Posted on 07/02/2007 11:52:31 AM PDT by Dubya
War forces terrible decisions on young men. No one knows that better than Marcus Luttrell.
In June 2005, on a barren mountain high in the Taliban-infested Hindu Kush, Luttrell and three fellow Navy SEALs came together to talk. Their mission — to locate and possibly take out an important Taliban leader hiding in the Afghan village below — had just been compromised. Three goatherds, one a boy of about 14, had blundered onto their position. Sitting against a log under the watchful eyes of their captors, the Afghans clearly weren't happy to see the Americans. On the other hand, they were unarmed, technically civilians.
As about 100 goats milled about, Petty Officers Matthew Axelson, Danny Dietz and Luttrell, and their commander, Lt. Michael Murphy, discussed what to do. Having tried and failed earlier to make radio contact with their home base, they were on their own.
As they saw it, they had two options: kill the Afghans, or let them go and hope for the best. They let them go.
It's a decision Luttrell bitterly regrets.
Within hours, more than 100 Taliban fighters descended on the SEAL team. In the terrible gun battle that followed, Murphy, Axelson and Dietz died. A few miles away, a Taliban grenade brought down a rescue helicopter on its way to help the trapped men, killing all 16 aboard. It was the worst day in the 40-year history of the Navy SEALs.
Luttrell, who was born in Houston and raised on a small ranch outside Huntsville, recounts the harrowing events of that day and the days that followed in Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10. Co-written with novelist and biographer Patrick Robinson, the just-released book includes one of the most gripping and heartbreaking descriptions of heroism in combat to come out of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. On Sunday, Lone Survivor debuted at No. 6 on the New York Times best seller list.
The book is also an astonishing survival tale. Luttrell, half-dead, was taken in by Afghan villagers, many of whom probably had family ties to the Taliban. Having discussed the matter, they decided to grant the injured man lokhay warkawal, the protection of the village. They would be honor-bound, under this strict Pashtun tribal law, to protect Luttrell and not give him up.
"One of the lessons I learned was that there are good people everywhere," Luttrell said. "That village, Sabray, saved my life."
Luttrell, who received his Navy discharge early last month and has moved back to Walker County, discussed Lone Survivor recently over lunch in downtown Houston. His 6-foot-5, 230-pound frame squeezed into his only civilian suit, he wasn't enjoying himself. He admits he hates doing interviews. In the book, he expresses frequent disdain for the "liberal media" and "liberals" in general, whom he blames for imposing naive rules of engagement that jeopardize American lives, and for second-guessing difficult, split-second decisions soldiers in combat must make. While polite, ending sentences with a military-style "sir," he's intense and terse.
His friends' deaths remain raw and immediate and understandably painful to talk about. "Thirty seconds of every minute," he shot back when asked how often he thinks of that day. He can't sleep. He just goes until he collapses, he said. Then the nightmares jerk him back awake.
"The endless guilt of the survivor," as he puts it in the prologue of the book.
What was the right thing to do on the mountain? In the book, Luttrell describes how the team talked it out, trying to find the best course of action. If they killed the men, they worried, the American media would get wind of it, and they'd be charged with murder.
Luttrell wondered what great commanders in the past — Napoleon, Omar Bradley, MacArthur — would have done.
"Would they have made the ice-cold military decision to execute these cats because they posed a clear and present danger to their men?"
On the other hand, he felt the promptings of "another soul. My Christian soul."
"Something kept whispering in the back of my mind, it would be wrong to execute these unarmed men in cold blood."
He reports that Axelson favored killing the goatherds. Dietz was neutral. Murphy and Luttrell voted to let them go.
"It was the stupidest, most southern-fried, lamebrained decision I ever made in my life," Luttrell writes. "I must have been out of my mind. I had actually cast a vote which I knew could sign our death warrant. I'd turned into a (expletive) liberal, a half-assed, no-logic nitwit, all heart, no brain, and the judgment of a jack rabbit.
"At least, that's how I look back on those moments now. Probably not then, but for nearly every waking hour of my life since. No night passes when I don't wake in a cold sweat thinking of those moments on that mountain. I'll never get over it."
He's certain the goatherds betrayed their presence to the Taliban. "In my opinion, we should have killed them," he says today. "I regret it every day. I miss my friends."
