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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Foreword by Brandon Webb

Day 1: June 28

Day 2: June 29

Day 3: June 30

Day 4: July 1

Day 5: July 2

Day 6: July 3

Day 7: July 4

Day 13: July 10

Author’s Note

Also from SOFREP

About the Author

Copyright

Foreword

This book hits close to home for me. I remember finishing up a SEAL sniper course (at the time I was the course manager) in the spring of 2005. One of the graduates was Marcus Luttrell, author of Lone Survivor.

Part of the Navy SEALs’ new twenty-first-century sniper training methodology is to assign instructor/student mentors to at least two pairs of students. This mentor relationship creates competition among instructors to have their pairs outcompete the others and ensures that the students get 110 percent out of the instruction. It’s like having a personal instructor at your disposal and is very effective at graduating skilled marksman. As an instructor you cannot help but get a little closer to the men you mentor. I had the privilege to mentor some great students including Marcus Luttrell’s twin brother, Morgan, and his shooting partner, Matthew “Axe” Axelson, when they went through training. Both of these men graduated with high marks. I still remember hearing Morgan say, “Make sure you take care of my brother when he comes through here, Instructor Webb.”

Marcus was naturally an excellent marksman, but he had trouble with stalking, and it took him another shot at the course to master this skill. So here I was in the late spring of 2005, and Marcus had come to me with a special request. He asked to skip the final training exercise we put on for the graduating class so he could fly home and be with his family before deploying to Afghanistan in a few weeks with SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1 out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I had no idea how special this request was at the time, or what significance the training would have on Marcus’s survival in the Afghan mountains, but I knew that Marcus had given up a large portion of his predeployment leave to attend the course, and I honored his request.

I remember hearing that he was missing in action and presumed dead later that June along with the other members of Operation Red Wings. I was saddened by the loss. I knew everyone on that team and was close to both Marcus and Axelson. I also knew how close the Luttrell brothers were and could only imagine what Morgan and his family experienced getting this news. I was glad I had decided to let him leave the course a week early to see his family. At least he’d had his one last visit, I thought to myself.

Then news came that he was still alive, and it spread like a California wildfire throughout the SEAL network. A few years later Marcus was approached by the U.S. Navy and the Naval Special Warfare community to chronicle the fateful operation. This is something few people in the SEAL community are aware of.

This book isn’t about the mission and the men who fought and gave their lives on Operation Red Wings. As Peter Nealen points out later, this story has already been told by the only eyewitness, Marcus Luttrell. It was his story, and his story alone, to tell. Our story is about the rescue attempt and the mission to recover the remains of the men who fought and died with Luttrell; it’s about the heroes, some of whom gave their lives, who assisted in the rescue mission. Their story has gone largely untold until now and includes some explosive revelations. I’ll leave it up to you, the reader, to draw your own conclusions about how this plays into the long-term consequences of war in Afghanistan a decade later.

Hold on for the ride.

Brandon Webb,

former U.S. Navy SEAL and editor of SOFREP.com

On the morning of June 28, 2005, in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, a small, four-man team of Naval Special Warfare operators under the command of Lieutenant Michael Murphy was compromised. There are two types of compromise, soft and hard. A soft compromise means essentially that a unit’s mission is exposed but no enemy fire is exchanged. A hard compromise is the opposite of this. If you’ve read Lone Survivor (or seen the movie), you understand that the goat herders were the first “soft compromise,” and this led to a “hard compromise,” and a satellite phone call that would end a life.

Only a little while after informing the Joint Operations Center (JOC) of their compromise, Murphy called the JOC by satellite phone to inform them that the team, consisting of himself, Hospital Corpsman Second Class Marcus Luttrell, Gunner’s Mate Second Class Danny Dietz, and Petty Officer Second Class Matthew Axelson, was under heavy fire and required the Quick Reaction Force (QRF). A QRF team is always on standby in these situations. That was the last anyone in the rear heard from the team.

Marcus Luttrell has already told the story about what happened on that mountain. Some have called his account into question, but the indisputable fact is that he is the only one alive who knows what really happened there. No one who wasn’t there is in any position to say for certain what did or did not happen to him or his team. This is not the story of the compromise and firefight. This is the story of the effort to rescue him and retrieve the bodies of his comrades. It is the story of the largest Combat Rescue operation in the war up to that time, and the largest loss of life in U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) prior to the downing of Extortion 17 in 2011.

All times are given in Zulu time. Local Afghan time is 4 hours 30 minutes ahead.

Day 1: June 28

It was about 1140Z. Two MH-47 Chinooks, call signs Turbine 32 and Turbine 33, were closing on the LZ (landing zone) near the base of Sawtalo Sar, the compromised team’s last known position. Two UH-60 Black Hawks and two AH-64 Apaches were flying cover, and Grip 21, a flight of two A-10 Warthogs, was circling above. Lieutenant Commander Erik Kristensen, commanding SEAL Team 10 and the four-man Special Reconnaissance (SR) team, was aboard Turbine 33, determined to lead the effort to get his SEALs back, in one piece if at all possible.

The SEALs aboard both helos had been preparing to follow on the reporting from Murphy’s team. They had been hunting a particular anti-Coalition militia leader, known as either Ahmad Shah or Sharmak, who had killed a number of the marines of 2/3 (2nd Battalion, 3rd Regiment), who were moving into Kunar Province in the Korengal and Pech valleys and had set up in an FOB (forward operating base) named Camp Blessing, after Jay Blessing, a Special Forces soldier killed by an IED (improvised explosive device) strike in the area in 2003. Initial intelligence had Shah leading between one hundred and three hundred fighters and boasting that he had a weapon that could bring down helicopters.

The men aboard the helos, SEALs from both SEAL Team 10 out of Virginia Beach and SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1 out of Pearl Harbor, had been preparing to go in the next night, clear the target villages where Ahmad Shah was believed to be, and then blow LZs for the marines of 2/3 to come in and do a more thorough sweep of the entire area. There were about five villages on their target list, most of them clinging to the steep sides of the mountains. Instead, they found themselves going in during daylight, trying to retrieve their teammates under fire on the mountain.

Sawtalo Sar is the highest point on a ridgeline running between the Korengal and Shuryek valleys, roughly in the center of Kunar Province, a mountainous province in the northeast of Afghanistan. The Pech River runs across the end of the ridge to the north, with the Korengal and Shuryek rivers running into it. The valleys are dotted with small stone villages, surrounded by terraced fields. The heights are rocky alpine slopes, cloaked in thick coniferous woods.

Turbine 33 took the lead, descending toward the chosen LZ, an open meadow surrounded by scrubby trees on the shoulder of Sawtalo Sar, about 650 meters from the summit of the mountain. In their haste to rescue the SR team, they pushed to the LZ ahead of their escort.

As the big Chinook prepared to settle on the LZ, a white smoke trail was seen streaking up from the trees near the zone. The projectile impacted the MH-47’s exhaust duct and detonated.

