Marcus luttrell

 
 

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Afterword
 
by Patrick Robinson
In the fall of 2006, Marcus Luttrell was redeployed with SEAL Team 5 in Iraq. At 0900 on 
Friday, October 6, thirty-six of them took off in a military Boeing C-17 from North Air Station, 
Coronado, bound for Ar Ramadi, the U.S. base which lies sixty miles west of Baghdad — a 
notorious trouble spot, of course. That’s why the SEALs were going. 
The fact that the navy had deployed their wounded, decorated hero of the Afghan mountains was 
a considerable surprise to many people, most of whom thought he would leave SPECWARCOM 
for the less dangerous life of a civilian. Because even after more than a year, his back was still 
painful, his battered wrist was less than perfect, and he still suffered from that confounded 
Afghan stomach bug he had contracted from the Pepsi bottle. 
But the deployment of Marcus Luttrell was a personal matter. He alone called the shots, not the 
navy. His contract with the SEALs still had many months to run, and there was no way he was 
going to quit. I think we mentioned, there ain’t no quit in him. Marcus wanted to stay, to fulfill 
his new obligations as leading petty officer (Alfa Platoon), a position which carries heavy 
responsibilities. 
To me, he said, “I don’t want my guys to go without me. Because if anything happened to them 
and I wasn’t there, I guess I would not forgive myself.” 
And so Marcus Luttrell went back to war. The C-17 was packed with all the worldly goods of 
SEAL Team 5, from machine guns to hand grenades. On board the flight was Petty Officer 
Morgan Luttrell (Bravo Platoon), a new posting not absolutely guaranteed to delight their 
mother. 
Marcus had a new patch on his chest, identical to the one on the president’s desk in the Oval 
Office. “That’s who I’m fighting for, boy,” he told me. “My country, and the Lone Star State.” 
The last words to me from this consummate Navy SEAL were “I’m outta here with my guys for 
a few months. God help the enemy, and God bless Texas.” 

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