Let's face it, al Qaeda means "the base," and in return for the Saudi fanatic bin Laden's money, the Taliban made it all possible. Marcus Luttrell's book about the Navy Seal Operation. "Take it easy, Matt." Our, "Sooo much more helpful thanSparkNotes. As a child, he already knew what he wanted - to become a Navy SEAL, a member of the elite special operations unit that was the cream of the US military. We never give these guys one inch of latitude. It was hard for me to identify with Shane because he was so different. Excerpted from LONE SURVIVOR: THE EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF OPERATION REDWING AND THE LOST HEROES OF SEAL TEAM 10 by Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson by arrangement with Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company Hachette Book Group. Marcus Luttrell Didnt Pull a Bullet From His Leg. There was a kind of sullen look to them, as if they were sick to death of having the American military around them. Our mission may have been strategic, it may have been secret. It's written right there in black and white in the of?cial philosophy of the U.S. Navy SEAL, the last two paragraphs of which read: We train for war and ?ght to win. Sitting opposite me in the Hercules was Senior Chief Daniel Richard Healy, another awesome Navy SEAL, six foot three, thirty-seven, married to Norminda, father of seven children. At least nothing major. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Academically, he was constantly in the gifted and advanced classes. We'd get some light in there and march him directly to the window so the guys outside with the intel could compare his face with photographs. And that's probably why we never lost one Navy SEAL in all my long months in Iraq. We found half-trained terrorists all over the world, mostly un?t to handle a lethal weapon of any kind, especially those Russian-made Kalashnikovs they use. This most northerly rocky shelf which juts out into the Gulf of Hormuz is the closest foreign point to the Iranian base at Bandar Abbas. Gregory Rockwood . And our coming task was to stop them, right there in those mountains, by whatever means necessary. What can you do to hide a worn or frayed area of a garment? It's hard to survive when a door comes straight at you at one hundred miles an hour from point-blank range. Home; Brands; Category; About us; Contact us; Need help? The Saudi Arabian founder and head of al Qaeda, the organization responsible for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, and the figure most associated with the enemy side during Americas War on Terror. Bin Laden was killed by American troops in 2011. There was nothing left. a minor lapse in judgment after we found an Iraqi insurgent ammunition dump during a patrol along a river as sporadic shots were ?red at us from the other side. The first true automatic assault weapon; manufactured in Russia during the Cold War; widely, often illegally, traded and used in conflicts throughout the world. As a child, he already knew what he wanted to become a Navy SEAL, a member of the elite special operations unit that was the cream of the US military. Fortunately, his neighbor, Billy Shelton, was a US Army veteran. It was around this time we ?rst heard of the rise of this sinister group who called themselves al Qaeda in Iraq. I always called him Axe, and I knew him well. According to Luttrells account dramatized in vivid, often bloody, detail in the movie in the early hours of the operation, he, Axelson, Dietz and Murphy were still waiting for daylight when three goat herders stumbled upon their location. Now, the guy who went out on the rock to get a signal with his sat phone didn't exactly just sit there and take round after round. For example, Luttrell didnt flatline, Shah probably wasnt a member of al Qaeda, and the final battle depicted in the film never happened. Copyright 2023 Navy SEALs. Far from the garden path of his home, Navy SEAL Matthew Axelson had dropped from a helicopter by rope into the mountains of eastern Afghanistan a day earlier. Luttrell may have been the firefight's lone survivor, but he hardly emerged unscathed. More impressive than the visuals, however: the 5.1 DTS-HD master audio soundtrack. Like, The 43nd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009, Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000, and the president most associated with the War on Terror of the early 21st century. Turn on desktop notifications for breaking news? Loved the film, but my heart hurt so bad when that guy (forgot his name already) was wheezing up against the tree, breathing his last few breaths, and the Taliban shoots and misses twice before finally taking him out. Although these city houses were mostly two-story, Iraqis tend to sleep downstairs, all of them crowded together in the living room. Jim loved his teammates and risked his life to save them.. The stretch of coastline running south from that point is much ?atter, sloping down from the ancient Al Hajar Mountains. In March 1999, he joined the US Navy and learned to be a Hospital Corpsman. All Rights Reserved. Never Do that, do this. And we always have a very clear objective, usually just one guy, one person who is responsible for making the problem: the terrorist leader or strategist. And while this process happened, the SEAL team secured the property, which means, broadly, making darned sure the