He wrote the book to pay tribute to his friends' heroism, he said. "No matter what I say or what I put into words, it won't do justice to what they did out there."
The 50-page narrative of the fight is riveting. In Luttrell and Robinson's telling, the SEALs fought furiously but coolly, inflicting terrific casualties on the enemy. But the Americans faced overwhelming odds.
At one point Luttrell likens the fight to a 21st century version of "Little Bighorn with turbans."
Three times the SEALs threw themselves down the sheer face of the mountain to escape the Afghans, who were coming at them from three sides. Axelson, Dietz and Murphy all sustained numerous wounds but kept fighting. Near the end, Murphy deliberately exposed himself, moving into an open space to try to make his cell phone work. He managed to get through.
"My guys are dying out here ... we need help," he told headquarters before a bullet in the back knocked him to the ground. He struggled back to cover and continued fighting. It was that cell-phone call that summoned the ill-fated helicopter rescuers.
Dietz died first, followed by Murphy, whose cries for help, Luttrell, pinned down, couldn't answer. In his nightmares, he still hears those cries.
As he cradled a dying Axelson in his arms, a grenade blew them apart and tossed Luttrell into a ravine.
His friends gone, Luttrell managed to work himself out of sight of the enemy. But he was in bad shape — his legs full of shrapnel, his nose broken, three cracked vertebrae in his back. That night and the next day, he dragged his wounded body over the mountains in a desperate search for water.
Having finally found a watering hole, he looked up to see a half dozen armed Afghans surrounding him.
"Taliban?" Luttrell asked.
"No Taliban," the leader responded, running the edge of his hand across his throat. "No Taliban."
The man was Sarawa, the doctor of Sabray, the village Luttrell's team had been observing. Sarawa and his men hauled the American down the mountain. But Luttrell was hardly home free. The Taliban arrived and for several hours roughly interrogated him, breaking his wrist.
Finally, the village elder came into the hut and laid down the law: Luttrell wasn't to be harmed. Lokhay warkawal.
The elder's son, Gulab, became Luttrell's friend and chief protector. But the Taliban continued to threaten the village, demanding the American's handover. Something obviously had to be done quickly.
Gulab's father took off on foot for a nearby American base. Not long after, Gulab was able to hustle Luttrell into contact with an American search party.
Six days after his SEAL team had helicoptered into the mountains overlooking Sabray, Luttrell landed back at his base in Bagram.
"They never wanted any money from me," Luttrell said of his protectors. "And I offered it to them. I said, 'If you can get me to a safe haven in one piece, there's a reward for my return.' I tried to give them my watch. They didn't want any of that."
He doubts the Taliban harmed the people of Sabray. "They use those villages for food and shelter," he said. "You go in there and kill a whole village, and you're going to have a problem on your hands."
Asked why he thinks Sarawa, the village doctor, stopped to help this foreign infidel, Luttrell said he doesn't know.
"I never asked him that. He was a good man. Someone who would help. That's the way I was raised, too."
For his part in Operation Redwing, Luttrell was awarded the Navy Cross, as were Axelson and Dietz. According to Newsday, Murphy is being considered for the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for heroism.
As for the future, the 31-year-old ex-frogman plans to go to medical school — the SEALs trained him as a medic. He thinks he might like to practice sports medicine.
He remains close to his twin brother, Morgan, who's also a SEAL. Both had known since their early teens they wanted to join the elite service, an ambition encouraged by their father David, a Navy veteran from the Vietnam War era.
Luttrell entered the Navy in 1999, shortly after earning his business degree at hometown Sam Houston State University. The early chapters of the book describe the brutally tough training required to make it as a SEAL.
"People make mistakes and bad things happen," Luttrell said, summing up the events of two summers ago. "We fought as hard as we could. We just ran out of bullets. My greatest honor was to serve my country."
fritz.lanham@chron.com
My apologies for being too harsh -
I probably had it coming. Having a bad day. Thanks for clearing it up for me. Best to you,
h
Awesome story.
And don’t forget the frogs and aircrew who died in the helo on the rescue mission..........
Bingo.
Well said and heartfelt rant, I agree. Also handled the backwash with a lot of class, both of you.
Couldn’t agree more, Dev. Most civilians think our troops are a bunch of trigger-happy rejects, thanks ENTIRELY to the MSM.
If average Americans could see what the liberals conveniently omit, this war would be over in a New York minute and the MSM would never hold sway over us like they do today.
