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tell him the entry requirements had changed. He could now join the Corps with his stabilized wrist. Instead of the Corps, Kyle joined the Navy with the intent of becoming a Navy SEAL. He had heard the SEALs were the best of the best, and he wanted to roll with that crowd.
    In 2003 he took part in the invasion of Iraq, riding into combat aboard three-man dune buggies and manning the rig’s Mark 48 machine gun. When he came home from that first combat deployment, he spent a week with his family before shipping out to SEAL sniper school.
    Like so many great American shooters, Kyle learned to shoot from his father, who gifted him a 30-06 as his first rifle. On their North Texas ranch, Kyle and his father stalked white-tailed deer, wild turkey, pheasants, and quail. Between hunting excursions, his dad showed him the finer points of marksmanship, and soon Chris was zeroing, or sighting in, all the families’ firearms on the back forty.
    When he was about ten years old, he was out with his dad, stalking deer while armed with a lever-action 30/30. He crept up to a canyon and discovered his quarry about three hundred yards away and perhaps ninety feet below him. The elevation threw him off, and it took him six tries before he finally brought the deer down. His father told him afterward, “Chris, you’ve got to learn shot placement.” He worked for hours, patiently showing his son how to do this until Chris could routinely kill a turkey with a headshot or bring a buck down at three hundred yards with a bullet to its heart.
    In 2003 SEAL sniper school took that raw, backwoods talent and gave Kyle the sophisticated understanding of the long-range precision marksmanship needed to be able to take out targets well over a thousand meters away. The first two weeks of the school taught him how to use photography on the battlefield to provide real-time imagery to his commanders. He learned to take photos through his scope then upload them to headquarters via satellite radios and computers. After that, he went through a four-week-long stalking phase before transitioning to six weeks of shooting. He emerged from the course a master of all four sniper rifles employed by the SEALs. Those included the Mark 11, the Mark 12, the .300 Win Mag (for Winchester Magnum), and the Barrett .50 cal.
    In 2004 Kyle served in combat again during Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he took part in the Battle of Najaf that August, then the Second Battle of Fallujah in November. He accounted for forty enemy KIA during the latter campaign.
    It did not take Chris Kyle long to make an impact in Ramadi. After arriving at the main base outside the city, Chris learned that most of SEAL Team Three was busy operating on the other side of town. While he waited for a way to get out to his unit, he received permission to climb into one of the base’s guard towers and search for targets. Insurgents had been launching hit-and-run attacks against the perimeter armed with AKs and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), and Chris thought he might be able to help out with that situation.
    In quick succession, he detected, tracked, and smoke-checked two enemy fighters who were trying to maneuver onto the base and spray the towers with AK fire.
    Not long after, he went out with a small team to take up position about two hundred yards forward of a small Marine outpost inside the city. He and the other four men with him climbed a battered and abandoned seven-story office building that overlooked some of the main roads in town. Throughout the day, they saw only a few insurgents moving on the streets below. They would dart from corner to corner, moving like wraiths. Chris killed several of them with well-placed shots.
    After sunset, the Jihadists launched an assault at the Marine outpost, just as they had at other isolated Coalition bases scattered in and around the city. This time they advanced right into Chris Kyle’s field of fire. He quickly killed three RPG gunners as