Iraqis under this sudden house arrest had no access to any form of weaponry whatsoever. Awaiting us was the huge C-130 Hercules, a giant turbo-prop freighter. Joe Rogan has revealed why his podcast episode with Navy SEAL and "Lone Survivor" inspiration Marcus Luttrell ended so abruptly after a bathroom break. I think I would have enjoyed a documentary on the subject more than this . Complete your free account to request a guide. Patrick Griffin . Then he saw three officers in naval whites walking toward his door, and he sank slowly to his knees. Suh was one of 16 troops killed when a MH-47 Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan on June 28, on a daring daylight mission to reinforce an outnumbered four-man SEAL reconnaissance squad in 8,000-foot mountainous terrain. Even if we had not used the ?ash-crashes, they'd wake up real quick to face a group of big masked men, their machine guns leveled, shouting, daring anyone to make a move. And that's the issue: Was Saddam spinning for uranium-235, and if so, where did he get the uranium in the ?rst place? And we knew where we were going: right up there to the high peaks of the Hindu Kush, those same mountains where bin Laden might still be and where his new bands of disciples were still hiding. But in many ways I'm grateful for the experience. I was standing astride a bomb, directly over it, and I never even saw it. . I stand ready to bring the full spectrum of combat power to bear in order to achieve my mission and the goals established by my country. Luttrell later learned his name was Mohammad Gulab. Luttrell might have changed this detail to protect Gulab from retribution, but Gulab is mentioned by name later in the memoir. "No problem. All rights reserved. Up to that point, only 5 Marines had died in combat since the war started. That was all the information we had. In the film, Taraq comes to the village, grabs Luttrell, and drags him out to a log to behead him, raising a machete in the air. Now, that's all very gallant. . You can ask them. He was a super photographer and a skilled mechanic and engineer; he'd single-handedly restored and customized two old Volkswagen Bugs. Only one would live to tell the tale, and he survived only because a local risked everything to save a stranger in need. Lone Survivor Vocabulary & Cast of Characters Learn with flashcards, games, and more for free. 2023 JustWatch - All external content remains the property of the rightful owner. Those terrorist organizations laugh at the U.S. media, and they know exactly how to use the system against us. Only Mike Murphy. Their deaths were entirely due to the fact that a couple of their devoted, loyal comrades, full of pride in their ?ght for freedom, betrayed them. (I didnt give that much of a shit, Luttrell writes. A group of fundamentalist Muslims who took control of Afghanistan's government in 1996. First of all, make him drop his gun and get his a** on the ground. Need help? "Get away from me, Marcus!" Despite this, I can guarantee you that if three SEALs were put into a crowded airport, I would spot them all, just by their bearing, their con?dence, their obvious discipline, the way they walk. Press J to jump to the feed. (This claim is in both trailers.) Find related themes, quotes, symbols, characters, and more. Not that we imagined some trigger-happy Iranian missile director might take a pop at us with some fast heat-seeking weapon. It was always Please. It was about me getting my a** whipped. ** Relative location of the bodies The day was June 28th, 2005. (including. They cared, above all, about the quality of the informant's information, the priceless data which might save dozens of American lives. Everything Shane did, all through his short life, was outstanding. Because that would mean he was trying to produce weapons-grade uranium-235. We operate differently, because we are a much smaller force. "Lone Survivor," the story of SEAL heroism in the mountains of Afghanistan, resurfaced in May 2016 after an article in which Mohammed Gulab, the man who saved lone SEAL survivor Marcus Luttrell, disputed some of the most important aspects of Luttrell's story.Lone Survivor was eventually made into a major motion picture, but that . This site is where Mike and Jeff were buried. Often the photographs had been taken by the team I worked in, and identi?cation was swift. Anyway, we drove on through Manama out to Muharraq, where the U.S. air base lies to the south of the main Bahrain International Airport. Unfortunately, the ACM was waiting. And that's as sharp as it gets. Especially in our coastal searches. He was vastly experienced in the Middle East, having served in Jordan, Qatar, and Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. As a fighter and a warrior, those are usually the stories you dont want out., READ NEXT: Joe Rogan Just Sold His LA Home for This Much, Joe Rogan Reveals Reason for Sudden Ending: The Correct Decision, Please review our privacy policy here: https://heavy.com/privacy-policy/, Copyright 2023 Heavy, Inc. All rights reserved. Evaluate your skin tone for either blue or yellow undertones. Nonetheless we had to drive through the city in an unprotected vehicle over another causeway, the Sheik Hamad, named for the emir. In the book, members of the Taliban enter Luttrells room and begin beating him. There were times when he and I did not see eye to eye. In the book, the village