Marcus luttrell

What kind of a SEAL would it make me if they had to help me off the plane? No sir. I won’t agree 
to that.
And so I entered my home base once more, moving very slowly down the ramp under my own 
steam until I touched the ground. By this time, I noticed two other nurses were in tears. And I 
remember thinking, 
Thank Christ Mom can’t see me yet.
Right about then I think I caved in. The doctors and nurses ran forward to help me and get me 
stretchered into a van and directly to a hospital bed. The time for personal heroics had passed. I’d 
sucked up every goddamned thing this fucking country could throw at me, I’d been through 
another Hell Week to the tenth power, and now I was saved. 
Actually, I felt particularly rough. The morphine was not as good as the opium I’d been given. 
And every goddamned thing hurt. I was met formally by the SEAL skipper, Commander Kent 
Pero, who was accompanied by my doctor, Colonel Carl Dickens. 
He came with me in the van, Commander Pero, a very high-ranking SEAL officer who had 
always remembered my first name, ever since the day we first met. He sat beside me, gripping 
my arm, asking me how I was. I recall telling him, “Yes, sir, I’m fine.” 
But then I heard him say, “Marcus.” And he shook his head. And I noticed this immensely tough 
character, my boss’s boss, had tears streaming down his face, tears of relief, I think, that I was 
alive. It’s funny, but it was the first time in so long that I was with someone who really cared 
about me, the first time since Mikey and Axe and Danny had died. 
And I found it overwhelming, and I broke down right there in the van, and when I pulled myself 
together, Commander Pero was asking me if there was anything I needed, because no matter 
what it was, he would get it. 
“Yes, sir,” I replied, drying my eyes on the sheet. “Do you think I could get a cheeseburger?” 
The moment I was secured in Bagram, they made news of my rescue available. I had been in the 
hands of the U.S. military for some hours, but I know the navy did not want anyone to start 
celebrating until I was well and truly safe. 
The call went around the world like a guided missile: Bagram — Bahrain — SATCOM to 
SPECWARCOM, Coronado — direct phone link to the ranch. 
The regular call had come in on time at around one that afternoon, and they were expecting 
another “no news” update at four. But now the phone rang at three. Early. And according to my 
dad, when Chief Gothro came outside and walked through the crowd to collect my mom, telling 
her there was a call from Coronado, she almost fainted. In her mind, there could be only one 
possible reason for the call, and that was the death of her little angel (that’s me). 
Chief Gothro half carried her into the house, and when they arrived at the bedroom where the 
phone was installed, the first thing she saw was Morgan and my other brother, Scottie, with their 

---

arms around each other, sobbing uncontrollably. Everyone thought they knew the military. There 
could be only one reason for the early call. They’d found my body on the mountain. 
Chief Gothro walked my mom to the phone and informed her that whatever it was, she had to 
face it. A voice came down the line and demanded, “Chief, is the family assembled?” 
“Yessir.” 
“Mr. and Mrs. Luttrell?” 
“Yes,” whispered Mom.
 
“We got him, ma’am. We got Marcus. And he’s stable.”
Mom started to collapse right there on the bedroom floor. Scottie moved swiftly to save her from 
hitting it. Lieutenant JJ Jones bolted for the door, stood on the porch, and called for quiet. Then 
he shouted, 
“They got him, guys! Marcus has been rescued.”
They tell me the roar which erupted over those lonely pastures way down there in the back 
country of East Texas could have been heard in Houston, fifty-five miles away. Morgan says it 
wasn’t just your average roar. It was spontaneous. Deafening. Everyone together, top of their 
lungs, a pure outpouring of relief and joy for Mom and Dad and my family. 
It signaled the conclusion of a five-day vigil in which a zillion prayers had been offered by God-
fearing folk; they understood in that split second after the announcement that those prayers had 
been asked and answered. For them, it was a confirmation of faith, of the unbreakable hope and 
belief, of the SEAL chaplain Trey Vaughn and all the others. 
Immediately, they raised the flag, and the Stars and Stripes fluttered in the hot breeze. And then 
the SEALs linked arms with my family and my friends and my neighbors, people who they 
might never see again but to whom they were now irrevocably joined for all the days of their 
lives. Because no one, according to Mom, could ever forget that one brief moment they shared, 
that long-awaited moment of release, when fears and dreads were laid to rest. 
I was alive. I guess that’s all it took. And all these amazing guys, with hearts as wide as the 
Texas prairies, burst suddenly into song: “God bless America, land that I love . . .” 
That’s Mrs. Herzogg and her daughters; Billy Shelton; Chief Gothro; Mom and Dad; Morgan 
and Scottie; Lieutenant Andy Haffele and his wife, Kristina; Eric Rooney; Commander Jeff 
Bender; Daniel, the master sergeant; Lieutenant JJ Jones; and all the others I already mentioned. 
Five days and five nights, they’d waited for this. And here I was, safe in a hospital bed eight 
thousand miles away, thinking of them, as they were thinking of me. 
Matter of fact, at the time I was just thinking of a smart-ass remark to make to Morgan, because 
they’d told me I was about to be patched through to my family, on the phone. I guessed Morgan 
would be there, and if I could come up with something sufficiently slick and nonchalant, he’d 
know for sure I was good. Of course, it wasn’t as important to talk to him as it was to speak to 
Mom. Morgan and I had been in touch all along, the way identical twins usually are. 