The Chinook rolled over in midair at the impact. The pilot lost control, and the helicopter hit the side of the mountain and exploded. All sixteen men aboard—eight members of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), the Night Stalkers, and eight SEALs from Team 10 and SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1—were killed.

Under more ground fire, Turbine 32 turned away hard, throwing the men in the troop compartment to the deck, and pulled into an orbit above the mountain, searching for survivors. According to the official contact report, one of the AH-64s reported a possible survivor near the crash at around 1215Z, but the report was never corroborated. It is remotely possible that one of the men aboard the helicopter survived, only to succumb to his wounds before rescue forces could reach the LZ, but it is equally possible that what the Apache pilot saw was a Taliban combatant, investigating the wreck. No one will likely ever know.

The birds continued to orbit the mountain. A No Fire Area was established for a 500-meter radius around the downed helicopter, so as to avoid accidentally hitting any possible survivors. There would be no air support or artillery missions approved within 500 meters of the crash site.

While the SEALs desperately wanted to get on the ground to look for surviving SEALs and Night Stalkers from the downed bird, as well as retrieve the SR team that still had not been contacted, word came from CJSOTF (Commander, Joint Special Operations Task Force) to return to the airbase at Jalalabad. The risk of losing another helicopter on the mountain was considered too great. The aircraft turned southwest for Jalalabad, while the SEALs aboard Turbine 32 fumed at losing a chance to rescue their brothers.

*   *   *

It was later reported that Turbine 33 was struck by an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) that went through the open ramp and impacted the main driveshaft, thus downing the bird. According to the SEALs who witnessed the shootdown, however, it is the consensus that it was not an RPG but something much more powerful, a MANPAD (man-portable air defense) device of some kind. RPGs, contrary to movies and video games, do not leave smoke trails. Missiles do. There had been rumors of Stingers still around from the Soviet-Afghan War, but those were just that—rumors. Stinger batteries don’t last all that long; the missiles have a definite shelf life. Whether it will ever be discovered what exactly shot down Turbine 33 is unlikely, but the question of how many loose SA-7 Strela shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles are still floating around has to be asked.

Given the operational impact of acknowledging an actual MANPAD threat in-theater, the reports were put down as an RPG shot down Turbine 33. Otherwise, it would have been necessary to completely alter air operations in the entire AO (area of operations). It did, however, put a substantial damper on air operations in support of the rescue effort. Having lost one bird already, the command became extremely skittish about risking another.

Had a suspected MANPAD been reported and verified, it’s likely that loss of life in-theater linked to shot-down helicopters could have been prevented, including the controversial Extortion 17 crash that would happen years later.

*   *   *

The SEALs weren’t going to sit still in Jalalabad. Now, not only were four SEALs missing on the mountain, but another eight, plus their Night Stalker brethren, had gone down on the same mountain. Getting off the MH-47, they pushed to get aboard new birds, this time UH-60 Black Hawks. They had to get back to the crash site as quickly as possible, in case the reports from the Apache pilots had been correct and anyone had survived. The birds took off and headed back northeast toward Sawtalo Sar, passing over the checkered fields of the Kunar River valley before heading up into the Hindu Kush as the sun began to go down.

It was only about a 65-kilometer flight from Jalalabad to Sawtalo Sar, but they only made it about halfway before the storms building up in the mountains made it too dangerous to fly. The pilots told the SEALs that they had to return to base and turned around for Jalalabad once more. Once again, the SEALs had to wait, knowing their comrades—those still alive—were in deadly jeopardy on the mountain slopes.

Shortly after returning to Jalalabad, the SEALs were ordered back to Bagram Airfield, to reconstitute a new rescue force. The effort would now be completely coordinated out of Bagram.

*   *   *

It was after the second attempt to rescue the downed SEALs and the SR team that CJSOTF called off the organic rescue effort and called for dedicated Air Force Rescue to come in and take over. The initial effort had been according to standard operating procedure, but with the situation getting more complex, especially with Turbine 33 down, the commander wanted expert rescue personnel involved. There were no Combat Rescue personnel or plans in that AO at the time.

The call was answered by U.S. Air Force Combat Rescue personnel of the 59th Expeditionary Rescue Squadron from Kandahar. The combat rescue officer, or CRO, had been in Kunar only a week before, working out of Camp Blessing to attempt to find and rescue a marine who had been lost in the Pech River. While on an evening patrol, marines in a Humvee had been moving down the road next to the river when the Humvee hit a washout and began to tip toward the water. Two marines were in the back of the vehicle, and when the truck started to slide, one went out to the left, the other to the right, into the water. The driver managed to right the vehicle, but the marine had been swept away by the current. The Combat Rescue personnel, along with more marines and their attached Afghan National Army counterparts, searched for several days, but the lost marine was never found. Neither was any of his equipment.

The CRO, six Pararescue Jumpers, or PJs, and three HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters, two of which were from the 920th Rescue Wing, a reserve unit, flown by “Skinny” and “Spanky,” flew from Kandahar to Bagram Airfield in the afternoon of June 28. The CRO went straight to the JOC to get a handle on the situation, while the other rescue personnel got ready to head out as soon as possible.

The 920th Rescue Wing pilots and crews were reservists, and as such encountered a fair amount of tension with the 160th SOAR personnel. The Night Stalkers had lost eight of their own and felt that it should be their responsibility to go rescue them. They didn’t necessarily trust the training and expertise of reservists, who didn’t train constantly for the job, as they saw it. In fact, the reserve pilots and crews did spend a great deal of their time either training or deployed; the 920th is the only Reserve Combat Rescue Wing in the U.S. Air Force, and with the Global War on Terror in full swing, they had quite a few operational commitments. Spanky had been flying Combat Rescue for ten years.

The 920th pilots and crews had actually been scheduled to return home within days; several of them already had plans for the Fourth of July. The disaster on Sawtalo Sar deferred those plans.

Getting up to speed and ready to go wasn’t as easy as it might sound. The CRO was the only one cleared to enter the JOC in the first place, which put a crimp in getting the rest up to speed. They had to get clearance paperwork done and get the necessary briefs on what was going on. The concerns about possibly losing another helicopter on the mountain were still very fresh, which meant there was not a lot of hurry to send the HH-60s back up. There was required maintenance on the helicopters after the flight from Kandahar, as well as required crew rest before they could fly again.

In the JOC, the CRO sat down with the special tactics officer, the air force SOF officer on-site, and got the full briefing on what they knew had gone down. There were already Rangers, Special Forces, and some PJs heading for Turbine 33’s crash site, so the primary effort became about finding the four-man SEAL team that had come under fire, then dropped off comms (slang for communications). They had to figure out what they would do next, where they would go, so that they could get rescue assets there to pick them up.

