Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

sudden barrage of accurate, devastating machine gun fire from multiple
directions, which hammered the American sentry posts and forced those
on guard to take cover. Then, while Soldiers or Marines were hunkered
down, deadly RPG-7 shoulder-fired rockets were launched in rapid
succession, impacting with violent noise and lethal shrapnel. Next,
mortars (fired from some distance away) rained down inside the walls of
the coalition compound, often impacting with alarming accuracy. All
this was done in an effort to take out the sentries or force them to keep
their heads down long enough so they couldn’t return fire, while the
enemy launched their final and most devastating weapon: the VBIED
suicide bomber driving a large truck or vehicle filled with several
thousand pounds of explosives.^2 If the truck made it past the concrete
barriers, past the Marine or Army sentries that would engage them, and
inside the compound, the results could be catastrophic—as deadly as the
most powerful U.S. Tomahawk missile launched from a Navy warship or
Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guided bomb dropped from U.S.
aircraft.
These enemy attacks were well coordinated and viciously executed.
The Sunni jihadi militants were far more capable than those I had
previously seen in Iraq two years before and eager to wipe out the
American outposts, leaving dozens of Marines or Soldiers dead and
many more wounded. But those fearless Marine and Army sentries held
their ground every time and beat the insurgents back. Instead of taking
cover to save themselves, the young Marines and Soldiers who manned
the watchtowers and sentry posts courageously stood fast and returned
fire with deadly accurate machine gun fire of their own. Their selfless
stands almost always prevented those VBIEDs from entering all the way
into compound. The VBIED might explode in a massive fireball and