Marcus luttrell

“They’ll kill us all if we stay here! Jump, guys, for fuck’s sake, jump!”
And once more all four of us clutched our rifles, stood up, braved the flying bullets, and headed 
for the precipice. We leaped into the void, Mikey first, me next, then Axe, then Danny. The drop 
must have been about thirty or forty feet, down into a thicket of shrubs alongside a little stream. 
We were by no means at the base of this little escarpment, but at least we were once more on a 
flat bit and not clinging to some cliff face. I landed directly on top of Mikey, then Axe and 
Danny landed on both of us. There wasn’t even time to let rip with a few curses. 
We spread out and took up firing position again, preparing once more to blast the enemy away 
from our flanks, where they would be sure to begin their advance in the next stage of the battle. 
They were clambering down the rocks to our right, and I was trying to make sure none of them 
made it to the bottom. My rifle felt red-hot, and I just kept loading and shooting, aiming and 
firing, wishing to hell I still had my Texas helmet. 
We were trying to move into a decent position, jumping between the rocks, working our way out 
into open ground. But we were picking up fire now. The Taliban had seen us and were raining 
bullets down, firing from a prime overhead spot. We moved back against the rocks, and Danny 
was shot again. 
They hit him in his lower back, and the bullet blew out of his stomach. He was still firing, Christ 
knows how, but he was. Danny’s mouth was open, and there was blood trickling out. There was 
blood absolutely everywhere. It was hot, and the stench of it was unmistakable, the cordite was 
heavy in the air, and the noise, which had not abated since they first opened fire, was deafening. 
Our ears were ringing from the blasts like we were wearing headphones. 
And then they opened up with the grenades again. We saw the white smoke streaking through 
the air. We saw them coming, winging down that canyon right onto us. And when they blew, the 
blast was overpowering, echoing from the granite rocks that surrounded us on three sides. 
It was like the world was blowing up around us, with the flying rock splinters, some of them 
pretty large, clattering off the cliff walls; the ricocheting bullets; the swirling dust cloud 
enveloping the shrapnel and covering us, choking us, obscuring everything. 
Murph was trying to reassess the situation, desperately trying to make the right decision despite 
our limited options. And let’s face it, the options had not changed very much since I first 

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slammed a bullet between that guy’s eyes from behind the tree. Right now we were not hemmed 
in on our flanks; our enemy was dead ahead. That, and straight up. Overhead. And that’s bad. 
I guess the oldest military strategy in the world is to gain the higher ground. In my experience, 
no Taliban commander had ever ordered his men to fight from anything other than the high 
ground. And did they ever have it now. If we’d been in a cornfield, it would have been nothing 
like so dangerous, because the bullets would have hit the earth and stayed there. But we were in a 
granite-walled corner, and everything bounced off at about a zillion miles per hour, which is 
more or less the definition of a ricochet. Everything, bullets, shrapnel, and fragments, came 
zinging off those rocks. It seemed to us like the Taliban were getting double value for every shot. 
If the bullet missed, watch the hell out for the ricochet. 
And how much longer we could go on taking this kind of bombardment, without getting 
ourselves killed, was anyone’s guess. Murph and Danny had picked up the fight on the left and 
were still firing, still hitting them pretty good. I was firing upward, trying to pick them off 
between the rocks, and Axe had jammed himself into a good spot in the rocks and was blazing 
away at the oncoming turbans. 
Both Murph and I were hoping for a lull in the fire, which would signify we had killed a 
significant number. But that never came. What came were reinforcements. Taliban 
reinforcements. Groups of guys moving up, replacing their dead, joining the front line of this 
wide-ranging, large force on their home ground, armed to the teeth, and 
still
unable to kill even 
one of us. 
We tried to take the fight to them, concentrating on their strongest positions, pushing them to 
reinforce their line of battle. No three guys ever fought with higher courage than my buddies up 
there in those mountains. And damn near surrounded as we were, we still believed we would 
ultimately defeat our enemy. We still had plenty of ammunition. 
But then Danny was shot again. Right through the neck, and he went down beside me. He 
dropped his rifle and slumped to the ground. I reached down to grab him and drag him closer to 
the rock face, but he managed to clamber to his feet, trying to tell me he was okay even though 
he’d been shot four times. 
Danny couldn’t speak now, but he wouldn’t give in. He propped himself up against a rock for 
cover and opened fire again at the Taliban, signaling he might need a new magazine as his very 
lifeblood poured out of him. I just stood there for a moment, helplessly, fighting back my tears, 
witnessing a brand of valor I had never before been privileged to see. What a guy. What a friend. 
Murph called out to me, “The only way’s down, kid,” as if I didn’t know. I called back, “Roger 
that, sir.” 
I knew he meant the village, and it was true. That was our chance. If we could grab one of those 
houses and make a stand, we would be hard to dislodge. Four SEALs firing from solid cover will 
usually get the job done. All we needed to do was coax the Taliban down there. Although if 
things didn’t get a whole lot better in the next few minutes, we might not make it ourselves. 

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