Hunters: U.S. Snipers in the War on Terror (23 page)

RPGs shattered the silence and hit the Humvees below. AKs and machines guns immediately followed. The rockets came from Stan’s sector, and he instinctively reached for his M4 while his partner did the same. They searched the area in front of them and found two men in an alley. No words had to be said, and the snipers aimed in on them.

Elsewhere, soldiers and insurgents traded fire. Stan tracked one of the men in the alley less than a hundred meters away. The man moved into the light, revealing his entire body, giving Stan enough time to rest his sights on the man’s chest and fire. His bullet entered the man’s chest and sent him onto his knees. Stan quickly fired again, dropping the man onto his back. Next to Stan, his partner aimed at the other man, who attempted to drag Stan’s target away. He was killed with one shot.

From the minaret, a machine gun fired on the soldiers. Another sniper took aim at the machine gun’s muzzle flash and shot once, silencing the weapon. Stan and his partner searched for more targets, but they were out of range. Soldiers on foot patrol were fighting nearby, and Stan searched in their direction.

Ten minutes later, a man stumbled from the mosque and into the road, holding his stomach. It was the gunman from the minaret and he was hit. A squad close by searched the man as he lay dying; a single bullet had entered just below his sternum.

The fighting lasted fifteen minutes. Later, the soldiers raided the town’s hospital to interrogate the wounded. There, soldiers found the men whom Stan and his partner had shot. One died while the other was in the process of dying. The man who had been shot in the sternum wore a blue Iraqi Police uniform. The soldiers realized that none of the police could be trusted.

As Stan spent more time in Sinjar, his team assisted with many different missions. When they were needed for raids or reconnaissance, Stan was allowed to ride in helicopters to scout objectives from the air. He rode with Blackhawk helicopters to scope the lay of the land and get a view of the best sniping positions.

One day Stan’s team was ordered to observe and report on a certain target in a nearby village. Their target was a village elder with ties to the insurgency. The battalion learned that the man’s son had died in a shoot and his body had been transported back to the village for burial. Stan’s team needed to infiltrate the village and report on the man’s movements before a raid force was sent to apprehend him on the morning of the son’s burial.

Stan’s team patrolled in on foot. With absolutely no ambient light, the pitch darkness made it hard for the snipers to find a suitable position. They crept between trees and shrubs two hundred meters from the target’s house, but nothing would hide the four of them. Stan had an idea. The cemetery was built into a nearby hill and Stan led his team there.

In the graveyard, Stan decided his team would stay there. They stumbled upon a freshly dug grave big enough for all of them to occupy. It was unorthodox for the snipers to set up in such a common area, but the position had a suitable egress route and the snipers were low enough that it would be hard to see them, especially that night. They also knew that they were not going to be there long. Early the next morning, a raid force would move in while the village gathered for the funeral.

Stan reached for the PAS-13 thermal night sight in his pack. With the night vision rendered useless, the PAS-13, able to detect heat, was used to observe. The village had no streetlights, and hours passed with no movement. Stan felt that something was amiss. Normally some movement was observed, and Stan felt that their mission might have been compromised. He reported that the raid force should move early. Within the hour, soldiers arrived in helicopters, and the mission went as planned. During debrief, Stan learned that his team had set up in the grave in which the elder’s son was to be buried.

In November of 2003, Stan’s team was sent out on another adventure. Third Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR) patrolled the Al Anbar Province, south of Stan’s battalion. The ACR requested a company to support their push into the border town of Husaybah. Charlie Company was elected, and the commander wanted two snipers attached. Since their area was quiet, all of the snipers wanted to go, but after a brief discussion the team leaders decided on Stan and his partner. The two of them packed up and met with Charlie Company to convoy south.

After a long drive, the soldiers met with the Third ACR. The plan was to patrol through the small towns on their way to Husaybah. The snipers were to be used as over-watch, and when they finally made it to Husaybah, they would sneak into the city in advance of the main force. To Stan, it was nothing new. He had done plenty of it before.