What the CRO found as soon as he started working was that there was very little coordination going on. Between the army, the air force, Naval Special Warfare, and the marines, there were lots of units and groups trying to get in to help, but very few were talking to each other. The communications channels between the different chains of command simply weren’t there. Units in the field were setting up comms with their own headquarters, but all of the radio frequencies being utilized for the rescue effort were separate. So anything the Rangers found wasn’t necessarily being passed to the Special Forces, and thus wasn’t being passed to the air force personnel who were in charge of the overall effort. In fact, throughout the entire recovery operation, the Combat Rescue personnel were never entirely sure who was where on the ground, and when, due to the spotty nature of the communications channels.

He also found that, while the initial actions to launch the QRF on Turbine 32 and Turbine 33, and the follow-on attempt to get SEALs, PJs, and U.S. Air Force Combat Controllers to the crash site were the correct ones, there really wasn’t any further contingency planning in place. There was no plan beyond the initial attempt. While the CRO will today stress that everything they did was the right thing to do, the JSOTF in Kunar was winging it. That was what the CRO was there to fix.

*   *   *

While all this was happening, in spite of the numbers of forces on the ground already, including elements of 2nd Ranger Battalion, Special Forces, and marines from 2/3 who were pushing into the Korengal and Merit valleys from Camp Blessing, more forces were deemed to be needed on the ground. To this end, elements of 3rd Ranger Battalion, still stateside in Georgia, were called in and told to get ready to deploy to Afghanistan. All the 3rd Battalion Rangers was told initially was that an MH-47 had gone down with sixteen men aboard, SEALs and Night Stalkers. They would not find out about the four-man SR team on the mountain until they arrived at Bagram.

The Rangers, most of whom were off duty, were simply paged to report to Battalion Headquarters. When they got to their company areas, they were told to pack their gear and get ready to go. Eighteen hours after receiving the first page, they were on the plane and heading for Afghanistan.

*   *   *

With forces already preparing to move to the Turbine 33 crash site, and the site being known already, the CRO’s primary focus became finding the four-man SR team. While Turbine 33 was well localized, no one knew exactly where the team was, or whether they were alive or dead. The assumption, for the sake of the operation, was that they were alive; if they were alive, it made it all the more urgent to find them and get them out. They were alone, off comms, and in enemy territory, and quite likely one or more of them were wounded. The longer they stayed lost, the greater the likelihood that they would wind up dead. In fact, three of them already were dead, but the JOC didn’t know that for certain.

The first priority, in addition to getting air assets up to search and attempt to make contact over the SAR (search and rescue) frequency, was to get inside the SEALs’ heads and try to ascertain where they would go, assuming they were still alive. To that end, the CRO had to go through all of their operational plans and materials, as well as their personnel recovery materials, which would provide information that only they would know, in the event they were found and had to be identified on the ground.

What had to be determined was what direction the team would go, based on their E&E (escape and evasion) plan, what retrieval point they would make for, and what equipment they had with them they could signal with. What was their SAR frequency? What nonradio signaling devices did they have? Moreover, he had to get to know the men themselves. He had to get into their heads, figure out how they thought, to try to determine what each one of them would do when alone and cut off, with everything having gone to hell in a hand basket. A man in a team will react differently from a man alone. Even if they had a detailed team E&E plan, there was no guarantee that if cut off from each other, they would follow it exactly. Personality quirks became extremely important.

He immediately ran into some serious difficulty. The E&E plan the SR team had left was vague at best—in fact, there hardly was one. There was a possible retrieval area, but actual E&E routes, especially in the brutally steep terrain of Kunar, weren’t there. The team might well have had a detailed E&E plan worked up before going out; they just didn’t leave a copy of it with the JOC. This made the CRO’s job considerably harder, as the “probability of area,” the zone where the lost team might be found, couldn’t be narrowed down without that E&E plan, unless they actually made contact with the team.

Determining how they might make contact was made even harder by the fact that the team had apparently not left behind an Equipment Density List, or the list of all serialized gear (including comms and other signaling devices), when they left on the mission. At least it couldn’t be found when the CRO requested it at the JOC. Eventually, however, some photographs of the team, taken just before insertion, provided some idea of the equipment they’d taken with them.

They had gone light on comms, taking only PRC-148 MBITR radios and a satellite phone. The PRC-148 is a small, light, individual VHF/UHF radio. It is technically capable of satellite communications, but the MBITR can also be notoriously unreliable. While lightening the load, especially in the terrain they were operating in, is usually a good idea, comms is a reconnaissance team’s lifeline. All four men, Murphy, Luttrell, Dietz, and Axelson, were members of SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1, a SEAL team that specialized in reconnaissance. They would have known this. While the reasoning behind their choice not to take a heavier-duty radio isn’t known for sure, it does raise some eyebrows among those with reconnaissance experience. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, it could well be that they were familiar enough with and confident enough in the satellite-communications ability of the MBITR that they decided they could make do with it. The fact that comms failure contributed to their being cut off belies their confidence; in fact, at one point the only way they could make contact with the rear was with a Leatherman tool jammed into the antenna jack of a PRC-148.

To further expand his knowledge of the team, the CRO pulled all of their record files and began studying them. He interviewed other SEALs to try to understand the men’s personalities. By the time he was finished, he felt like he knew all four men personally. It only hardened his resolve to get them back. As a PJ before he was commissioned, he had always felt a kinship with the SOF operators out in the field that he might be called upon to go rescue in just such circumstances. He considered them his brothers just as much as teammates might consider each other brothers. It was more than an assignment to get these men back; it was now a personal mission. He had family up on that mountain.

Even before sundown on the twenty-eighth, another obstacle to making contact with the missing SEALs arose. At 1623Z, an AC-130 Spectre gunship orbiting Turbine 33’s crash site reported one individual on the ground with a strobe, a common identifying marker for Coalition forces. It was only the first of many false communication attempts by the enemy, attempting to draw the Combat Rescue forces into a trap.

Day 2: June 29

Rangers, Special Forces, and PJs were already moving up the mountain toward the crash site. It would take them until nearly midnight to reach it after the first attempt had been turned back by the weather, but the weather had eased up. There had also been the issue of theater command denying any further flights in the area. The loss of Turbine 33 had hit U.S. forces hard, and no one wanted to risk losing another bird on Sawtalo Sar. The CRO and the two 920th Rescue Wing pilots remained focused on the missing SR team.

Other Rangers and Special Forces were patrolling the surrounding valleys, looking for any sign of the missing SEALs. Marines from 2/3 were pushing down from the north, but 2/3’s chain of command had no contact with the JOC; while they were known to be operating in the area (it was their AO, after all), the CRO didn’t know exactly where the patrols were and had no contact with them. This disconnect would continue throughout the operation.

