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

A few months into our deployment, we conducted our largest
operation yet. It included two different U.S. Army battalions, each with
hundreds of Soldiers, a U.S. Marine battalion, nearly one hundred
armored vehicles on the ground, and American aircraft in the skies
overhead. Many of these units operated on different communications
networks, which greatly added to the complexity and compounded the
risk.
Our SEAL sniper teams would lead the way into the area of
operations. By occupying the high ground with the best visibility over
the battlefield, Task Unit Bruiser SEALs would gain substantial tactical
advantage over the enemy and protect other U.S. forces on the ground.
But all this movement could create chaos. My job was to provide
command and control to coordinate between my SEAL sniper overwatch
teams from Charlie and Delta Platoons and the U.S. Army and Marine
Corps units.
This operation centered around a major north–south road that was
sandwiched between two notoriously violent neighborhoods—the
Ma’laab District, a war-torn neighborhood to the east, and to the west,
the J-Block: an American designation for an equally violent section of
Central Ramadi. In the Ma’laab, Task Unit Bruiser suffered our first
casualty during the initial weeks of our deployment. A young SEAL
operator sustained a gunshot wound from an enemy armor-piercing
machine gun round, which shattered his femur and ripped a massive hole
in his leg. SEAL machine gunner Mike Monsoor laid down suppressive
fire and helped drag him out of the street to safety. Luckily, the wounded
SEAL survived and returned to the States for a long road to recovery.
The SEALs in Corregidor were in firefights on an almost daily basis in
the Ma’laab.