elder walks to Asadabad to alert the military to Luttrells presence, but thats not how the military actually found him. In battle, he held his own and didn't get ruffled, which was extremely invaluable since he handled the radio. If the guy we'd arrested was especially stubborn, we'd cuff him and send him back to base for a more professional interrogation. Business class this wasn't. But frogs don't travel light, and they don't expect comfort. Marcus Luttrell on Having a Movie Made About His Story, Taken from JRE #1622 w/Marcus Luttrell: open.spotify.com/episode/7mY3guBPWWdyfUIYK1zUay?si=cc9643afc2c94265, Joe Rogan Just Sold His LA Home for This Much. As part of the mission, a four-man SEAL reconnaissance and surveillance team is tasked with locating Shah. First of all, the d**n thing is inaccurate, and in the hands of an hysteric, which most of them are, the guns spray bullets all over the place. Always Would you mind? It was important for us to appear nonmilitary, to not stand out in a crowd. You'll also get updates on new titles we publish and the ability to save highlights and notes. The sixth member of our group was James Suh, a twentyeight-year-old . Brutal, no mercy. This might be, perhaps, a little daunting for regular soldiers. Somewhere. Rogan wrote on Instagram, A real honor and a hell of a good time to share a podcast with a great man and a real hero. Heres how the screenplay reads: According to Luttrells memoir, however, he was not in mortal danger. James, like his close buddy Shane, was another inordinately tough SEAL, a petty of?cer second class. At ?rst there was just dust and small bits of concrete ?ying around. He was 29. On May 1, 2003, President Bush announced the military phase of the war was over. That's the way we gathered the intelligence we needed in order to locate and take out those who would still ?ght for Saddam Hussein, even if his government had fallen, even if his troops had surrendered and the country was temporarily under American and British control. If there's a ? He was devoted to his wife and his parents and his brother. The other scene where Danny Dietz began to panic after seeing his shot hand was also powerful since it showed a warrior going into a state of shock despite being trained to overcome any mental obstacle. Remember, there is no other reason on this earth to want uranium-235 except to make an atom bomb. why wasn't james suh in lone survivor. Spotify Fuggeddaboutit.". As for Luttrell, he was taken to Salar Ban a village. We used to hang out together half the night, and I can truthfully say no one ever made me laugh like that. Seemed ?tting. Just ask Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, whose life Gulab saved at great personal peril. A second operation recovered all 16 bodies, as well as those of Luttrells team bringing the body count to 19. I also saw the al Qaeda training camp north of Baghdad. Because in the end, your enemy must ultimately fear you, understand your supremacy. I'm not saying that, given the serious situation, those elite American warriors might not have died a little later, but they would not have died right then, and in my view would almost certainly have been alive today. When asked about his version, Gulab had a different story to tell. We know about bad guys, what they do, and, often, who they are. With the exception of Luttrell, all were killed June 28, 2005, by enemy forces while supporting Operation Red Wings. Below: (L to R) Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), Matt Axe Axelson (Ben Foster) and Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) in Lone Survivor. For people wondering why the podcast cut off abruptly after Marcus went to take a leak we decided that perhaps he had consumed a little too much to continue talking., Rogan added, in retrospect, I believe that was the correct decision. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. Stay right where you are." From what I've read and watched, he was screaming at Marcus to help him out. If not the actual guys, then their blood brothers, the lunatics who still wished us dead and might try it again. The politicians have chosen to send us into battle, and that's our trade. It wasn't long before Ting was cast for the role of Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class, James Suh, in "Lone Survivor" (2014). Perhaps the most surprising and meaningful scene was when Marcus, alone and in foreign hostile territory, receives help from a very unexpected source. If the public insists it has the right to know, which I very much doubt, perhaps the people should go and face for themselves armed terrorists hell-bent on killing every single American they can. There are parts to it that just shake you. The target of Luttrells team was the local ACM group led by Ahmad Shah Dara-I-Nur better known to his followers as Mohammad Ismail. Donna and Cordell Axelson were the driving force behind a memorial erected in Cupertinos Memorial Park in 2007, an effort she describes as therapeutic. The statue depicts Matthew who attended Monta Vista High School and James in commando gear, rifles ready. How about when a bunch of guys wearing colored towels around their heads and brandishing AK-47s come charging over the horizon straight toward you? Man, we can do it all. In fact, there were districts in Manama known as black ?ag areas, where tradesmen, shopkeepers, and private