The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons. Nicholas Schmidle: Chris Kyle’s Tragic Quest to Help Troubled Veterans. On the morning of August 2, 2006, three Navy SEALs walked onto the roof of a four-story apartment building in Ramadi, in central Iraq.
One of them, a petty officer and a sniper named Chris Kyle, got into position with his rifle. Peering through his gun’s scope, Kyle scanned the streets below; as other American soldiers searched and cordoned off homes, he waited for insurgents to appear in his sight line. It was an especially bloody phase of the war, and Kyle, who was thirty-two at the time, had distinguished himself amid the violence. That summer, he recorded his hundredth career kill—ninety-one of them in Ramadi. He was on his way to becoming one of the deadliest snipers in American history, with a hundred and sixty confirmed kills.
In “American Sniper,” a memoir that was published in 2012, and went on to sell more than a million copies, Kyle recounted some of his most dramatic tales of marksmanship. Kyle seemed to consider himself a cross between a lawman and an executioner. Chris Kyle's Wife Speaks for His Book and for Guns. EXCLUSIVE: Sgt. 1st Class Dillard Johnson is the US military’s deadliest soldier. GIVING SADDAM A ‘FLAT’: The “Carnivore” — the Bradley Fighting Vehicle commanded by Army Sgt. 1st Class Dillard Johnson — makes a meal of one of dictator Saddam Hussein’s armored Mercedes-Benzes during the Iraq war.
With 2,746 confirmed kills, Sgt. 1st Class Dillard Johnson is the deadliest American soldier on record — and maybe the most humble. As a commander of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle nicknamed “Carnivore,” Johnson, 48, helped lead the ground assault during Operation Iraqi Freedom, overwhelming the enemy with a relentless show of military might that left a trail of dead in his wake. Johnson was obliged to report confirmed kills to his superiors, cataloging the dead in a green journal that revealed the astonishing tally — which only began to come light as he and co-writer James Tarr were researching his exploits for his memoir, also titled “Carnivore.”
There may have been a deadlier soldier in an earlier war, but since detailed records have been kept, Johnson tops the list. Excerpt from “Carnivore,” memoir by Sgt. Dillard Johnson, America’s deadliest soldier. BANG FOR BUCK: Johnson shows the old hunting knife that saved his life during an attack in an Iraqi home. ( ) Of Sgt.
Dillard Johnson’s battles, one stands out as particularly blood-tingling. In March 2003, he and his crew faced down Saddam’s army in a sandstorm outside An Najaf. Brain Wars. Army Study Finds Troops Suffer Concussions in Training by Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica, and Daniel Zwerdling, NPR Aug. 24, 2012, 9 a.m.
Brain specialists say Army's training may make soldiers more vulnerable to head injuries on the battlefield. Overlooked and cut loose by the Army, veteran’s life spirals to an end - Suicide in the military. KANSAS CITY, Mo. — By last September, the Army had had just about enough of infantryman Jacob Andrews, so it gave him a general discharge and a one-way bus ticket home to Kansas City.
He had plenty to think about on the 30-hour trip from Fort Drum, N.Y. There were the alcohol-fueled mistakes that had led to the end of his military career, and the memories of good friends who had been killed the year before in Afghanistan. There was, in particular, his horrific discovery of the body of one friend who had been crushed to death in a Humvee accident. There was the night back at Fort Drum when he’d tried to commit suicide.
Friends and family members say the Army was more than happy to take Andrews when it needed new soldiers for an unpopular war, but that it punished and abandoned him when he returned from Afghanistan, despite clear signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and possible traumatic brain injury. The military children left behind: Decrepit schools, broken promises. Catie Hunter is only 11 years old.
Her father, an Army platoon sergeant, has spent five of those years away from her, serving his country in Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. At her elementary school on an Oklahoma military post, ceiling tiles are removed so that when a Great Plains storm rumbles in, rain can cascade from the rotting roof into large trash cans underneath. To get to class, Catie must dodge what she calls “Niagara Falls.” Each day as the fifth grader enters Geronimo Road Elementary School, she walks beneath the tiles, bent and browned, some dangling by threads of glue.
In her classroom, an archaic air conditioning unit at times drowns out her teacher’s voice. “I’m really proud of the fact that the school is still standing,” said Catie, a pixie of a girl who twitches her nose when she talks. " Catie’s Fort Sill schoolhouse, built before Gen. Catie has been separated from her father four times since her birth.