Two weeks into the operation, Stan and his partner were alone in Husaybah. They were blocks ahead of the main force, who were clearing houses in Stan’s direction. He and his partner occupied the top level of a gutted and partially built three-story house. Inside, Stan and his partner held security for the advancing force and had been doing so for hours.

Outside, the sky was gray and dark. It had rained for nearly a week.

“Hey, I’m going to the bathroom,” Stan said to his partner, and he reached for his weapon. Their headsets allowed them to keep communications.

Stan slipped into another room, careful not to draw attention to himself. There, he noticed movement outside. With his scope, Stan caught sight of two men moving through an alley in the distance. Nobody else was on the streets. He told his partner that he was going to investigate the men. In another room, he gazed through a window and noticed what the men carried. One had a PKM machine gun, while the other carried an AK with a bundle of RPGs strapped to his back. When Stan saw them, they were running from left to right, but they suddenly turned and headed straight toward his building.

“We’re compromised,” Stan said, worried. He remembered the Special Forces snipers that had fought and died in Somalia after being surrounded. He believed that his fate would be the same.

Without hesitation, Stan leveled his weapon. The men were easy targets. They ran straight at him. After Stan shot both men in the chest, his partner asked him the situation. Stan met him in the room, telling him to pack his gear. When they were ready, the two snipers moved out of the building and linked up with the other soldiers.

When the operation was complete, Stan moved back with his battalion to Sinjar. He spent the next six months conducting sniper missions and eventually his time came to an end. When it was all said and done, Stan felt lucky that no one in his section ever died. Others in the battalion had succumbed to insurgents in Iraq and the fighting in Afghanistan, but no snipers from his platoon.

Rules Of Engagement—Directives issued by
competent military authority that delineate the
circumstances and limitations under which United
States forces will initiate and/or continue com-
bat engagement with other forces encountered.
Also called ROE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEGOTIATING
the streets of Iraq is tough. Amid fighting the insurgency, evading IEDs, repressing ambushes, and surviving attacks, snipers face another obstacle, one that can be as confusing and complicated as the fighting itself. It is the Rules of Engagement.

The purposes of the ROE seem simple. They regulate the actions troops can and cannot take in hostile situations, but for snipers they can also become hindrances for a few reasons. First, snipers are often used for prevention, which calls for split-second, life-or-death decisions to decipher intent. These are tremendously hard decisions to make under some circumstances. Secondly, insurgents know exactly what the U.S. military ROE are and have tailored their operations to skirt them in order to accomplish their missions. Lastly, because of the ROE, many snipers fear making any decision, knowing that if their actions seem suspicious, the repercussions can destroy their careers. One Marine sniper in particular, Sergeant Johnny Winnick II, learned this lesson the hard way.

In 2007, Johnny was aboard the USS
Bonhomme Richard
as a scout/sniper team leader with the Third Battalion, First Marine Regiment. At the time, “The Thundering Third” made up the ground combat element as the battalion landing team for the Thirteenth Marine Expeditionary Unit. He and the other marines had been out to sea for months and were in much need of ground time. Fortunately, by May, their Western Pacific float steered them toward the Middle East and to a four-month stay in Iraq.

Before debarking, the marines sat in on the typical briefs. They were informed of their mission; it was ground combat counterinsurgency operations in the Al Anbar Province. The insurgency was alive and well there, and Johnny knew it, having been there twice before. His team sat quietly listening to the intelligence officer explain cultures and customs, what they could and could not do. Finally, he described the Rules of Engagement.

Johnny’s team knew the rules of combat. Most of them had been to Iraq at least once. This was Johnny’s fourth deployment there; twice before he’d gone as a machine gunner and once as a SAW gunner in a sniper team. Stabler, from Missouri, was the assistant team leader and this was his second deployment there. The two of them had passed sniper school together just months earlier. Alex, the team’s radio operator, had been to Iraq, as well. They knew what to expect of the brief, except this time, when the officer was finished the marines were struck by one sentence.