Throughout the day, there were more and more reports of attempted communication on the SAR frequencies, and aircraft were reporting visual signals as well. Few if any of these reports could be corroborated by satellite or national assets, and as the CRO mapped them out with pushpins on the map in the JOC, he saw increasingly clearly that the enemy was attempting to draw in the rescue forces. By the time the operation was over, there had been between fifty and sixty separate attempts at communication, either over the SAR frequencies or by visual signals, and spread over a radius of over 6 miles. It was frankly impossible that they were coming from the missing SEALs, as there were too many of them, spread too widely. While it was possible that some of the contacts were coming from one of the missing men, the rest of the white noise made it impossible to determine if such was the case, and if so, which one. As it was, the enemy’s spoofing tactics were never officially reported, although mention remains in the after-action review.

The CRO and the rest of the personnel in the JOC continued to attempt to nail down a workable probability of area. Unfortunately, with the terrain being as harsh as it is, the lack of verifiable contact with any of the SEALs, on top of the uncertainty as to their E&E plan, the task appeared hopeless. They didn’t even know which direction they might have gone—east into the Shuryek Valley, west into the Korengal (which was considerably more hostile to U.S. forces than the Shuryek), or even north or south along the ridge. They had to press on, hoping and praying that the SEALs were still alive, while constantly attempting to establish contact on every frequency on the team’s comms plan.

Rangers, Combat Controllers, and PJs finally arrived at Turbine 33’s crash site at 2316Z, set security, and began to recover the bodies, as well as any electronics, equipment, and weapons. The earlier reports of a survivor on the ground were belied, as they found the bodies of all sixteen men aboard, eight Night Stalkers and eight SEALs. The crash being as localized as it was, on the relatively flat shoulder of the mountain, they didn’t have to go far, so they set a perimeter and went to work.

*   *   *

Meanwhile, it had taken some time, but the pilots finally had the go-ahead to go back up into the mountains to search from the air. CJSOTF had been reluctant to clear any more flights, fearing the loss of another helicopter after the shootdown of Turbine 33. Finally, with a stern warning to the pilots that the United States could not afford to lose another bird on that mountain, they were allowed to take off.

This time, the birds didn’t take off until after dark. Turbine 33 had been shot down trying to land in broad daylight, driven by the sense of urgency to get the SEALs out. The follow-on rescue effort would be more cautious, relying on the cover of darkness to keep the birds safe.

Skinny and Spanky flew patterns over Sawtalo Sar and the surrounding Korengal and Shuryek valleys, listening and watching for any sign of the missing men. Spanky was on the radio, calling out repeatedly, “This is Air Force Rescue. We are here to get you out. Please, show yourself. Make yourself known.” They flew close to the mountainsides, looking with night-vision goggles and the helicopters’ forward-looking infrared (FLIR) thermal cameras for any sign of the missing men. In the mountainous terrain, without a verifiable signal to narrow things down, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Multiple times during the night, they heard the radio key on the SAR frequencies, but they could never nail down where the transmissions were coming from, or whether they were legitimate. Given the pattern that was developing in the JOC, most or all of them were SAR traps, sent by the enemy to attempt to draw the helicopters into striking range.

Several times, aircraft even saw infrared (IR) lasers signaling from the ground. It is still uncertain where exactly the enemy procured them, as Marcus does not recall signaling with his own laser at any time. Weapons captured from the dead SEALs by Ahmad Shah’s fighters did have PEQ-2 IR laser sights attached; it is entirely possible that these were the source of the spurious IR signals.

As dawn approached, the helicopters had to turn back to return to Bagram before losing the cover of darkness. There had been no definite sign of the SEALs, but they weren’t about to give up.

Day 3: June 30

At just after midnight, an elderly Afghan by the name of Shina arrived at the gate of Camp Blessing. When the interpreter reached the gate, he said he needed to speak to the marines’ senior officer, because there was a wounded American in his village. The interpreter ran to the Marine Combat Operations Center and found the commanding officer, telling him that the man said he had a wounded American in his village. The interpreter added that for anyone to venture out in the middle of the night in Kunar was extraordinary.

The marine lieutenant was unaware of what had happened on Sawtalo Sar less than two days before. He knew only that he had been instructed to prepare for a search in the nearby mountains. He ran to the gate and met Shina, a tired-looking, gray-bearded man from the Shuryek Valley.

Taking Shina to the FOB’s “tearoom,” the lieutenant had him served tea and a little food, then sat down to talk to him. Shina told him, through the interpreter, that an American doctor was in their village. He had been shot and appeared to be in bad shape. He went on to say that the doctor was treating himself. That suggested to the lieutenant that the “doctor” was a navy corpsman. The man handed over a note, written on Rite in the Rain paper, from Marcus, telling the Americans that he had been shot and that the villagers had taken him in and were taking care of him. Initially, the lieutenant couldn’t make out the signature, or much of the rest of the handwriting, and was confused that there was no real identifying information in the note, which he would have expected from an SOF operator who was isolated and on E&E. He took the note to the Combat Operations Center, scanned it, and sent it by secure e-mail to the marine operations officer at Asadabad, the closest major U.S. base.

The fact was, Marcus had not intended the note to serve as a “blood chit,” i.e., a reward for his safe return, but had expected to accompany Shina to Asadabad. The elder had instead left without him, apparently considering him too much of a hindrance on a trek over the mountains in his condition, having been shot in the leg. Shina had walked down the Shuryek Valley from Sabray to Matin, where he had hired a taxi for the ride up the Pech Valley to Camp Blessing. The tribesmen of the Shuryek had had more dealings with 2/3 than with anyone at Asadabad, and therefore trusted the marines more.

Shortly after sending the e-mail, the lieutenant called the operations officer by satellite phone. He explained what had happened and that he couldn’t make out the signature; he could read “Marcus” but not the last name. The ops officer, having been read in on the situation, confirmed that a SEAL named Marcus Luttrell was missing and instructed the lieutenant not to let Shina leave until they had gotten all possible information from him.

Because of the lack of identifying information in Marcus’s note, there was some doubt that it had in fact come from him. With Taliban activity in Kunar being what it was, and given the large number of faked SAR signals coming from the area, there was the very real risk that this was a fake, an attempt to draw U.S. forces into some kind of trap. When the note reached Bagram, it was handed over to FBI handwriting analysts, along with other samples of Marcus’s handwriting, in an attempt to ascertain whether the note was legitimate or a ruse. Meanwhile, the rescue forces continued searching and waiting for any other sign that any of the SEALs might be alive.

*   *   *

The Rangers and PJs at Turbine 33’s crash site had set to work gathering the remains and sanitizing the crash. The bodies were packed in body bags and dragged up to the new LZ while the Rangers held security. All weapons and sensitive equipment on the helicopter were either taken or destroyed. The Rangers had rigged what was left of the wreck with explosives to ensure that nothing of any value would be left for the enemy. As the MH-47 with the bodies and the recovery force lifted off, the Rangers detonated the explosives and reduced what was left of Turbine 33 to scrap.

