‘I’ve seen so many soldiers thinking they’re mentally ill and I tell them, “No you were injured.”’
Sergeant Nicholas Ranstad was twenty minutes into a nap when his spotter woke him up.
Four Taliban fighters were 1.28 miles away from the hut where the Army specialist sniper was living in Kunar Province in northeastern Afghanistan.
If the insurgents had looked more carefully, they would have seen white marks on boulders beside them. Randstad, a 28-year-old Florida native, had been using them for target practice for weeks.
Now, however, his AK-47-wielding target could shoot back while they were surveilling the U.S. traffic checkpoint.
Nick Ranstad set up on top of a Afghanistan Border Patrol (ABP) hut and got into the prone position.
He peered down his scope, and got the precise distance from his spotter Alex Simpson: the enemy was 6,778ft away – 22 football fields. It was an immense distance for any marksman.
He tried to reduce his heartbeat by taking slow, deep breaths, then pulled the trigger, unleashing a round traveling at almost 3,000ft per second.
This is an exceptionally well-done story. Highly appropriate for Memorial Day. ABN
American Buddhist Net 