What do I blame this on? For starters, fewer and fewer of our adult population has ever served in the military, let alone in combat. They see it as a cross between some glorious noble deed and a bunch of murdering psychopaths.
Those SEALs did something I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but made a choice which separates us from the Islamists—they put the lives of those who might well betray them on a level higher than their own for that moment. They had a choice between life and death, and they chose life.
I’m done.
Indeed. Never forget. Brave warriors all.
bfl
Very well said - I couldn't agree more -
I think a couple of field grade officers jumped on that rescue bird. Their wives probably thought they were safe, back at some safe base. God bless em all, E-1 and up.
God Bless Them All.
He now is trying to live with a decision that was brought about by trying to be a "good man".
If there are any lurkers out there that have seen or been in combat and you have made choices that may have been as tough. I pray that you find God's grace and the ability to make peace with him.
I've read about this and talked with friends and brothers about this incident. My thought is that this honorable, brave man would have beat himself up either way and that nobody should judge whether he was "right" or "wrong". The choice many have made is to "kill". He would have been haunted with being a "murderer" by the libs and the dumb-@ss JAG/NCIS who read his after action report if he'd of killed the herder.. .
This man needs a loving family, counseling and to be involved in training others... he needs a purpose in life or he'll spend all day thinking about what happened.
SEALs that I've met (besides looking great in sunglasses) are like rabid, well disciplined wolves when a member of their TEAM is attacked. They share everything and are like a fist, each member makes up the fist and makes it stronger.
I know that I would have killed the goat men. I think that it would only have bought them a little time because of the layout and the fact that there were hundreds of bad men wandering around a small area.
I'm not a "counseling" kind of guy, but I say this only as a prayer for hope. This man appears to be at risk to hurt himself. He has to put up with stupid questions in promoting this book by idiot reporters and confront the incident over and over again.
I hope that his family comforts and helps this man, and that a church or group reach out to help this man find the peace he deserves.
Anyone would immediately condemn a man who kills a child.
Right?
What if that child was sent to kill you?
What if that child was sent to be killed by you, and in the process expose your position and the position of those with you?
Now - you’re faced with really only ONE decision...
How to kill quietly.
Do you kill the child - or do you allow yourself to be killed or create a disturbance that will lead to your certain death...
Still feel “holier than thou”?
Still feel the child’s life is worth your own and more?
Still feel there are no circumstances under which it is necessary to kill a child?
War, especially the screwed up fight we’re in now -— is unwinable under rules which deny warriors the RIGHT to survive....or considering the death of THEIR civilians as unacceptable.....
Our current enemy — has no such constraints, and in fact targets the softest enemy — our innocent civilians...
Wake up folks — we’re going to have to kill these bastards is huge numbers and lay waste to vast tracts of their Islamic Turd World to force them back into their dung fired tents for another 1000 years.. If we've become too damned civilized to do the job, then we will be introduced to a level of barbaric destruction that puts the existence of Western civilization at risk....
This man will carry his torment throughout his life..
The only thing that will change is the level of hurt, anguish and horror... It will continue to cycle from bearable to nearly unbearable...
I would hope that he is carefully monitored..
Suicide is not a remote possibility...
Drug or alcohol abuse is a very high risk...
Lack of sleep from the constantly repeating and horrifying nightmares will leave him exhausted and agitated for years if not decades.....
This man need more than our prayers....but he certainly has mine....
And lawyers and judges. Its a sad state of affairs when a Navy SEAL is put in the position by Politicians to be more afraid of a courtroom then someone who wants to kill them.
I was just cruising ‘freesis’ thru FR. Giving her a few lessons here and there.
She’s not an adult yet, physically.
But she sure sounded like one when we got to this thread
and she uttered the word
“Pantano”.
For the record, “Pantano” occurred April 15, 2004.
The extraordinary loss of life chronicled on this thread occurred in June 2005.
The Haditha and Hamdania Marines didn’t make the same choice in November 2005 and April 2006 as the Navy Seals.
Some folks in America believe they should have.
A new round of target practice on the United States Marine Corps, using live ammo, begins this coming Monday.
Calls, contributions, anything at all, is appreciated. Nothing is insignificant.
“Fighting a war now-a-days involves not only the enemy, but also dealing with our media...”
BIG, BIG DITTO.
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