Marcus luttrell

“Move it, 
guys! Let’s really move it!”
That’s what he always said under pressure. Sure, he was a 
commanding officer, and a hell of a good one. But more than that, he was a SEAL, a part of that 
brotherhood forged in blood. Even more important, he was a man. And right now he was 
answering an urgent, despairing cry from the very heart of his own brotherhood. There was only 
one way Eric Kristensen was headed, straight up the mountain, guns blazing, command or no 
command. 
Inside the MH-47, the men of 160th SOAR waited quietly, as they had done so many times 
before on these hair-raising air-rescue ops, often at night. They were led by a terrific man, Major 
Steve Reich of Connecticut, with Chief Warrant Officers Chris Scherkenbach of Jacksonville, 
Florida, and Corey J. Goodnature of Clarks Grove, Minnesota. 
Master Sergeant James W. Ponder was there, with Sergeants First Class Marcus Muralles of 
Shelbyville, Indiana, and Mike Russell of Stafford, Virginia. Their group was completed by Staff 
Sergeant Shamus Goare of Danville, Ohio, and Sergeant Kip Jacoby of Pompano Beach, Florida. 
By any standards, it was a crack army fighting force. 
The MH-47 took off and headed over the two mountain ranges. I guess it seemed to take forever. 
Those kind of rescues always do. It came in to land at just about the same spot we had fast-roped 
in at the start of the mission, around five miles from where I was now positioned. 
The plan was for the rescue team to rope it down just the same, and when the “Thirty seconds!” 
call came, I guess the lead guys edged toward the stern ramp. What no one knew was the Taliban 
had some kind of bunker back there, and as the MH-47 tilted back for the insert and the ropes fell 
away for the climb-down, the Taliban fired a rocket-propelled grenade straight through the open 
ramp. 
It shot clean past the heads of the lead group and blew with a shattering blast against the fuel 
tanks, turning the helo into an inferno, stern and midships. Several of the guys were blown out 
and fell, some of them burning, to their deaths, from around thirty feet. They smashed into the 

---

mountainside and tumbled down. The impact was so violent, our search-and-rescue parties later 
found gun barrels snapped in half among the bodies. 
The helicopter pilot fought for control, unaware of the carnage behind him but certainly aware of 
the raging fires around and above him. Of course, there was nothing he could do. The big MH-47 
just fell out of the sky and crashed with thunderous impact onto the mountainside, swayed, and 
then rolled with brutal force over and over, smashing itself to pieces on a long two-hundred-yard 
downward trail to extinction. 
There was nothing left except scattered debris when our guys finally got up there to investigate. 
And, of course, no survivors. My close SDV Team 1 buddies James, Chief Dan, and young 
Shane were all gone. It was as well I did not know this as I lay there in my crevasse. I’m not sure 
I could have coped with it. It was nothing less than a massacre. Weeks later I broke down when I 
saw the photographs, mostly because it was me they were all trying to rescue. 
As I explained, at the time I knew nothing of this. I only knew something had happened that had 
caused a lot of Taliban to get very obviously excited. And soon I could see U.S. aircraft flying 
right along the canyon in front of me, A-10s and AH-64 Apache helicopters. Some of them were 
so close I could see the pilots. 
I pulled my PRC-148 radio out of my pouch and tried to make contact. But I could not speak. 
My throat was full of dirt, my tongue was sticking to the roof of my mouth, and I had no water. I 
was totally unable to transmit. But I knew I was in contact because I could hear the aircrew 
talking. So I fired up my emergency distress beacon on the radio and transmitted that. 
They picked it up. I know they did because I could hear them plainly. “Hey, you getting that 
beacon?” “Yeah, we got it...but no further information.” Then they just flew off, over to my 
right, where I now know the MH-47 had gone down. 
The trouble was, the Taliban steal those radios if they can, and they often used them to lure the 
U.S. helicopters down. I was unaware of this at the time, but now it’s obvious to me, the 
American pilots were extremely jumpy about trying to put down in response to a U.S. beacon 
because they did not know who the hell was aiming that beacon, and they might get shot down. 
Which would have been, anyway, little comfort to me, lying there on the mountainside only half 
alive, bleeding to death and unable to walk. And now it was growing dark, and I was plainly 
running out of options. I guessed my only chance was to attract the attention of one of the pilots 
who were still flying down my canyon at pretty regular intervals. 
My radio headset had been ripped away during my fall down the mountain, but I still had the 
wires. And I somehow rigged up two of my chem lights, which glow when you break them in 
half, and fixed them to the defunct radio wires. And then I whirled this homemade slingshot 
around my head in a kind of luminous buzz saw the first moment I saw a helicopter in the area. 
I also had an infrared strobe light that I could fire up, and I had the laser from my rifle, which I 
took off and aimed at the regular U.S. flyby. Jesus Christ! I was a living, breathing distress 
signal.