Posted on 06/11/2007 11:14:32 AM PDT by RDTF
The blood in his eyes almost blinded him, but the Navy Seal could hear, clattering above the trees in northeast Afghanistan, rescue helicopters.
Hey, he pleaded silently. I'm right here.
Deadly Day in 2005
Marcus Luttrell, a fierce, 6-foot-5 rancher's son from Texas, lay in the dirt. His face was shredded, his nose broken, three vertebrae cracked from tumbling down a ravine. A Taliban rocket-propelled grenade had ripped off his pants and riddled him with shrapnel.
As the helicopters approached, Luttrell, a petty officer first class, turned on his radio. Dirt clogged his throat, leaving him unable to speak. He could hear a pilot: "If you're out there, show yourself."
It was June 2005. The United States had just suffered its worst loss of life in Afghanistan since the invasion in 2001. Taliban forces had attacked Luttrell's four-man team on a remote ridge shortly after 1 p.m. on June 28. By day's end, 19 Americans had died. Now U.S. aircraft scoured the hills for survivors.
There would be only one. Luttrell's ordeal -- described in exclusive interviews with him and 14 men who helped save him -- is among the more remarkable accounts to emerge from Afghanistan. It has been a dim and distant war, where after 5 1/2 years about 26,000 U.S. troops remain locked in conflict.
Out of that darkness comes this spark of a story. It is a tale of moral choices and of prejudices transcended. It is also a reminder of how challenging it is to be a smart soldier, and how hard it is to be a good man.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Wow!
Stunning article. I wonder what happened to the Afghan family that sheltered him?
ping
Wow! Great read!
This is the measure of a man, that he knows when to fight and when to pray.
Thanks to God for our fighting men and women - whether they’re a Seal, Airman, Paratrooper, Coastie or Marine, they all deserve our praise in this long and brutal war. Thanks also to God that this writer, Laura Blumenfeld, chose to cover this story with such heart. For Gubal and his family, special prayers for protection.
May God bless those who fight for our Freedom, and those who give shelter to them... each doing the will of God.
beautifully said!
Great story, thanks for posting it.
Patriot’s Proud PING
SandRat...thank you SO much for this ping.
My boy needs to read that story of this incredibly brave man. May God bless Marcus Luttrell, he’s the stuff America and our military are made of.
Fyi..
Good story. I remember a tale from the first Gulf War of a US Spec Op’s team in Iraq that came upon an Iraqi farmers kid. They let the kid go and just like those Afghans, he promptly went and told his Dad who alerted the Iraqi army who decended in force after the US Spec Op team.
I forget all the details but suffice it to say, the mission ended in failure although in the rescue, a US F-15 pilot was credited with downing an Iraqi helicopter... with a 2000 lb laser guided bomb.
It'd be a nightmare to have to make a decision like that one but, speaking for myself only, I'd rather go to jail than agonize for the rest of my life over a decision that cost my friends their lives.
He never saw Gulab again.
The Taliban won't have forgotten. It'd be a miracle if Gulab and his family are still alive.
That's really troubling that in Spec Op's, someone would fear that.
Do you think he made the right decision? I do. At least it was the professional's decision, imo.
I wouldn't make a good special operator for a whole host of reasons, and that's one of them. I know I could only be professional up to a point. Then the calculus of my own personal survival and the survival of my teammates would enter the picture and I could easily see myself voting the other way, if killing the "civilians" or letting them go were the only choices, which I'm assuming was the case.
Too bad they can't give our Spec Ops guys powerful sedatives in the future to administer to the occasional civilian they encounter. So the choice wouldn't always be between killing him, letting him go, or abandoning the mission.
My first instinct is to say regardless of how the mission turned out, he made the wrong decision.
That having been said, I wasn't there to know all the subjectives that influenced their decision, or what factors influenced prior decisions, it's difficult from my armchair to second guess. However, while the Afghans were in their control, they knew that by releasing them, their mission would be compromised. Compromising the mission was their decision to make and that's what they chose to do. I suspect abandoning the mission because they encountered and released two Afghans would raise questions about their competence.
Perhaps they thought support was sufficiently close that if the Afghans did blow their cover, they'd still be ok. They obviously failed to include into their calculus the chance of Murphy being in the area. As it turns out, he showed up and we know what happened to their support.
Full stop - End of discussion - Is where you should have left it - In terms of your opinions about these warriors decisions.....
When one goes deep into Indian country....in the type of Indian country they were in.....ugly sh*t is going to happen certain times no matter if every decision you made was perfectly correct.....
Navy SEAL Lt. Mike Murphy - For his heroic actions and efforts in Afghanistan in June of 05 will likely be awarded the MOH-
When most of the details are released about the entire fight, it will be recorded as one of the most courageous demonstrations of American warriors in our nation's history.....These SEALs where vastly out numbered, in deep, deep enemy territory, high in the mountains.....and fought a ferocious firefight that lasted several hours....It ended with a tragic loss of life on our side....but this small SEAL Teams left dozens and dozens of the enemy dead on that mountain range as well....
Actually, I disagree. Releasing the two afghans compromised the mission and the SEAL's knew the risk before releasing them. I cannot judge why they did what they did but the fact remains that if rather than being released, the two Afghans were made to disappear, the risk of a compromised mission would have been much lower.
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