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I was still waiting for a chance to join the rest of my platoon when the Marine unit at the northern end of the city put in a request for snipers to help with an overwatch from a seven-story building near their outpost.
The head shed asked me to come up with a team. There were only two other snipers at the base. One was recovering from wounds and looped out on morphine; the other was a chief who appeared reluctant to go.
I asked for the guy who was on morphine; I got the chief.
We found two 60 gunners, including Ryan Job, to provide a little muscle, and with an officer headed out to help the Marines.
Seven Story was a tall, battered building about two hundred yards outside the Marine outpost. Made of tan-colored cement and located near what had been a major road before the war, it looked almost like a modern office building, or would have if it weren’t for the missing windows and huge holes where it had been hit by rockets and shells. It was the tallest thing around and had a perfect vantage into the city.
We went out in early evening with several Marines and local jundi s for security. The jundi s were loyal Iraqi militia or soldiers who were being trained; there were a number of different groups, each with its own level of expertise and efficiency—or, most often, the opposite of both.
While there was still light, we got a few shots here and there, all on isolated insurgents. The area around the building was pretty rundown, a whitewashed wall with a fancy iron gate separating one sand-strewn empty lot from another.
Night fell, and suddenly we were in the middle of a flood of bad guys. They were on their way to assault the Marine outpost and we just happened to be along the route. There were a ton of them.
At first, they didn’t realize we were there, and it was open season. Then, I saw three guys with RPGs taking aim at us from about a block away. I shot each of them in succession, saving us the hassle of ducking from their grenades.
The firefight quickly shifted our way. The Marines called us over the radio and told us to collapse back to them.
Their outpost was a few hundred treacherous yards away. While one of the 60 gunners, my officer, and I provided cover fire, the rest of our group went downstairs and moved over to the Marine base. Things got hot so fast that by the time they were clear we were surrounded. We stayed where we were.
R yan realized our predicament as soon as he arrived at the Marine outpost. He and the chief got into an argument over whether to provide cover for us. The chief claimed that their job was to stay with the Iraqi jundi s, who were already hunkered down inside the Marine camp. The chief ordered him to stay; Ryan told him what he could do with that order.
Ryan ran upstairs on the roof of the Marine building, where he joined the Marines trying to lay down support fire for us as we fought off the insurgents.
T he Marines sent a patrol over to pull us out. As I watched them coming from the post, I spotted an insurgent moving in behind them.
I fired once. The Marine patrol hit the dirt. So did the Iraqi, though he didn’t get up.
“There’s [an insurgent] sniper out there and he’s good,” their radio man called. “He nearly got us.”
I got on my radio.
“That’s me, dumbass. Look behind you.”
They turned around and saw a savage with a rocket launcher lying dead on the ground.
“God, thank you,” answered the Marine.
“Don’t mention it.”
The Iraqis did have snipers working that night. I got two of them—one who was up on the minaret of a mosque, and another on a nearby building. This was a fairly well-coordinated fight, one of the better-organized ones we would encounter in the area. It was unusual, because it took place at night; the bad guys generally didn’t try and press their luck in the dark.
Finally, the sun came up and the gunfire slacked down. The Marines pulled out a bunch of armored vehicles to cover for us, and we ran back to their camp.
I went up to see their commander and brief him on what had happened. I had barely gotten a sentence out of my mouth when a burly Marine officer burst into the office.
“Who the hell was the sniper up there on Seven Story?” he barked.
I turned around and told him it was me, bracing myself to be chewed out for some unknown offense.
“I want to shake your hand, son,” he said, pulling off his glove. “You saved my life.”
He was the guy I’d called a dumbass on the radio earlier. I’ve never seen a more grateful Marine.
“The Legend”
M y boys returned from their adventures out east soon afterward. They greeted me with their usual warmth.
“Oh, we know the Legend’s here,” they said as soon as they saw me. “All of a sudden we hear there’s two kills at Camp Ramadi. People are dying up north. We knew the Legend was here. You’re the only motherfucker who’s ever killed anyone out there.”
I laughed.
The nickname “the Legend” had started back in Fallujah, around the time of the beach ball incident, or maybe when I got that really long shot. Before that, my nickname had been Tex.
Of course, it wasn’t just “Legend.” There was more than a little mocking that went with it—THE LEGEND. One of my guys—Dauber, I think it was, even turned it all around and called me THE MYTH, cutting me down to size.
It was all good-natured, in a way more of an honor than a full-uniform medal ceremony.
I really liked Dauber. Even though he was a new guy, he was a sniper, and a pretty good one. He could hold his own in a firefight—and trading insults. I had a real soft spot for him, and when it came time to haze him, I didn’t hit him… much.
Even if the guys joked about it, Legend was one of the better nicknames you could get. Take Dauber. That’s not his real name (at the moment, he’s doing what we’ll call “government work”). The nickname came from a character in the television series Coach. There, Dauber was the typical dumb-jock type. In real life, he’s actually an intelligent guy, but that fact was of no consideration in his getting named.
But one of the best nicknames was Ryan Job’s: Biggles.
It was a big, goofy name for a big, goofy guy. Dauber takes credit for it—the word, he claims, was a combination of “big” and “giggles” that had been invented for one of his relatives.
He mentioned it one day, applying it to Ryan. Someone else on the team used it, and within seconds, it had stuck.
Biggles.
Ryan hated it, naturally, which certainly helped it stick.
Along the way, someone later found a little purple hippo. Of course, it had to go to the guy who had the hippo face. And Ryan became Biggles the Desert Hippo.
Ryan being Ryan, he turned it all around. It wasn’t a joke on him; it was his joke. Biggles the Desert Hippo, best 60 gunner on the planet.
He carried that hippo everywhere, even into battle. You just had to love the guy.
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