There was later some concern that the remains of all sixteen men on Turbine 33 had not been recovered. This was likely due in part to the state of the remains (the helicopter had exploded on impact, and it was the middle of the summer in Afghanistan, where the bodies had been lying for two days already) and in part to the initial report from the Apache pilot of seeing a survivor. However, by July 6, all the remains had been identified by DNA analysis. All eight Night Stalkers and eight SEALs had been recovered.

Day 4: July 1

After exhaustive analysis, the note from Marcus was determined to be genuine. Finally, the probability of area had been narrowed down, and the search could become more focused. Air assets were still over the area constantly, though only going down toward the mountainsides at night. Dozens of resupply bundles were dropped from the air, containing food, water, cell phones, batteries for every piece of equipment the SEALs might have, radios, and other signaling devices. It was hoped that if one of the missing SEALs found one of these bundles, they would have a chance of contacting SAR assets, since it was assumed, based on the circumstances of the attack, that they did not have working comms.

Leaflets with encrypted survival information were dropped. Others promised a reward to any of the local tribesmen who came forward to Coalition forces with information that led to the rescue of any of the SEALs.

*   *   *

Around this time, the Rangers of 3rd Ranger Battalion arrived in the AO. They had reached Afghanistan a day before but had to go through all of the procedures for entering theater before they could be inserted to join the search.

For interpreters, the Rangers had with them members of the Afghan Counterterrorist Pursuit Team, a U.S.-sponsored Afghan special operations unit. The Mohawks, as they were called, would not only provide language support for the Rangers if they had to talk to the locals but were trained to fight alongside them.

To the Rangers’ concern, when briefed they learned that the insert route was the exact same flight path as Turbine 33’s. Even though the crash site was secured, the Rangers were a little wary of going right into the same area, by the same route. It wouldn’t be the first time a follow-on force taking the same route had been ambushed.

However, the insertion went smoothly, without making contact with the enemy. The Rangers moved off the LZ, seeing what was left of the wreck of Turbine 33 as they passed it. Once away from the LZ, they set up a patrol base, getting ready to head out to search the surrounding mountains in the morning.

Day 5: July 2

With the FBI analysts’ confirmation that the note did indeed come from Marcus Luttrell, things began to speed up. The area of the team’s E&E had been solidified, and the search could be narrowed down to the Shuryek Valley and the eastern side of Sawtalo Sar. While the steepness of the terrain still provided plenty of challenges to the Rangers and Special Forces conducting the search, it was now workable. Furthermore, they now had a location and a contact for Marcus, and confirmation that he, at least, was still alive.

As soon as the note was verified at around 0200Z, Special Forces and Ranger personnel were immediately directed by the JOC to move to Objective Barracuda, which was the code name for the village of Sabray, where Marcus was being harbored by the local villagers, led by Gulab, the son of the village elder.

At about midday, the first elements made contact with Marcus Luttrell. According to Marcus’s recollections, the first one he saw was an Afghan commando, followed by two Rangers from 2nd Ranger Battalion. The word spread quickly that Marcus had been found, and the Rangers got him to higher ground, where his wounds were further treated while the Rangers and Special Forces set security and prepared for the birds to come extract him.

The two 920th Rescue Wing HH-60 Pave Hawks would fly the extraction mission, covered by AH-64 Apaches, A-10 Warthogs, and an AC-130 Spectre. At 1452Z, the flight, call sign Halo 43, received its tasking, and Skinny and Spanky began their planning process.

Because of the Black Hawk’s vulnerability to ground fire (as had been graphically demonstrated in Mogadishu, Somalia, twelve years before), and the fear of losing yet another helicopter after the shootdown of Turbine 33, the HH-60s had only flown at night and would go into the extract in a pair, with one helo landing and the other flying top cover, its door gunners vigilant for any threats to the bird on the ground. It was decided that Skinny would fly top cover while Spanky went in, landed on the LZ, and retrieved Marcus, Gulab, and Gulab’s family. Spanky, on learning he was going to get the most dangerous part of the mission, became even more focused.

The pilots had not gotten a good look at the terrain near Sabray on their previous flights, and Spanky later recalled that the imagery they had to work off of didn’t give an entirely accurate picture of just how steep the terrain in the Shuryek Valley was. Regardless, they departed Bagram Airfield at 1750Z, heading east toward Kunar.

En route, Halo 43 received a radio call from Bagram, informing them that the extract grid coordinate had changed and that the LZ was 2 kilometers over from where they had planned. They received the call while ten minutes out from the LZ, prompting some frantic recalculation to ensure they got to the right spot. In the dark, in the mountains, a 2-kilometer error was going to make the rescue all but impossible if they didn’t figure it out.

As the copilots calculated the new grid coordinate, it made less and less sense. The flight computers were not changing the time or distance to the new grid. After what he described as trying to pull his hair out through his helmet, Skinny’s copilot, JP, figured out that there had been a misunderstanding by the source sending the new grid.

Military grid coordinates operate on a metric system, where each digit represents so many meters. Thus, a 4-digit grid is accurate to within 1 kilometer, a 6-digit grid is accurate to within 100 meters, etc. What had happened with the new grid coordinate was that the end of the 10-digit grid coordinate had changed, and someone had misinterpreted a 2-meter change as 2 kilometers. The LZ hadn’t changed at all.

As they neared the mountains, the cloud cover got heavier. The moon was not up, and the clouds were obscuring any starlight, rendering the pilots’ and crews’ night vision nearly useless. The AC-130 on station was supposed to illuminate the LZ with its IR floodlight, commonly known to the men on the ground as “the Eye of God.” This IR flood, invisible to the naked eye but incredibly bright on night vision, is usually used to mark targets for the gunship’s weapons, including a 25 mm chain gun, a 40 mm Bofors cannon, and a 105 mm howitzer. As they neared the LZ, however, they received a call from the AC-130, “Halo, negative burn, negative burn.” The AC-130 had to stay above the clouds and couldn’t burn through them with the floodlight. The LZ remained shrouded in pitch darkness. The pilots were already having to use their FLIR cameras to navigate, because the illumination was so poor.

On the ground, the Rangers and Special Forces were waiting with Marcus, watching the lights of the Taliban moving on the opposite slopes, as Ahmad Shah’s men tried one last time to capture the wounded SEAL. Based on his recollections and observations from the previous few days, Marcus helped the Rangers call in air support on the enemy positions. Spanky recalled the muzzle flashes and rocket strikes flickering over the mountainsides.

The problem still remained that the LZ was completely shrouded in darkness and invisible to the pilots. Unless they could get some reference to get a fix on it, the rescue was going to be a no-go.

At the last moment, one of the A-10s flying above dropped down through the clouds and briefly illuminated the LZ with his targeting laser. That was enough. Halo 43 started in toward the LZ.

Skinny went first, though he was flying top cover, swooping in low enough for the crew chief to toss a chemlight onto the LZ before climbing back into the sky, hoping to draw fire while getting into a better position to cover Spanky’s bird as it landed on the LZ. The chemlight provided Spanky with a visual reference on the LZ.

