Marcus luttrell

lokhay
or no 
lokhay,
because if the Taliban ever did 
get into this room, they would not believe I was a wounded doctor, not with a sniper rifle like 
that. 
Lokhay
or no 
lokhay.
At that stage I did not understand them, and anyhow there was little I could do about it. So I just 
cast it from my mind. And I lay there in the fading light when they finally left me entirely alone. 
I had had water and I’d eaten some of that flat bread they bake in the East. They had offered me 
a dish full of warm goat’s milk into which I was supposed to dip it. But the combination was 
without doubt the worst-tasting sensation I’d ever had. I damn near threw up, and I asked them to 
take the milk away, telling them it was against my religion! I thus tackled that hard, awful bread 
bone dry. But I was grateful, and I tried to make that clear. Hell, I could have been dead up the 
mountain. But for them, I would have been. 
And now once again I was alone. I stared around me, looking for the first time at my 
surroundings. A thick, loose-woven Afghan carpet covered the floor, and colored cushions were 
placed against the wall. There were carved hanging ornaments but no pictures. There was glass 
in the windows, and below this house I could see others had thatched roofs. They were definitely 
skilled builders up here, but I was uncertain where the raw materials came from, the rocks, glass, 
and straw. 
Inside my room there was one very large, locked wooden box. In there, I learned, were the most 
valued possessions of every member of the household. And there was not much. Trust me on 
that. But what they had they seemed prepared to share with me. 
I’d been given a couple of blankets, and as the night drew in, I discovered why. The temperature 
plummeted from the searing heat of the day straight into the thirties. 
I noticed there was also an old iron woodstove in one corner of the room, where I later learned 
they baked bread every day. The system up here is for the two main houses, like this one, to do 
the baking for everyone, and the bread is then distributed. I lay there wondering where all the 
smoke went when they lit the stove, since there was no chimney. But that was a discovery yet to 
come. Answer: nowhere. That wood smoke stayed right in my bedroom. 
I drifted into a half sleep, my wounds still throbbing but thankfully not becoming infected. 
Hooyah,
Sarawa! Right? 
The door to my new residence was quite thick but ill fitting. It would keep out the wind and the 
rain, but the guys had to give it a mighty shove to open it. I’d already noticed that, and I knew no 
one could enter the room without waking me, so I had no need to sleep on high alert. 

---

What happened next, however, took me by surprise. The door gave way to a kick that shattered 
the silence. I opened my eyes in time to see eight armed Taliban fighters come barging into the 
room. The first one came straight over to my cot and slapped me across the face with all his 
force. That really pissed me off, and he was a very lucky boy that I could not move and was 
effectively a prisoner. If he’d even thought about putting his hands on me when I was fit, I’d 
have ripped his fucking head off. Little prick. 
I knew they were Taliban because of their appearance, very clean cut, manicured beards, clean 
teeth, hands, and clothes. They were well fed and could speak broken English. None of them was 
very big, maybe around five feet eight on average, and they all wore those old Soviet leather 
belts, the ones with the red star in the middle of the buckle. They wore Afghan clothes, but each 
one had a different-colored vest. Every man carried a knife and a Russian pistol jammed into his 
belt. Everything made in Moscow. Everything stolen. 
There was nothing I could get my hands on to defend myself. I had no rifle, no grenade, just my 
own personal badge of courage, the Lone Star of Texas on my arm and chest. I needed some of 
that courage because these bastards laid into me, kicking my left leg and punching my face and 
upper body, beating me to hell. 
I didn’t give that much of a shit. I can suck this kind of crap up, like I’ve been trained. Anyway, 
they didn’t have a decent punch among them. Essentially they were all very lucky boys, because 
in normal circumstances, I could have thrown any one of them straight through the freakin’ 
window. My main worry was they might decide to shoot me or tie me up and march me off 
somewhere, maybe over the border to Pakistan, to film me and then cut off my head on camera. 
If I’d thought for one moment that was their intention, it would have been bad news for all of us. 
I was hurt, but not so bad as I was making out, and I was formulating a fallback plan. Up above 
me in the rafters, I could see a four-foot-long iron bar, just resting there. Could I get it if I stood 
up? Yes. 
In a life-or-death situation, I’d grab that bar, carefully select the most violent of them, and smash 
it right through him. He’d never get up again. Then I’d lay into the front two, taking them 
entirely by surprise. At the same time, using the bar, I’d ram the whole group into a corner, 
crushing them together, as per standard SEAL combat strategy, making it impossible for anyone 
to draw down on me, pull a knife, or get out. 
I’d probably have to obliterate the skulls of another couple of them before using one of those 
Russian pistols to finish anyone still alive. Could I have done it? I think so. My buddies back in 
SEAL Team 10 would have been mighty disappointed in me if I’d failed. 
My absolute fallback position would have been to kill them all, grab their weapons and 
ammunition, then barricade myself in the house until the Americans came to get me. 
The problem was, where would all this get me in the short term? What was the point of being a 
bad-ass SEAL, the way some guys would be? The house was surrounded by more Taliban, all of 
them with AKs. I saw those guards come in and then go out again. Some of the little creeps were 
right outside the window. Anyway, the entire sprawl of the village of Sabray was surrounded by 
the Taliban. Sarawa had told me so, and it beat me why I’d been left alone...unless they 

---

knew...unless they were indoctrinated...unless I really was in the hands of off-duty Taliban 
warriors. 
But the guys at my bedside were not off duty. They were right on my case, demanding to know 
why I was there, what the American planes were doing, whether the United States was planning 
an attack on them, who was coming to rescue me (good question, right?). I knew that right now 
discretion was, by a long way, the better part of valor, because my objective was simply to try 
and stay alive, not to get into a brawl with knife-wielding tribesmen or, worse, get myself shot. 
I kept telling them I was just a doctor, out here to help with our wounded. I also told them a huge 
lie, that I had diabetes. I was not a member of the special forces, and I needed water, which they 
ignored. The main trouble was, strangely, my beard, because they knew the U.S. Army did not 
permit beards. Only the U.S. Special Forces allows that. 
I managed to persuade them I needed to go outside, and they gave me this one single 
opportunity, one last desperate try to slip away. But I could not move fast enough, and they just 
dragged me back inside, threw me on the ground, and beat me even more seriously than they had 
before. Broke the bones in my wrist. That hurt, and I’ve since needed two operations to correct 
it. 
By now they had lit their lanterns, maybe three of them, and the room was quite light. And their 
inquisition went on for maybe six hours. Yelling and beating, yelling and kicking. They told me 
my buddies were all dead, told me they’d already cut everyone’s head off and that I was next. 
They said they had shot down an American helicopter, killed everyone. They were just full of 
bravado, shouting, boasting they would in the end kill every American in their country and then 
some...