How to Know if You Were Meant to Be a Sniper

Story highlights

• Brandon Smith believes he is well-suited to be a sniper
• He, like Chris Kyle in the picture show "American Sniper," has no regrets about killing the enemy
• He was proud of what he did in Iraq and has struggled with adjusting to a more than mundane existence

(CNN)As a proud Regular army mother, Kelly Copeland cannot carry to see "American Sniper," even though it at present rates as the biggest grossing war movie of all fourth dimension.

Her son, Brandon Smith, told her that his life mirrored the pic. "I can't bring myself to watch it," Copeland said.

Smith was only 20 when he was assigned to the sniper section of a mortar platoon at the height of the Iraq war. When I met him in that location in early on 2008, he told me he was well-suited for his mission. He grew upwards hunting in Georgia and was used to waiting for his prey.

Non every soldier has that kind of patience. Not every soldier tin become a sniper.

Smith already had his first confirmed kill when we met. He was hungry for another 1. And he got more than, though he wouldn't tell me how many when I caught up with him this week after I saw the pic.

"I really don't want to talk about that," he said.

But what he did say was that only like Chris Kyle, the fundamental grapheme of "American Sniper," he felt he was doing the correct matter.

"I enjoyed being on a roof, knowing that any moment now, this could be information technology. I enjoyed the thrill of getting a shot out. I liked killing the enemy."

Understanding the American feel in Iraq

The Oscar-nominated blockbuster biopic, which tells the story of the near lethal sniper in U.S. history, has fueled intense debate over the motion picture'southward message. Is information technology anti-war or not? Is Kyle a hero or a psychopath?

Those questions -- and interest in the picture show -- may only intensify equally the soldier accused of killing Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield goes to trial in the coming days. Jury option in the case of former Marine Eddie Ray Routh was scheduled to begin Thursday in Stephenville, Texas. It'due south expected that mental wellness will be central -- Kyle and Littlefield were helping Routh with rehabilitation at a rifle range when Routh gunned them downward two years ago.

I've met sharpshooters who relished the moment of a kill. Some liked the adrenaline and the satisfaction of vanquishing a foe. Others were fatigued to the stark simplicity of a life-and-death moment -- when nothing else seemed important.

No matter the perspective, I've heard a couple of abiding themes from soldiers. "American Sniper," they say, is a must-see for anyone who wants to sympathize the American experience in Iraq. Still, for those who fought in compatible, especially sharpshooters, it tin can be difficult to scout.

Smith mentioned a scene toward the end of the moving picture in which Kyle, played by Bradley Cooper, adjusts his scope and targets an Iraqi sniper as a dust tempest clouds the air. This is supposed to exist Kyle'due south legendary longest shot at 2,100 yards away.

The first fourth dimension Smith killed, he did the aforementioned from a rooftop in restive Arab Jabour, southeast of Baghdad. He scoured the area with high-powered opticals known as the Long Range Advanced Scout Surveillance System. There was no dust tempest, merely information technology was early in the morn and hard to focus through dense fog.

Smith spotted a man trying to hide from helicopters overhead. He saw him selection upwardly an object, put it over his shoulder and attempt to comprehend it with a blanket. Smith thought information technology might exist a shaped-charge explosive that tin pierce armored vehicles.

"I remember it to this 24-hour interval, like I was still sitting there," he said.

He heard the command, "engage," and opened fire with his .50-caliber rifle -- 2 rounds through the trees, two more than on either side. His shot was i,243 yards.

He predictable he would be upset by his first kill. He wasn't.

Even then, I heard Smith speak lines that Kyle echoes in "American Sniper": Their kills saved American lives, and that'southward what mattered.

'When you are bred to kill, you lot know'

Only two% of men are not loath to kill, wrote Dave Grossman in his landmark volume "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society." Chaplain Turner thought Smith might be one of them, though he worried how it would touch on the young soldier later on.

Smith yet believes he, like Kyle, is one of the 2%.

"When you are bred to kill, yous know. Yous merely know," he said.

Smith is a civilian now; he repairs substations for an electrical company. He is 6 years older and has a married woman and two picayune children. But he sounds far less sure of himself than when I start saw him wearing a sweat-drenched patrol cap and nursing the Copenhagen Long Cut stuffed in his jaw.