The LZ itself proved to be a narrow shelf among the village’s agricultural terraces, with a sheer rock wall on one side and a drop of 1,500 to 2,000 feet on the other. The level ground was actually narrower than the HH-60’s rotor disc.

As Spanky took his helicopter in, at about 10 feet above the ground, they found themselves in a complete brownout. A brownout happens when the helicopter’s rotor wash has kicked up so much dust and debris that it becomes impossible for the pilot to see the ground, or just about anything, for that matter. It is an extremely dangerous situation at the best of times. On the side of a mountain, in the dark, trying to land on a tiny shelf, it is much, much worse.

In those conditions, without being able to see the ground, especially with a 1,500-foot or longer fall on one side, there is a high risk of rollover. If one tire rests on something higher than the other, it acts as a pivot point. Even hovering under brownout conditions becomes hazardous, as the pilot has no references to keep the hover stable.

For some time, which seemed like forever to the pilots and crew, they hovered in the dust, trying not to crash. Gonzo, Spanky’s copilot, told the crew in the back that if they were of a praying disposition, now would be a good time. The PJs and crew lay down in the back, which they hoped would reduce the damage if they did crash.

Through the dust, Gonzo could catch glimpses of the rock wall to their left. He later estimated that they were 15 or 20 feet from the wall. One of the PJs in back saw the tail rotor come within 6 feet of the trees.

Spanky was trying to hold the bird level, searching for any reference at all. He later recalled thinking that they were going to die, that he’d failed not only his crew but Marcus and the rest of the guys on the ground.

When Gonzo warned him about the wall on their left, and with increasingly frantic warnings coming from the crew in the back, Spanky tried to correct to the right. The Black Hawk has two sets of controls, both of which can affect the bird at the same time. This is to allow the pilot or copilot to moderate the other’s maneuvers. Gonzo grabbed the stick and moderated Spanky’s correction, keeping them from going out over the edge.

Then, through the dust, in the dark, Spanky saw something. It was a bush on the terrace ahead of them, waving wildly in the rotor wash. He said it reminded him of the hanging plants he’d known as a kid. It provided him the hover reference he needed to get the bird steady. He eased the helicopter to the ground and landed. Once the pitch of the rotor blades changed, the dust began to settle. Spanky would later admit that he never would have tried such a landing if there had been any other option, even in daylight.

The PJs disembarked, and the first thing they saw was an Afghan tribesman approaching the helicopter. Without any identification, they first thought he was a threat, and the lead PJ had his weapon trained on him. Then a second, smaller man stepped forward, trying to communicate that they were friendly. The PJ wasn’t sure what to do until one of the Rangers approached and made linkup, verifying that the first man was in fact Marcus Luttrell. He was in Afghan tribal dress, largely because his uniform had been torn to pieces by bullets, RPG shrapnel, and the fall down the mountain.

The PJ asked Marcus an authentication question, to determine for certain that he was indeed the missing SEAL. In this case, the question was “What’s your favorite superhero?” Marcus, strung out from his injuries and the stress of the Taliban threatening to take him for the last four days, at first looked at him as if wondering why he was being asked such a ridiculous question on the side of an Afghan mountain in the dark. Then he remembered and answered correctly. “Spider-Man.” It was one of the pieces of verifying information that had to be left at the JOC before any SOF team went outside the wire, in case just such a situation arose.

Although the original plan had been to extract Gulab and his family, the family was not on the LZ. The PJs brought Marcus and Gulab onto the Black Hawk and started looking Marcus over. The one who had first met him and verified his identity found himself wondering why they hadn’t taken off yet. They were still perched on a tiny LZ on the side of a mountain, and there were still Taliban out there in the dark. Then he remembered that it was his responsibility to alert the pilot that they were ready, so he called forward to Spanky that they were good. Spanky pulled them up off the mountainside, and they were headed away.

The bird headed to Asadabad first, only about 15 kilometers to the east. At 1942Z, they arrived at Asadabad and dropped off Gulab. He would be questioned, and measures would be taken to protect him and his family from retaliation by the Taliban for their role in sheltering Marcus. Marcus only had a moment to say good-bye to the man who saved his life; then the bird was pulling for the sky again, heading for Jalalabad.

At 1956Z, both Black Hawks landed at Jalalabad, and Marcus was taken to an MC-130 that was waiting to return him to Bagram Airfield. He arrived at Bagram at 2045Z and was met by four doctors and the repatriation team. The process of repatriation and recovery had to begin.

Marcus refused the litter the medical personnel had brought for him. Though he had been shot in the leg, he insisted on walking off the bird. He was a SEAL; he would walk.

One of those who met him was the CRO. He had left the JOC long enough to go meet Marcus, shake his hand, and know, for certain, that one of his brothers was home safe. Then he went back to work to retrieve the rest.

Later, Spanky would recall his crew celebrating as they got back. He said he didn’t think any of them quite understood just how close they had come to crashing and dying on the mountainside that night.

*   *   *

The 3rd Battalion Rangers had set out at sunup to begin their part of the search. While relatively lightly loaded, with Rhodesian vests and no body armor, they had gone from only a few hundred feet above sea level in Georgia to over 8,000 feet above sea level in Kunar. One Ranger who was there mentioned that it took only about an hour to realize just how difficult the mission was going to be. The team leaders were issued extra IV bags in case their men suffered heat injuries in the summer heat, struggling over the rough terrain.

The Rangers patrolled the mountains in the heat for the entire day, finding nothing, though at least one incident of a Ranger firing at what he thought was an enemy in the trees was reported. When they set in a new patrol base as darkness descended, two Rangers were almost hit by a descending resupply bundle, dropped by the aircraft overhead for the missing SEALs.

*   *   *

Earlier in the day, a team of 2nd Battalion Rangers had discovered remains of what they first reported as another SEAL. The Rangers had been patrolling the area of Sawtalo Sar for days, looking for any sign of the missing team. The terrain was brutal, and the heat (it was the middle of summer in Afghanistan, after all) was oppressive. The nearby Shuryek Valley was at 5,500 feet above sea level, and the summit of Sawtalo Sar stood at 9,230 feet. The Rangers were patrolling the fingers coming off Sawtalo Sar’s main ridge, which Marcus had begun calling “Murphy’s Ridge.” A great deal of the movement was up and down steep, rocky inclines covered in scrub and tall trees.

One of the Ranger patrols had been working their way along one of the fingers when, looking down into the ravine below, they spotted what looked like a body. Leaving part of the patrol on the high ground to hold security, several of the Rangers descended into the ravine to investigate.

After clambering down into the ravine, the Rangers found the bodies of both Michael Murphy and Danny Dietz. The Taliban had found them first and stripped them of their weapons and most of their equipment. Shah’s men had made a video that had gone up on the Internet and Al Arabiya TV earlier, showing off the weapons they had taken from the bodies of the dead SEALs, including camouflage-painted M-4s with ACOG scopes, suppressors, and M-203 grenade launchers. They had even displayed a shaky image of what they claimed was one of the SEALs’ ID cards. That appeared to be accurate.

