, there was no high-fiving. You've got troops under fire, taking casualties and you're not thinking about anything other than finding a target and putting it down. Every shot is for the betterment of our cause."
All told, the 10-strong Shadow sniper team, attached to Task Force 2/69, has killed just under 200 in the same period and emerged as the US Army's secret weapon in Ramadi against the threat of the hidden Improvised Explosive Device (IED) or roadside bomb - the insurgency's deadliest tactic.
. . ."You've got to live with it. It's on your conscience. It's something you've got to carry away with you. And if you shoot somebody just walking down the street, then that's probably going to haunt you."
Although killing with a single shot carries an enormous cachet within the sniper world, their most successful engagements have involved the shooting a up to 10 members of a single IED team.
"The one-shot-one-kill thing is one of beauty but killing all the bad dudes is even more attractive," said Staff Sgt Gilliland, whose motto is "Move fast, shoot straight and leave the rest to the counsellors in 10 years" and signs off his e-mails with "silent souls make.308 holes".
Sniping is perhaps the second toughest -- or second most intimate -- way to kill a man, given that most soldiers never have the opportunity to dispassionately observe the enemy, see his face, study it and recognize him as an individual, before taking a breath, exhaling halfway, holding it and squeezing the trigger ever-so-gently.
The military historian S.L.A. Marshall wrote in his study of Americans in WWII that the majority never fired their weapons in anger, and even fewer saw the men they killed, given the chaos of battle. No one can claim that these snipers are unaware of the results of their lethal efforts.
Given the mantra of the anti-war Left about the U.S. targetting innocent civilians, Staff Sgt. Gilliland and his fellow snipers must be providing the kind of surgical precision desired by U.S. critics, carefully excising diseased tissue from the flesh of the Iraqi body politic.
Posted by Mike Lief at January 2, 2006 08:40 AM
Comments
I think the anti-war left will read this as being dispassionate and unaffected because they do not seem to understand that a person can be affected without outward overemotionalism. (I think I made up a word.) This article will be totally lost on "them."
Posted by: Thin Ice at January 2, 2006 06:38 PM
"Not lost on me."
"anti-war left."
You do what you must do in combat, but the point of being anti-war is not to go there in the first place. I don't advocate piddling around once you're there, you get the job done and a person must be dispassionate about it to succeed.
Categorizing everyone to convenient stereotypes is exactly what makes people close their ears to one another when they are in disagreement. Don't do it.
Posted by: Elessar at January 29, 2006 12:32 AM