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

commander of Team Bulldog and other Soldiers of Task Force 1-37
Bandit. Then Leif and most of the SEALs pushed out to a building a few
hundred yards down the road to set up another sniper position. I
remained at COP Falcon to coordinate their movements providing
overwatch for the Army combat engineers as they built COP Falcon into
a defensible position. This required extensive planning, coordination and
hours of intense labor to haul and emplace some 30,000 sandbags, over
150 concrete barriers, and hundreds of yards of concertina wire. It had
been a long night. The jarring impact of the deadly mortars was our
morning wake-up call.
There had been intermittent small-arms fire throughout the night, but
no serious firefights. The mortars were the first real attack that did
damage and inflicted casualties. Not that it slowed down the operation.
The courageous Army engineers had a job to do and they kept working,
swinging hammers and operating heavy machinery even as bullets flew;
they were brave Soldiers, to a man. As the hot Iraqi sun rose above the
dusty city streets and people awakened, so did the bulk of the enemy
fighters. I soon heard the loud report of SEAL sniper rifles from Charlie
Platoon’s position on the high ground in a four-story apartment building
a few hundred meters down the street. Leif relayed to me via radio that
his SEAL snipers had engaged enemy fighters maneuvering to attack
COP Falcon.
But building the combat outpost in enemy territory was only the
beginning. There was more to be done. One of the primary objectives in
placing this combat outpost in the heart of enemy territory was to show
the local populace that we, the coalition of American and Iraqi soldiers,
were here to stay and that we did not fear the al Qaeda insurgents who
had controlled most of Ramadi unchecked for years. This could not be