As soon as they determined that they had found two of the missing SEALs, the Rangers called back to Bagram to inform the JOC. Given the altitude and the difficulty of the terrain, the JOC started putting together a High Angle Combat Search and Rescue Team, consisting of five PJs and one Combat Controller, to go in and retrieve the bodies.

At 1822Z, the team boarded an MH-47 helicopter and took off from Bagram, heading toward Kunar in the wake of the two Black Hawks that had left less than an hour earlier. Their objective, code-named Objective Thresher, was an LZ from which they would move on foot to link up with the Rangers. They landed at 2113Z and began the 1.5-kilometer trek to the Rangers’ position.

Day 6: July 3

It wasn’t an easy movement. Not only were they in hostile territory (though the Shuryek Valley was considerably more friendly toward U.S. forces than the Korengal Valley and the village of Chichal, on the other side of the ridge), but they were facing the same brutally steep, rocky terrain that the Rangers had been moving over in the dark. Under those circumstances, and with the loads involved, including radios, batteries, water, ammunition, and the specialized rescue equipment they would need, footing becomes treacherous, and a single slip can result in a nasty fall, which can set back the movement at best, and result in serious injury at worst. The rescue team had to move slowly and carefully not only because of the difficulty of the terrain and the weight but simply to avoid needlessly risking the success of the mission.

The movement, less than a mile as the crow flies, took over six hours. At 0330Z, with the sun already up, the PJs made contact with the Rangers and linked up on the high ground above the bodies.

The Rangers, who had been holding security on the area for over ten hours, turned the site over to the High Angle Team. For security, they had apparently pulled all their men up onto the high ground; there wasn’t anything more they could do for the bodies, and down in the ravine was a decidedly tactically unsound position. Telling the PJs where the bodies were located, they then moved up to the team’s original observation post (OP).

Using the OP as a starting point, the Rangers began searching for the body of Matthew Axelson. They searched 800 meters out from the OP, following the ridge. The Rangers kept to the ridgeline, leaving the ravine to the PJs.

Meanwhile, the High Angle Team got to work and headed down into the ravine where the Rangers had found the first two bodies. They had to do some searching of their own but found the remains, effectively for the second time. They began to prepare for retrieval, calling back to Bagram for the birds to come get the bodies. They would hold security, with the Rangers back on the high ground, until the helicopters arrived.

*   *   *

Back at Bagram, more problems arose. It wasn’t as simple as just sending the birds to pick up the bodies; they were in a ravine, with no usable LZ nearby, and at 8,600 feet above sea level. While regular forward flight isn’t too difficult for a helicopter at that altitude, hovering is another matter altogether. It becomes extremely difficult to hold the bird steady, or even maintain enough lift. There isn’t as much air for the rotors to move, so therefore less lift is generated. The fact that the terrain meant they would have to hover over a steep slope only made things more difficult; while over a flat surface, a helicopter’s rotors generate “ground effect,” where the air being forced downward by the rotors effectively “bounces back” up, creating a cushion of air and generating more lift. A steep slope denies the helicopter that ground effect, making generating lift even more difficult.

Also, the heavier the helicopter, the more the rotors would have to work to hold it up, and the more likely that the pilot wouldn’t be able to hold the hover at all. Since Spanky had flown the retrieval for Marcus the night before, it was Skinny’s turn to handle the hairy flying while Spanky flew top cover. Every bit of equipment not essential to the retrieval itself was taken off of Skinny’s helo, to cut down on the weight. Even the door guns and the ammunition were stripped off the bird, making the door gunners, and the rest of the crew, extremely nervous. They would have to rely entirely on the Rangers on the ground and Spanky’s door gunners to keep the Taliban off them while they flew the retrieval. They would be sitting ducks until they could get away from the mountainside. The internal fuel tanks were also removed, which was not only going to reduce the helicopter’s range but would further reduce the time they had to hover on-station. One of the PJs even removed his back armor plate from his vest. He didn’t tell anyone at the time, as it was a severe violation of Standard Operating Procedure in-theater, but he figured that even that little bit of weight savings might make a difference.

Just stripping the weight wasn’t enough. The CRO and the pilots sat down to try to figure out how to minimize the hover time. The longer the helicopter hovered over the ravine, the greater chance they would lose the lift and crash. They had to come up with a plan that would allow them to get in, come to a hover, retrieve the bodies, and get out in as short a time as possible.

It took five to six hours of skull session before they believed they had a workable plan put together. The CRO went to the JOC to call out to the Rangers and the High Angle Team with instructions. This was going to be a very difficult mission, with a very narrow margin for error.

Day 7: July 4

Following standard procedure, the retrieval effort for Murphy’s and Dietz’s bodies would not begin until after dark. The preparations meant the mission couldn’t go on the night of July 3, so at 2047Z the two Pave Hawks lifted from Bagram and headed back into the mountains of Kunar.

The JOC had been in close communication with the High Angle Rescue Team and had passed along all the necessary instructions for the extraction, as well as stressing the time-sensitive nature of the operation. The quicker it was executed, the better. As Spanky flew top cover, Skinny swooped in toward the ravine. The PJs had the bodies prepped and ready at the LZ. Code-named Firebird HLZ, it was basically just a small clearing in the 40- to 50-foot-tall trees on the steep mountainside.

Even before reaching the LZ, the crew was already lowering the aircraft’s hoist, with a Stokes litter at the end of it. They timed the lowering and the approach so that the hoist was at full extension the moment the helicopter came to a hover.

The PJs on the ground were ready and waiting. As soon as the Stokes litter came down, they unhooked it and loaded both bodies into it. It had been decided that doing so would both reduce the weight the aircraft would have to fly with and reduce the time involved in loading the bodies. As soon as the remains were secured on the litter, the PJs hooked it back up to the hoist and signaled to Skinny that he was good to go. Skinny pulled off from the mountainside and started back to Bagram.

The helicopter had been in an actual hover for only about 1 minute and 15 seconds.

As the Pave Hawks flew away from the mountain and back toward Bagram, the crew raised the hoist and brought the bodies of the two SEALs aboard. One of the crew had thought to bring two American flags, which were draped over the bodies once they were secured inside the helicopter.

Once on the ground at Bagram, the helicopters were met by SOF personnel, including the CRO. The CRO helped carry both bodies, now in flag-draped body bags, to the Bagram morgue. It was the least he could do for two more brothers. However, there was still one left. Matthew Axelson still had to be found.

Shortly after returning to the JOC, the CRO was approached by a man he didn’t recognize. The man told him that the president wanted to know whether the body of Murphy or Dietz had been mutilated in any way. Doubtless the thought of the mutilated bodies of Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randy Shughart being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in 1993 was on the president’s mind at the time.

