Marcus luttrell

Racehorses, 
beautiful. Give me six. Six fast ones, Mr. Luttrell. That way I’ll win some races.
That oil money just washed right off, and people were making fortunes in anything that 
smacked of luxury, anything to feed the egos of the oil guys, who were spending and borrowing 
money at a rate never seen before or since. 
It wasn’t anything for banks to make loans of more than $100 million to oil explorers and 
producers. At one time there were 4,500 oil rigs running in the U.S.A., most of them in Texas. 
Credit? That was easy. Banks would lend you a million bucks without batting an eye. 
Listen, I was only a kid at the time, but my family and I lived through the trauma to come, and, 
boy, I’ve done some serious reading about it since. And in a way, I’m glad I lived through it, 
because it taught me to be careful, to earn my money and invest it, get it somewhere secure. 
And it taught me to think very carefully about the element of luck, when it’s running, and how to 
keep your life under control. I have long since worked out that when the crash came in Texas, its 
effects were magnified a thousandfold, because the guys in the oil industry sincerely believed 
money had nothing to do with luck. They thought their prosperity came from their own sheer 
brilliance. 

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No one gave much consideration to the world oil market being controlled in the Middle 
East by Muslims. Everything that happened had its roots in Arabia, assisted by President Carter’s 
energy policy and the fact that when I was five years old the price per barrel of crude was $40. 
The crash, when it came, was caused by the oil embargo and the Iranian revolution, when the 
ayatollah took over from the shah. The key to it was geopolitical. And Texas could only stand 
and watch helplessly as the oil glut manifested itself and the price per barrel began to slide 
downward to an ultimate low of around $9. 
That was in 1986, when I was not quite ten. In the meantime, the giant First National 
Bank of Midland, Texas, collapsed, judged insolvent by government financial inspectors. That 
was one huge bank to go belly-up, and the ripple effect was statewide. An era of reckless 
spending and investing was over. Guys building palaces were forced to sell at a loss. You 
couldn’t give away a luxury boat, and Rolls-Royce dealers darned near went out of business. 
Along with the commercial giants felled by the oil crash went the horse farm of David and Holly 
Luttrell. Hard-running colts and mares, which Dad had valued at $35,000 to $40,000, were 
suddenly worth $5,000, less than they cost to raise. My family lost everything, including our 
house. 
But my dad’s a resilient man, tough and determined. And he fought back, with a smaller 
ranch and the tried-and-trusted techniques of horse raising he and Mom had always practiced. 
But it all went wrong again. The family wound up living with my grandfather, Morgan sleeping 
on the floor. 
My dad, who had always kept one foot in the petrochemical business ever since he came 
back from Vietnam, went back to work, and in a very short time he was on his feet, with a couple 
of huge deals. We moved out of Grandfather’s place into a grand four-story house, and the good 
times seemed to be back. 
Then some giant deal went south and we somehow lost it all again, moved back out to a 
kind of rural skid row. You see, my dad, though born over the border in Oklahoma, is a Texan in 
his soul. He was as brave as a lion when he was a navy gunner in Vietnam. And in Texas, real 
men don’t sit on their money. They get back out there, take risks, and when they hit it big, they 
just want to hit it bigger. My dad’s a real man. 
You could tell a lot about him just by the names he gave the ranches, big or small — 
Lone Star Farms, North Fork Ranch, Shootin’ Star. Like he always said, “I’d rather shoot for a 
star and hit a stump than shoot for a stump and miss.” 
I cannot describe how poor we were during the time Morgan and I were trying to get 
through college. I had four jobs to pay tuition and board and make my truck payment. I was the 
lifeguard in the college pool and I worked with Morgan on construction, landscaping, cutting 
grass, and yard work. In the evening I was a bouncer in a rough local bar full of redneck 
cowboys. And I was still starving, trying to feed myself on about twenty dollars a week. 
One time, I guess we were around twenty-one, Morgan snapped his leg playing baseball, 
sliding into second. When they got him to the hospital Morgan just told them we didn’t have any 
money. Eventually the surgeon agreed to operate and set the leg on some kind of long-term 