“Remember this, gents, the Marine Corps eats its young,” said the officer.

He was referring to the fact that if the team screwed up in Iraq, they would be prosecuted to the fullest extent. They all knew what he meant, after having witnessed what had happened during their last deployment, when marines from their battalion were accused of murder in Haditha, Iraq. None of them wanted to be on the receiving end of that hell storm.

A month later, Johnny and his sniper team were punched out to FOB Golden, near Lake Tharthar in the Al Anbar Province. They were quickly spun up on the area and the enemy situation. Insurgents owned the area, particularly al-Qaeda in Iraq, whose members roamed freely, establishing training facilities and terrorizing U.S. collaborators. Though small arms and mortar attacks were regular, the biggest danger facing the team would be, by far, the immense amount of IEDs.

The area was a haven for IED factories and bombings. Small teams of insurgents made up IED cells whose sole purpose was to make, plant, and detonate the deadly bombs. The most common were artillery or mortar rounds planted near or on roads. Even more deadly were suicide bombers in vehicles packed full of explosives, attempting to get as close to the marines as possible before blowing themselves up.

Other threats came in daisy-chained IEDs, where more than one bomb was linked together for multiple explosions. Some were pressure plated and positioned in the road, destroying vehicles when they were run over with the slightest of weight. The snipers also learned of a new, very powerful bomb made of ammonium nitrate packed in jugs, barrels, and cars. The jugs and barrels were a good way to hide the contents from snipers, who, the insurgents knew, needed positive identification before shooting.

The snipers were also told of the insurgents’ increasingly sophisticated tactics. They had planting IEDs down to a science, literally emplacing them within sixty seconds. Unmanned aerial vehicles caught footage of their method, which was broken into three parts. The “softeners” arrived first with gasoline or other substances to break up the concrete, asphalt, or dirt. Next, the “diggers” hit the exact same spot, making a hole for the final component, the IED “layers.” Ideally, this method endangered only the IED planters, allowing the softeners and diggers to escape because they were unarmed. The snipers realized the challenge ahead of them, but relished the idea of stopping IED layers and saving others from being hurt by them.

Johnny’s team was anxious to get started. Their first mission was simple; they were ordered to provide surveillance on a mosque near their base. It was suspected that IED cells and bomb-making materials came from it. Should they spot anyone taking IED materials from the building or laying bombs in the road, they were to get permission and engage.

The mosque was not far away, only fifteen hundred meters (five thousand feet), close enough for the team to hump into position, which they did the next night. While departing, Alex radioed the COC, or Combat Operations Center, for a radio check. They were only a few hundred meters out, but Alex knew something was wrong, because he could barely hear the marine on the other end. It was a consistent problem that would plague their entire stay.

Early the next morning, Johnny’s team was in place. The radio had given them trouble the entire time, but they kept on with the mission. Hidden, the team was observing the mosque from a nearby building when, in the afternoon, someone spotted suspicious activity.

“We’ve got company,” said the sniper on watch.

A mix of cars and small trucks stopped on the road next to the mosque. The drivers spilled out and quickly gathered around the back of one car. Johnny took over the gun and followed in his scope, noticing that a few men pulled IED materials from the trunk and placed them in the ground.

“Get the COC up, and let ’em know what what’s going on!” he shouted, needing permission to engage.

Alex tried to raise the COC, but the radio would not have it. He immediately switched to the iridium satellite phone, their emergency communications device, but the Iraqis were gone before he could explain everything.

Frustrated, Johnny directed a nearby quick reaction force to the IED’s location. Sure enough, the marines found a 155mm artillery round fashioned into a bomb. To make the situation worse, when the snipers arrived back at the base, Johnny was lectured for not taking the initiative and eliminating the IED cell. He was told not to hesitate if the situation happened again. Being reprimanded for something that he could have prevented was disheartening, especially because he was obligated to get permission before engaging.