The CRO was rather nonplussed at the question; he still had one more missing SEAL to find. He replied, “The injuries were consistent with normal combat operations.” The man went to the phone nearby in the JOC and made a phone call, relaying the CRO’s words. The CRO forgot about it and got back to work.

Day 13: July 10

The Rangers had been scouring the mountains for over a week. The heat and altitude had taken their toll, with more than one Ranger having to be medevaced as a heat casualty, and many more needing to use IVs to recover the fluids they had lost hiking over the mountains with full combat loads. One had been knocked unconscious by a branch broken off by a descending resupply bundle. No matter how bad the conditions were, and how worn out the men were, they kept up the search. That was the mission, and they’d stay until the mission was accomplished.

Having found expended 5.56 mm casings left over from the firefight with Ahmad Shah’s fighters, the Rangers knew they were in the right area. Still hoping that the SEALs might be alive, a platoon set up an overwatch in a stone house on the mountainside, looking for any sign of the missing SEALs. Others continued combing the mountainside.

Eventually, the Rangers were joined by members from SEAL Team 10. The Rangers hadn’t known the SEALs were out there, and in fact, the CRO had kept them back at Bagram while they chafed to go out and search for their brothers. He needed them on-site if and when the missing operators were found, to assist in the repatriation and recovery process. Having familiar faces nearby helps the mental recovery of a man who has been cut off and alone behind enemy lines. The CRO needed the SEALs to be ready to help their brothers make the transition back, even more so as the days continued to drag on. He did not know they were out in the AO and still does not know who gave them the go-ahead to launch to help the search. Even after that long, the lines of communication were still blurred.

The SEALs told the Rangers that they had been informed by a local that, for some money, he would show them where a body was. They needed the Rangers’ help to provide security and move the body to where it could be more readily recovered. The Rangers readily agreed, and half the platoon accompanied the SEALs, while the other half remained behind to hold security.

They moved down the mountain and found the body of Matthew Axelson. He had apparently moved some distance away from the fight before he died, in spite of his wounds. There’s been talk about Axelson being alive for a short duration after the initial firefight, and there is no doubt that he traveled some distance and was still alive for some time. One of the U.S. Army Ranger battalion medics who recovered the body commented on how amazed he was that Matthew had covered any ground at all. His head injuries were so extensive that, according to witnesses with a medical background, he wouldn’t have survived if he had landed on the operating table. While we can offer no substantial evidence as to the actual distance traveled by Matthew after he broke contact, nor can we speculate further about his injuries, one thing remains clear: It’s a testament to his character and his “never quit” mentality that he covered any ground at all.

The SEALs insisted that they would carry Axe’s body. He was their brother; it was only fitting. They got him out of the more mountainous terrain to where a helicopter could come pick them up.

The Rangers suffered some loss of morale at that point, as the only one of the SEALs they had found was dead. Some of them did not know that Murphy’s and Dietz’s bodies had been picked up already, so they still held out some hope that all the SEALs were still alive and hiding in the mountains. Finding Axelson’s body took away some of that hope. Not long after, they were told about the earlier recoveries and informed that the mission was over.

The HH-60s departed Bagram at 1715Z and reached the LZ at 1845Z. This pickup was much simpler than the effort to extract Murphy’s and Dietz’s remains and went without incident. By 2015Z, the helos were back at Bagram.

The helicopter carrying Axelson’s body taxied to 100 yards from the Mortuary Affairs building on Bagram Airfield, as was standard. Again the CRO met the bird, and he lent a hand carrying Axelson’s body to the morgue, just as he had with Murphy and Dietz. The crew had once again brought an American flag to drape the body bag.

Because the base was still under threat from Taliban indirect fire, Bagram’s runway lights were kept dim, illuminating only a small area. As the CRO and the SEALs carried Axelson’s body to the morgue, figures loomed out of the dark.

SOF personnel had lined the 100 yards between the aircraft and the morgue. Most were invisible in the darkness until the bearers were right on top of them. As the body passed, each man came to attention and saluted, before disappearing back into the dark as the body moved toward Mortuary Affairs.

This show of respect hadn’t happened before. It only occurred when Axelson returned. In a way, it was a note of closure. The CRO would later say, “It almost made me feel as if a higher power was saying, ‘Welcome home, it’s over.’”

Author’s Note

This account is as accurate as I could make it, 7,000 miles away and eight years after the fact. Sources differed in their recollections, particularly about timelines. Not having been there, I have had to piece together the story as best I could.

There has been a great deal of controversy about Marcus Luttrell’s account in Lone Survivor. People who were not there have called his account into question, even calling him a liar. Some have even attempted to say, beyond all logic, that Ahmad Shah only had eight to ten fighters. This smacks of saying anything to puff up their own credentials and discredit the one man who lived to tell what happened on that mountain.

I found a few discrepancies in Marcus’s account, particularly when it came to dates and times. While this might be an indictment to some, there is a fact that needs to be considered.

I went through several firefights as a Recon Marine, both in Iraq and Afghanistan. Afterward, there was a lengthy team debrief, where we attempted to piece together exactly what had happened. No two of us remembered it the same way; it was a process of putting together a puzzle made up of fragmented individual memories. Adrenaline has a way of scrambling short-term memory, and we were doing this the day after the fight, in which none of us had taken a scratch.

Now consider Marcus’s situation. He had been shot, fallen off a mountain, and seen three of his best friends die. That is a level of stress that most people never have to face. That some of the details may have become uncertain in his mind is not only to be expected, it is natural.

What is unconscionable is that those who were not there attempt to tear down the man who was, in order to promote themselves. They know no better than Marcus what happened on that mountain. Attacking him based on supposition or a couple of Taliban videos they watched later will not bring back the dead, but only heaps dishonor on themselves.

There is a long-held truth in the military, although it has often been ignored in this age of satellite communications and drone overwatch. That truth is “Always listen to the man on the ground.” Marcus was the man on the ground. While some of his timelines might be corrected by those who had better record-keeping capability at the time, we should follow that hard-won wisdom and listen to the man on the ground.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Nealen stepped on the yellow footprints at MCRD San Diego in 2003. A year and a half later he began training to be a Reconnaissance Marine. After graduating the Basic Reconnaissance Course, he deployed twice to Iraq as a Recon Marine with Bravo Company, 1st Recon Battalion, before moving on to what was to become the reconstituted Force Recon Company, I Marine Expeditionary Force. By the time he finished his active service, he had qualified as a Combatant Diver, Navy/Marine Corps Parachutist, Marine Scout/Sniper, Scout/Sniper Team Leader, and Combat Tracker. He is now a Tactical Tracking Instructor, a freelance writer and contributor for SOFREP.com, and the author of the thrillers Task Force Desperate and Hunting in the Shadows.

OPERATION RED WINGS. Copyright © 2013 by SOFREP, INC. Foreword copyright © 2013 by Brandon Webb. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Cover art by Lisa Marie Pompilio

e-ISBN 9781466855533

First Edition: December 2013

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