citizens hung black ?ags outside their properties to signify Americans are not welcome. Rogan signed a deal worth more than $100 million with the streaming service in 2020, according to The Wall Street Journal, and some Rogan listeners have been skeptical about the move, wondering whether the company would be censoring Rogan or controlling his content. He then went on to create the Lone Survivor Foundation a service organization for veterans. Somebody, someone from their own side, shopped them, as they had shopped hundreds of others. I never once saw him upset, and he always knew precisely what he was doing. The Korengal and Shuryak valleysthe geographic region of Operation Red Wingsare sparsely populated and could not support an enemy force of 200 people. His second book, Service: A Navy SEAL at War, was released in 2012. It was also the ?rst inkling we had of the rise from the ashes of Osama bin Laden's followers. There was SGT2 Matthew Gene Axelson, not yet thirty, a petty of?cer from California, married to Cindy, devoted to her and to his parents, Cordell and Donna, and to his brother, Jeff. In combat he was a supreme athlete, swift, violent, brutal if necessary. So we jocked up and combed the deep, clear waters of that lake for about a week, every inch of it. But don't even try to go around him and bawl out one of his guys, because he could be a formidable adversary when riled. Of course he did. Right after that, we found the body of the pilot washed up on the shore. Compare these costs to the cost of buying a new or used tuxedo. Each one of us had grown a beard in order to look more like Afghan ?ghters. He positioned us a ways back, but a couple of us did wonder if it was quite far enough. No. Seven new cops were killed and seventy more were wounded. I'm not a real fast runner, but I'm quick through the water, and I reached him with no trouble. James Suh. We didn't mind this, but we didn't love it either. . He once gave me a stop sign for my birthday. But how about a group of U.S. soldiers who have been on patrol for several days; have been ?red upon; have dodged rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bombs; have sustained casualties; and who are very nearly exhausted and maybe slightly scared? Petty Officer Second Class Shane Patton , Lone Survivor. This first appeared in The Havok Journal on March 23, 2014. Complete your free account to access notes and highlights. Easily the best war movie to focus on the modern Middle Eastern conflicts. None of this happened. Get Morning Report and other email newsletters, Donna Axelson was watering flowers in the front yard of her Cupertino home one summer day when she noticed two men dressed in Navy blues walking up the front path to her house. The article has been adapted and reprinted with their permission below. So they just went right back at it. While his classmates were describing their family pets or favorite baseball stars, he was busy crafting a fictional memoir of a lone Jonestown survivor. Ten thousand feet up some treeless moonscape of a mountain range in one of the loneliest and sometimes most lawless places in the world. Ryan Kay . We continued our operations, looking for the key insurgents, forcing or bribing the information out of them. 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Forty-eight hours later, on April 17, U.S. forces captured Saddam's half brother the infamous Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti. The black ?ags worked. War is crazy. His early ambition had been to become a veterinarian, a dog specialist. In a sense, we were all alone. However, while the movie recreates many of the realities of war in painstaking detail, it also diverges significantly from the real-life Operation Red Wings. That's frogmen, by the way, which we all were. "I'm a race car in the red, highest revs on the TAC. Unfortunately, he failed to graduate because of an injury, so Luttrell instead graduated with Class 228 on April 21, 2000. Joe Rogan fans were left puzzled after a recent podcast episode with former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell ended abruptly when the war hero who inspired the movie Lone Survivor went to the bathroom. It was just another example of how amazingly sharp you need to be in order to wear the SEAL Trident. Sorry, I meant dude. America wanted the Afghan Parliament to hold elections scheduled for September of that year, while the ACM did not. . The pure clarity of purpose was inspirational to us. In many ways Dan was tough on everyone. The most important reason why the Taliban didnt attack? Petty Officer _____ wasn't even 30 yet. Both the film and the book more or less ignore the role of Marines in conceiving, planning, and leading Operation Red Wings. I'm not saying anyone else could recognize them. Moments later, our EOD guys blew it up. I remember him giving his very beautiful girlfriend Heather a gift-wrapped traf?c cone for her birthday. He was con?dent. ", "Right away, Marcus. You don't get a phone call, there are officers and chaplains who only job is to go inform and assist the families. Bush was, Dictator of Iraq during the early years of the War on Terror. Veteran and military casualties from every one of the nation's wars are buried at the cemetery, from the Civil War to the things in Afghanistan and Iraq. keto pee smells like asparagus, calvert hall roster lacrosse, similes about the environment,