He was afraid of the helicopter and clung to my arm throughout the short journey to Asadabad. And there we both disembarked. I was going on to Bagram, but for the moment Gulab was to stay on this base, out there in his own country, and assist the U.S. military in any way he could. I hugged him good-bye, this rather inscrutable tribesman who had risked his life for me. He seemed to expect nothing in return, and I had one more shot at giving him my watch. But he refused, as he had done four times in the past.
Our good-bye was painful for me, because I had no words in his language to express my thanks. I’ll never know, but perhaps he too would have said something to me, if he’d only had the words. It might even have been warm or affectionate, like…well…“Noisy bastard, footsteps like an elephant, ungrateful son of a gun.” Or “What’s the matter with our best goat’s milk, asshole?”
But there was nothing that could be said. I was going home. And he may never be able to go home. Our paths, which had crossed so suddenly and so powerfully in a life-changing encounter for both of us, were about to diverge.
I boarded the big C-130 for Bagram, back to my base. We touched down on the main runway at 2300, exactly six days and four hours since Mikey, Axe, Danny, and I had occupied this very same spot, lying here on this ground, staring up at the distant snowcapped peaks, laughing, joking, always optimistic, unaware of the trial by fire which awaited us high in those mountains. Less than a week. It might have been a thousand years.
I was greeted by four doctors and all the help I could possibly need. There was also a small group of nurses, at least one of whom knew me from my volunteer work in the hospital. The others were stunned at the sight of me, but this one nurse took one look at me standing at the top of the ramp and burst into tears.
That’s how terrible I looked. I’d lost thirty-seven pounds, my face was scoured from the crash down mountain one, my broken nose needed proper setting, I was racked with pain from my leg, my smashed wrist hurt like hell and so did my back, as it will when you’ve cracked three vertebrae. I’d lost God knows how many pints of blood. I was white as a ghost, and I could hardly walk.
The nurse just cried out, “Oh, Marcus!” and turned away, sobbing. I declined a stretcher and leaned on the doctor, ignoring the pain. But he knew. “Come on, buddy,” he said. “Let’s get you on the stretcher.”
But again I shook my head. I’d had a shot of morphine, and I tried to stand unassisted. I turned to the doc and looked him in the eye, and I told him, “I walked on here, and I’m walking off, by myself. I’m hurt, but I’m still a SEAL, and they haven’t finished me. I’m walking.”
The doctor just shook his head. He’d met a lot of guys like me before, and he knew it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good arguing. I guess he understood the only thought I had in my mind was 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:
He was hard and tough and wiry — just the sort that won’t say die —
There was courage in his quick, impatient tread;
And he bore the badge of gameness in his bright and fiery eye,
And the proud and lofty carriage of his head.
That was Lieutenant Michael Patrick Murphy precisely. You can trust me on that. I lived with him, trained with him, fought with him, laughed with him, and damn near died with him. Every word of that poem was inscribed for him.
And now they were carrying him past the crowd, past me, and suddenly my senior commanders came over and told me it would be fitting for me to stand right by the ramp. So I moved forward and stood as rigidly to attention as my back would allow.
The chaplain moved up the ramp, and as the coffins moved forward, he began his homily. I know it was not a funeral, not the one their families would attend back home in the States. This was our funeral, the moment when we, his other family, all serving overseas together, would say our final good-byes to two very great men. The voice of the priest, out there on the edge of the aircraft hold, was soft. He stood there speaking in praise of their lives and asking one last favor from God — “To let perpetual light shine upon them …”
I watched as around seventy people, SEALs, Rangers, and Green Berets, filed forward and walked slowly into the aircraft, paused, saluted with the greatest solemnity, and then disembarked. I stayed on the ground until last of all. And then I too walked slowly forward up the ramp, to the place where the coffins rested.
Inside, beyond the SEAL escort to the coffins, I saw a very hard combat veteran, Petty Officer Ben Saunders, one of Danny’s closest friends, weeping uncontrollably. Ben was a tough mountain boy from West Virginia, expert tracker and climber, kind of spiritual about the wild lands. And now he was pressed against the bulkhead, too upset to leave, too broken up to go down the steps. (He was SDV Team 2, same as Danny.)
I knelt down by the coffins and said my good-bye to Danny. Then I turned to the one that contained Mikey, and I put my arms around it, and I think I said, “I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry.” I don’t really remember it very clearly. But I remember how I felt. I remember not knowing what to do. I remember thinking how Mikey’s remains would soon be taken away, and how some people would forget him, and others would remember him slightly, and a few would remember him well and, I know, with affection.
But the death of Mikey would affect no one as it would affect me. No one would miss him in the way that I would. And feel his pain, and hear his scream. No one would encounter Mikey in the small hours, in their worst nightmares, as I would. And still care about him, and still wonder if they had done enough for him. As I do.
I stepped out of the aircraft and walked unaided to the bottom of the steps. Dr. Dickens met me and drove me back to the hospital. I stood there and listened for the C-130 to take off, to hear it roar off the runway and carry Mikey and Danny westward into the setting sun, a few miles closer to heaven.
And the words from a thousand memorial services flickered through my mind: “Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.” Right here in bed in Bagram, Afghanistan, I was conducting my own military service for my two fallen buddies.
My new worry was Axe. Where was he? Surely h
e could not have lived? But the guys could not find him, and that was bad. I’d pinpointed that hollow where we both had rested and waited for death while the unseen Taliban rained fire down on us from behind the rocks and finally blew us both across the open ground to oblivion.
I’d survived, but I had not been shot five times like Axe. And I knew to the inch where he was last time I saw him. I talked to the guys again, and the SEAL command was not about to leave him up there. They were going in again, this time with more intel if possible, more searchers, and more local guidance.
I suggested they find the village elder from Sabray, if he was still in residence. Because he of all people could surely lead them to the dead SEAL. I learned right then from the intel guys that the gentleman I referred to was the headman of all the three villages we had observed. He was a man hugely revered in the Hindu Kush, because this is a culture that does not worship youth and cheap television celebrity. Those tribesmen treasure, above all things, knowledge, experience, and wisdom.
We did contact him immediately, and a few days later, the same old man, Gulab’s father, my protector, walked through the mountains again for maybe four or five miles. This time he was at the head of an American SEAL team, the Alfa Platoon, which contained many of my buddies, Mario, Corey, Garrett, Steve, Sean, Jim, and James. (No last names. Active special ops guys, right?)
There was also a group from Echo Platoon. All day they tramped over the steep mountainside, and they took extra water and food with them, in case it took longer. But this time they were not coming back without Axe. No sir. We never leave anyone alone.
The elder hardly spoke one word to them. But he walked directly to the exact place where the body of Matthew Gene Axelson was lying. His face had been blasted by close-range gunfire, in that quaint, old-fashioned way the Taliban have when they find a mortally wounded American. By the way, if anyone should dare to utter the words Geneva Convention while I’m writing this, I might more or less lose control.
Lone Survivor Page 33