He returned home from Iraq and rode his motorcycle at crazy speeds on the highway. He took a fancy to balderdash riding. He did another bout in 2009 and admits that he has become an aroused person.

"I go from nothing to xc real quick," he told me.

He tried to vanquish up his dog once, just like Kyle does in the picture show.

On his first tour, he was troubled by the howls of a adult female and her 2 daughters later Smith's team killed her husband. He thought then about how his own mother and two brothers would react to his expiry.

The opening scene of the film, when Kyle takes aim at a adult female and child, took Smith dorsum to that twenty-four hour period. He told me that when he closes his eyes every nighttime, he sees faces, hears screams.

"Everyone thinks I'k crazy," he said. "I'm just trying to fit in."

I asked him the same question his counselor did: "Do you have any regrets?"

"That's not me," Smith replied.

That'due south not Louis Bravo or any of the other snipers I have spoken with either.

Moving-picture show'due south scenes resonate

Bravo, who now works as an Ground forces recruiter, enjoyed watching "American Sniper" and said that for some reason, he "welcomed the memories." He said he never struggled with what he saw and did at state of war, but the pic's homefront scenes resonated.

Bravo also was simply 20 when he did his first tour of Iraq. He returned to America to no one, as he put it. He completed sniper training at elite institutions and twice competed in the International Sniper Competition. He was a sniper squad leader in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan.

"Being a sniper is in fact unlike than just being infantry," Bravo told me. "It'due south an added stressor equally everyone expects more than from you. Or that every sniper should be able to perform at Hollywood level because they saw Mark Wahlberg in 'Shooter.' "

And now, Cooper in "American Sniper."

For snipers, it'due south e'er almost watching and waiting on a target. And watching and waiting some more than. Just afterward a while, Bravo said, it felt like whatever other job.

It was the months after his second tour that became a problem for Bravo. On that render, he had a wife and kid waiting for him at home.

There are scenes in "American Sniper" that played out at Bravo'south home, lines that were spoken verbatim. About Bravo's absence, his altitude, changes in his demeanor.

"What'south hard to grasp is that nothing is the aforementioned. ... You, your spouse, kids, house, bills, schools, job, interaction skills, emotions are all tainted and jumbled upwardly in what'due south left of your brain," Bravo said.

At 1 bespeak in the movie, Kyle is back home sitting in front of a television fix staring at what sounds like a battlefield.

"Why is he watching that stuff?" Bravo's wife asked him as they viewed the moving-picture show together.

"He's non," he told his married woman.

And, certain plenty, Bravo had called the scene correctly -- earlier the camera turns to show a blank Television set screen and the audience realizes that the noises are inside Kyle's caput.

Bravo, now 30, has had those moments. "I zoned out thinking of a terrible mission I was on."

Bravo was lucky. It took eight months of nightmares, union counseling and a close telephone call on divorce, but he managed to snap out of his post-war haze.

"I'1000 glad I have my married man back," his wife told him.

"When she said information technology, I kind of looked at her funny. I didn't feel any unlike. I didn't claim PTSD," Bravo said. "But if you ask my married woman, I was a train wreck for eight months."

Bravo said he didn't know how many kills he had. Kyle, he said, was a brilliant marksman, but he besides happened to be in all of the hot spots in Iraq. He faced Sunni insurgents in Falluja and Shiite militants in Sadr City. The places where Kyle went, said Bravo, every Iraqi was the enemy.

"Critics are twisting it and maxim that we thought of them all as savages," he said.

In Kyle's autobiography, on which the movie is based, he wrote that he loved beingness a Navy SEAL.

"I simply wish I had killed more than," he wrote. "I loved what I did. I still practise. If circumstances were different -- if my family didn't need me -- I'd be back in a heartbeat."

I've heard that before from soldiers I met in Iraq. I heard it again this week from Smith.

He said "American Sniper" made him miss the battlefield fifty-fifty more than.

"I was proud of what I did there," he said. "Now that I am out, I feel similar a nobody."

His mother understands her son is having a difficult time. She just wants back the mama's boy who made her express mirth.

"I dear him with everything I accept," she said. "I miss my son."

She idea she knew the boy she raised until the twenty-four hour period he became a sniper.

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Source: https://www.cnn.com/2015/02/05/us/sniper-view-on-killing/index.html

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