Posted on 01/19/2015 1:41:07 AM PST by spetznaz
A sniper has told how he was given the nickname 'The Reaper' by his comrades in the military - after killing 33 men in less than four months.
Former Army Ranger Nick ‘Irv’ Irving using his trusty SR-25 rifle he nicknamed ‘Dirty Diana’ to blast insurgents to death during the Iraq War.
He was so possessive over ‘his girl’ as he called the gun, that he hated it when other men touched her and would spend four hours a night painting her.
Before every battle he would get pumped up to the sounds of men zipping their gear up with Velcro, which he likened to music being played to a high school football team.
Irving was trained to become a sniper by his superiors who told him that it was the biggest thrill of your life and that 'once you kill a man, you can’t replace that feeling.'
In Irving’s memoir, extracts of which were published in the New York Post, he tells how he became the first black sniper in the Army’s Third Ranger Battalion, which had previously fought in the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident in Somalia.
Irving, who now runs a training site in San Antonio and blogs on special forces website sofrep.com
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Video of Irving talking about his experiences:
YouTube video of Irving speaking about his Sniper experiences
What with these modern snipers and all the death cult bravado talk? Hathcock was pretty quiet. Someone needs to explain to these guys about the “quiet pro”. It’s hard to get WWII and Vietnam guys to talk much at all. And Korean vets are very quiet.
But this bunch cant shut up.
I agree.Imo... Killing...even if done for a total justifiable reason...is not easy...nor is it enjoyable. Not after the fact anyway. And..its not something to brag about.
Sumpin ain’t right in this story...
First black sniper? Probably the first sniper period.
He sounds demented.
All joking aside, I’ve known two snipers in my time, and they’re both more than a little cracked. I’m starting to think it’s a job requirement.
I had some contractors at my house. They talked about a nephew who signed up to go to Iraq. A sharp shooter who was going to be a sniper, from the hills of PA.
At his going away party, with family and friends, someone asked, what do you want to to do there ?
He said, in a very serious way, kill people. People started to laugh.
The uncles told me he was dead serious, and he meant it.
Exposure such as these will only serve as a recruitment tool for jihadi - and their families will be targeted...it’s one thing to talk about solutions on a strategic level - it’s another to discuss it on a tactical one....
The movei’s already been made, and it wasn’t about him.
We’ve all been pretty convinced so far that if asked by their superiors, our military would refuse to turn on us. I”m not so sure anymore.
Better they do it in service to the country against a genuine enemy than be out on the streets in service to a gang.
I had a close friend who was a sniper in Vietnam. He was sick for three days after confirming his first kill. It ruined him for life.
He’s now dead from cirrhosis of the liver, the the side effect of the self medication of choice by many who carry such burdens in their soul.
I agree.
This man has my respect and sympathy for what he has given of himself in order to protect other soldiers and our country. War changes people.
Did you not see that his justification/rationalization for killing was less people to kill our people, and to save lives. I am not sure that there was any joy about killing other then to save our lives that he was talking about. Glad he is on our side.
Perhaps a line from Breaker Morant sums it up best: "The fact of the matter is that war changes men's natures. The barbarities of war are seldom committed by abnormal men. The tragedy of war is that these horrors are committed by normal men in abnormal situations. Situations in which the ebb and flow of everyday life have departed and have been replaced by a constant round of fear and anger, blood and death."
The Nintendo/Xbox Generation.
Someone needs to explain to these guys about the “quiet pro”. It’s hard to get WWII and Vietnam guys to talk much at all. And Korean vets are very quiet. But this bunch cant shut up.
And these psychopaths worship The Obama, The Messiah, the Won.
And they will follow his orders when SHTF.
Men like your friend literally sacrifice part of their being for the benefit of the brotherhood and country. True heroes.
Other men, heroes too, are affected by it in different ways. For some, like this Army Ranger (and a better example would be Navy SEAL Chris Kyle), they internalize the killing as part and parcel of the mission, and they fully rationalize it as a case of the means justifying the end. A very interesting book that just came out on Amazon called 'Modern American Snipers' that looks at a variety of snipers from the US special operations forces, ranging from Delta to DEVGRU (SEAL Team 6) to Army Special Forces (Green Berets), 'regular' SEAL teams, Army Rangers, MARSOC, etc. Several of those snipers, such as Chief Petty Officer Chris Kyle (hereafter referred to as CPO Chris Kyle), in essence end up thriving in the mission. There's one famous case where CPO Chris Kyle takes a knife a guts a dog that had been adopted by his SEAL Team 3 sniper element because the dog would bark the whole night through and prevent CPO Chris Kyle from sleeping. His rationale? He needed proper sleep to be able to do missions the next day, and considering his missions meant saving the lives of his fellow soldiers that more than justified the life of the dog. That logic makes 100% sense when looked at from that perspective, and shows that people like CPO Chris Kyle saw whatever it was that they did as simply a mission to save lives by killing as many of the enemy as humanly possible (and while Nicholas Irvin killed a lot of men who would have been shooting at American soldiers, CPO Chris Kyle had confirmed kill numbers that were multiples of that).
In all cases, men like your friend and these other snipers are true heroes. Men like your friend, Army Ranger Nicholas Irvin, and Navy SEAL Chris Kyle have undoubtedly saved MANY lives, often at great personal cost.
As for the dog incident, the book states it best:
"A lot of people were like, 'Holy S#!t!' We need to give this guy a psych evaluation,'" Davis said. "Chris admitted that people freaked out about it. But I would say, no, that is simply someone who is 100 percent mission focused. His job is to go out and save the lives of other Americans and he knew that this dog could stop him from doing that. He was able to put his feelings and conscience aside to do what needed to be done. There are not a lot of people that can do that anymore."
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