Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper Read Online Free
Author: Gunnery Sgt. Jack, Capt. Casey Kuhlman, Donald A. Davis Coughlin
on the rifle range,where we learned to use our M-16s. My barracks mates bragged about what good shots they were, how they grew up handling guns and could head-shoot a squirrel at a hundred yards, and I, knowing nothing about weapons, was in awe of their professed abilities. But once we hit the range, I discovered that shooting was easy! I could do it! When I pulled the trigger, I actually could see the vapor trail of the bullet leaving my rifle, and I received the top score in the platoon.
I was hooked on the military world, embraced life in the field, and was ticketed for coveted advanced training that only made me want more of the same. The Marines obliged, and I soon found myself attending Scout/Sniper School.
It takes more than good numbers on a rifle range to get into the school. Shooting, in fact, is only 25 percent of what a sniper does. Candidates are handpicked from among thousands of Marines, and even volunteers are not guaranteed acceptance. Every Marine is supposed to know how to shoot, and any fool can say, “I want to be a sniper,” but fools are not who we want.
Most of the candidates flunk out, so only the best make it through a grueling course that requires as much brain as brawn, because there is no such thing as a stupid sniper. The academic demands, from mathematics to botany, were harder than in any college classes I had taken and were only part of sixteen-hour days that also included backbreaking physical exercise. It was exactly what I wanted and needed at that point in my life, and I fit in there much better than I ever had at the university.
I grew steadily more comfortable with my rifle. It was a thrill every time we went to the shooting range, where I never had a bad day. Every time I pulled the trigger, every single time, I knew exactly what would happen, and even when I missed the bull’s-eye, I knew why. Nothing in my life, even throwing a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball, hadever given me such a feeling of being especially talented and confident, which drove me to gain even more knowledge and become even more accurate. Being a sniper soon became my life’s calling.
The scouting component was one of the most interesting courses I ever attended, better than survival schools, better than university classes, and even better than airborne training, for it was there that instructors taught me how to become invisible. I learned how to track my enemy and how to get up close enough to count the bad guys, determine how long they had been in the location, what they were doing, and what they were about to do. Once I had hunted them down, the job became how to remove or capture them. I learned to deal with physical discomfort and to accomplish my mission in rain, snow, desert wasteland, and triple canopy jungle where the vegetation was so thick that it was dark during the middle of the day. I was taught to get in, get close, kill quickly, and get out, without ever being seen.
As my skills developed, senior Marines who had been in the Corps longer than I had been alive took me, a young private first class, beneath their wings and became my private tutors in the secret arts of killing. There seemed to be nothing that these incredible guys could not do, and they coached me in how to go by the book and when to throw away the book and think for myself.
By the time I finished the sniper course, I had an instinctual feel for my rifle and knew how to precisely lead a target, which way he likely would turn in a given situation, how to make range estimates, and how to mathematically determine the effect that wind and weather have on a shot. Somehow, I didn’t need paper and pencil to solve the calculus, because I could almost sense what the bullet was going to do.
The tough schools and the rugged fieldwork were followed byintense exercises and then, finally, dangerous assignments in the real world. At no point did I ever consider that I was slowly turning into a killer, but I was.
The first ten years of
I was hooked on the military world, embraced life in the field, and was ticketed for coveted advanced training that only made me want more of the same. The Marines obliged, and I soon found myself attending Scout/Sniper School.
It takes more than good numbers on a rifle range to get into the school. Shooting, in fact, is only 25 percent of what a sniper does. Candidates are handpicked from among thousands of Marines, and even volunteers are not guaranteed acceptance. Every Marine is supposed to know how to shoot, and any fool can say, “I want to be a sniper,” but fools are not who we want.
Most of the candidates flunk out, so only the best make it through a grueling course that requires as much brain as brawn, because there is no such thing as a stupid sniper. The academic demands, from mathematics to botany, were harder than in any college classes I had taken and were only part of sixteen-hour days that also included backbreaking physical exercise. It was exactly what I wanted and needed at that point in my life, and I fit in there much better than I ever had at the university.
I grew steadily more comfortable with my rifle. It was a thrill every time we went to the shooting range, where I never had a bad day. Every time I pulled the trigger, every single time, I knew exactly what would happen, and even when I missed the bull’s-eye, I knew why. Nothing in my life, even throwing a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball, hadever given me such a feeling of being especially talented and confident, which drove me to gain even more knowledge and become even more accurate. Being a sniper soon became my life’s calling.
The scouting component was one of the most interesting courses I ever attended, better than survival schools, better than university classes, and even better than airborne training, for it was there that instructors taught me how to become invisible. I learned how to track my enemy and how to get up close enough to count the bad guys, determine how long they had been in the location, what they were doing, and what they were about to do. Once I had hunted them down, the job became how to remove or capture them. I learned to deal with physical discomfort and to accomplish my mission in rain, snow, desert wasteland, and triple canopy jungle where the vegetation was so thick that it was dark during the middle of the day. I was taught to get in, get close, kill quickly, and get out, without ever being seen.
As my skills developed, senior Marines who had been in the Corps longer than I had been alive took me, a young private first class, beneath their wings and became my private tutors in the secret arts of killing. There seemed to be nothing that these incredible guys could not do, and they coached me in how to go by the book and when to throw away the book and think for myself.
By the time I finished the sniper course, I had an instinctual feel for my rifle and knew how to precisely lead a target, which way he likely would turn in a given situation, how to make range estimates, and how to mathematically determine the effect that wind and weather have on a shot. Somehow, I didn’t need paper and pencil to solve the calculus, because I could almost sense what the bullet was going to do.
The tough schools and the rugged fieldwork were followed byintense exercises and then, finally, dangerous assignments in the real world. At no point did I ever consider that I was slowly turning into a killer, but I was.
The first ten years of
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