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credit. But the anaesthetist would not administer anything to Morgan without payment. 
No one’s tougher than my brother. And he eventually said, “Fine. I don’t need anaesthetic. Set 
the leg without it. I can take the pain.” The surgeon was aghast and told Morgan he could not 
possibly have such an operation without anaesthesia. But Morgan stuck to his guns. “Doc, I don’t 
have any money. Fix my leg and I’ll handle the pain.” 
No one was crazy about that, especially the surgeon. But then Jason Miller, a college 
buddy of Morgan’s, turned up, saw that he was in absolute agony, and gave him every last dollar 
of his savings to pay the anaesthetist. At which point they put Morgan back together. 
But I’m getting ahead of myself. When we were young, working the horses, my dad was very, 
very tough on us. He considered that good grades were everything, bad ones were simply 
unacceptable. I once got a C in conduct, and he beat me with a saddle girth. I know he was doing 
it for our own good, trying to instill discipline in his sons, which would serve them well in later 
life. 
But he ruled our lives with an iron fist. He would tell us: “One day I’m not gonna be 
here. Then it’s gonna be you two, by yourselves, and I want you to understand how rough and 
unfair this world is. I want you both prepared for whatever the hell might come your way.” 
He tolerated nothing. Disobedience was out of the question. Rudeness was damn near a hanging 
offense. There was no leeway. He insisted on politeness and hard work. And he didn’t let up 
even when we were all broke. Dad was the son of an Arkansas woodsman, another amazingly 
tough character, and he brought that stand-on-your-own-feet ruggedness into our lives at the 
earliest opportunity. 
We were always out in the woods, in rough country in the East Texas pines, the red oaks, 
and the sweet gum trees. Dad taught us to shoot straight at the age of seven, bought us a .22 rifle, 
a Nylon 66. We could hit a moving Miller High Life beer can from 150 yards. Now that’s 
redneck stuff, right? Redneck kids in redneck country, learning life’s skills. 
He taught us how to survive out there. What you could eat and what you couldn’t. He 
showed us how to build a shelter, taught us how to fish. He even taught us how to rope and kill a 
wild boar: drop a couple of long loops around his neck and pull, then hope to hell he doesn’t 
charge straight at you! I still know how to butcher and roast one. 
At home, on any of the ranches, Dad showed us how to plant and grow corn and potatoes, 
vegetables and carrots. A lot of times when we were really poor we just about lived on that. 
Looking back, it was important training for a couple of farm boys. 
But perhaps most important of all, he taught us to swim. Dad himself was an all-
American swimmer and this really mattered to him. He was superb in the water and he made me 
that good. In almost everything, Morgan is naturally better than I am. He’s very gifted as a 
runner, a fighter, a marksman, a navigator on land or water. He always sails through his exams, 
whereas I have to slog it out, studying, practicing, trying to be first man in and last man out. 
Morgan does not have to strive. 

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He was honor man after his SEAL BUD/S class, voted for by his peers. I knew he would 
be before he even started. There’s only one discipline at which he can’t beat me. I’m faster in the 
water, and I have the edge underwater. He knows it, though he might not admit it. 
There was a huge lake near where we lived, and that’s where Dad trained us. All through the 
long Texas summers we were out there, swimming, racing, diving, practicing. We were just like 
fish, the way Dad wanted it. 
He spent months teaching us to dive, deep, first on our own, then with our scuba gear on. 
We were good, and people would pay us to try and retrieve keys and valuables thrown into deep 
water. Of course, Dad considered this might be too easy, and he stipulated we only got paid if we 
found the correct object. 
During this time we had the occasional brush with passing alligators, but one of my great 
Texas friends, Tray Baker, showed us how to deal with them. I wrestled with one once and was 
pretty glad when that sucker decided he’d had enough and took off for calmer waters. But to this 
day my brother loves to wrestle alligators, just for fun. He is, of course, crazy. But we sometimes 
take an old flat-bottomed boat fishing in the lake, and one of those big ole gators will come 
sliding up alongside the boat. 
Morgan makes a quick assessment —