---

Right around this time, I was assigned a minder, Petty Officer First Class Jeff Delapenta (SEAL 
Team 10), who would never leave my side. And remember, damn near everyone on the base 
wanted to come and have a chat. At least that’s how it seemed to me. But Jeff was having none 
of it. He stood guard over my room like a German shepherd, taking the view that I was very sick 
and needed peace and rest, and he, PO1 Jeff, was going to make good and sure I got it. 
Doctors and nurses, fine. High-ranking SEAL commanders, well...okay, but only just. Anyone 
else, forget it. Jeff Delapenta turned away generals! Told ’em I was resting, could not be 
disturbed under any circumstances whatsoever. “Strict orders from his doctors...Sir, it would be 
more than my career’s worth to allow you to enter that room.” 
I spoke privately to my family on the phone and refrained from mentioning to Mom that I had 
now contracted some kind of Afghan mountain bacteria that attacked my stomach like 
Montezuma’s revenge gets you in Mexico. I swear to God, it came from that fucking Pepsi 
bottle. That sucker could have poisoned the population of the Hindu Kush. 
Didn’t stop me loving that first cheeseburger, though. And as soon as I was rested, the real 
intensive debriefing began. It was right here that I learned, for the first time, of the full 
ramifications of 
lokhay,
that the people of Sabray were indeed prepared to fight for me until no 
one was left alive. One of the intel guys told me those details, which I had suspected but never 
knew for sure. 
These debriefing meetings revealed sufficient data to pinpoint precisely where the bodies of my 
guys were lying. And I found it really difficult. Just staring down at the photographs, reliving, as 
no one could ever understand, the place where my best buddy fell, torturing myself, wondering 
again if I could have saved him. Could I have done more? That night, for the first time, I heard 
Mikey scream. 
On my third day in the hospital, the bodies of Mikey and Danny were brought down from the 
mountains. They were unable to find Axe. I was told this, and later that day I dressed, just in 
shirt and jeans, so Dr. Dickens could drive me out for the Ramp Ceremony, one of the most 
sacred SEAL traditions, in which we say a formal good-bye to a lost brother. 
It was the first time anyone had seen me outside of my immediate entourage, and they probably 
received a major shock. I was scrubbed and neat, but not much like the Marcus they knew. And I 
was ill from my brutal encounter with that goddamned Pepsi bottle. 
The C-130 was parked on the runway, ramp down. There were around two hundred military 
personnel in attendance when the Humvees arrived bearing the two coffins, each draped with the 
American flag. And all of them snapped to attention, instantly, no commands, as the SEALs 
stepped forward to claim their brothers. 
Very slowly, with immense dignity, they lifted the coffins high, and then carried the bodies of 
Mikey and Danny the fifty yards to the ramp of the aircraft. 
I positioned myself right at the back and watched as the guys carefully bore my buddies on their 
first steps back to the United States. A thousand memories stood before me, as I guess they 
would have done to anyone who’d been at Murphy’s Ridge. 

---

Danny, crashing down the mountain, his right thumb blown off, still firing, shot again and again 
and again, rising up as I dragged him away, rising up to aim his rifle at the enemy once more, 
still firing, still defiant, a warrior to his last breath. And here he comes in that polished wood 
coffin. 
Out in front was the coffin that carried Mikey Murphy, our officer, who had walked out into the 
firestorm to make that last call on his cell phone, the one that placed him in mortal danger, the 
one chance, he believed, to save us. 
Gunned down by the Taliban, right through the back, blood pouring out of his chest, his phone in 
the dust, and he still picked it up. “Roger that, sir. Thank you.” Was anyone ever braver than 
that? I remember being awestruck at the way he somehow stood up and walked toward me, tall 
and erect, and carried right on firing until they finally blew half his head away. “Marcus, this 
really sucks.” 
He was right then. And he was still right at this moment. It did suck. As they carried Mikey to 
the plane, I tried to think of an epitaph for my greatest buddy, and I could only come up with 
some poem written by the Australian Banjo Paterson, I guess for one of his heroes, as Mikey was 
mine: