Free Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper by Gunnery Sgt. Jack, Capt. Casey Kuhlman, Donald A. Davis Coughlin

training, because after months of practice, we were running out of time.
     
    Chairman Mao Tse-tung wrote that power grows out of the barrel of a gun, but I had found that sometimes it also grew nicely out of a typewriter. While rummaging among the paperwork and personnel problems, I had uncovered a jewel: the Table of Equipment, the bible that spells out who gets what. It specified that the Headquarters and Supply Company was authorized to have several hardback, armored Humvees. It did not say exactly how the vehicles should be allocated, so Casey and I figured that it was best that the company executive officer and gunnery sergeant should each have one for his own use. Who was going to argue? The Humveeswere parked outside the tent at that very moment, each with a powerful Mark-19 belt-fed automatic grenade launcher mounted in a turret. Presto, through a little administrative magic, we had firepower and mobility.
    I had readily surrendered my plan for a fast-moving sniper force a year and a half before, on 9/11, and thought the idea was dead. But now that we were within a stone’s throw of war, I realized that I had all of the ingredients at my fingertips: my shooters, some good wheels, and a battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel McCoy, who believed in the concept. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place with the steady development of Casey. In the old days, a sniper was never to be directly exposed to the enemy, but my plan was to be right up front with the crashing strong fist of the 3/4. I would need protection so I could concentrate on my job. Casey had my trust, plus the rank, the desire, and the ability to grab some Marines by their collars and not only get me to the hot hinge of battle but to protect my ass while I worked. By forcing me to take this job, Bryan McCoy had given me everything I wanted.
     
    The familiar
crack
of high-powered precision rifles was music to my ears as I took both my personal M-16 and my sniper rifle out to Target Range Ripper, which actually was just a big mound of dirt about a thousand yards to the left of our camp. As the company gunnery sergeant, I had been so busy training others that I had not gotten much personal shooting time, and I needed a final turn on the range to zero my scope to my eye for the terrain and climate we were in. I squeezed off enough shots to satisfy myself that everything was perfect, then took a walk down the firing line.
    The rest of the battalion sniper platoon was also zeroing theirweapons, and for one last time, I looked over this stable of thoroughbred studs. Although many had only high school diplomas, the instructors at Scout/Sniper School had challenged their intellects by cramming into their heads such arcane but important subjects as advanced ballistics (mathematics), cardiopulmonary functions (anatomy and biology), air density (meteorology), and enough data to send an advanced college student running to the nearest bar for relief. Unless our guys sucked the lessons into their very souls, they would not become snipers.
    They learn that the surface of a pond is much more than that, for it is a plane separating two mediums, air and water, and creates a mirage so that a stick protruding above that surface appears bent when it really is not. How will that affect your view of the target? What happens to your shot pattern if there is not perfect concentricity in the bore of your barrel? What is the formula to compute your range to the target, and how much lead do you give a moving target, regardless of the target’s speed, range, or weapon caliber? Which way does the bullet go when you shoot through glass? All that and much, much more was drilled into them. And that was just to teach them how to shoot the damned rifle!
    The scouting and stalking side of the business is just as difficult to learn. One myth that gets debunked along the way is that it is unsporting, even downright un-American, to shoot an adversary in the back. Snipers will pull the