Lone survivor: the eyewitness account of Operation Redwing and the lost heroes of SEAL team 10 (45 page)

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 he 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.

Anyway, they found Axe, with the bullets the Taliban rifles had emptied into his face as he lay dying, just as they had done to Mikey. But Axe was in a different place from where I thought. I know we were both blown out of the hole by the RPG, because I went over the precipice. But Axe was a few hundred yards even farther away. No one quite knows how he got there.

Axe still had three magazines left for his pistol when the grenade hit us. But when they found him, he was on the last one. And that could mean only one thing: Axe must have fought on, recovering consciousness after the blast and going for those bastards again, firing maybe thirty more rounds at them; must have driven them mad. I guess that’s why, when he inevitably succumbed to his most shocking injuries, they had accorded him that barbaric tribal finale.

I used to think Audie Murphy was the ultimate American warrior. I’m not so sure about that. Not now. Not anymore. And it upsets me more than I can say, thinking what they did, in the end, to Mikey and Axe. It upsets Morgan so bad, no one can even mention Axe’s name without him having to leave the room. I guess you had to know him to understand that. There were not many like Matthew Axelson.

Well, by the time they brought Axe down, I was gone. They flew me out on the night of July 8, in a big military Boeing, the C-141, on a long journey to Germany. Jeff Delapenta accompanied me, never left my side once. And there I checked in to the regional medical center at the U.S. Air Force base at Landstuhl, up near the western border with France, about fifty-five miles southwest of Frankfurt.

I was there for about nine days, recovering and receiving treatment for my wounds and therapy for the healing bones in my back, shoulder, and wrist. But that Pepsi bottle bug wouldn’t budge from my stomach. It showed major resistance for long months and made it hard to regain my lost weight.

But I came through it and finally left Germany for the four-thousand-mile ride back to the U.S.A. This time Lieutenant Clint Burk, my swim buddy in BUD/S, accompanied me, along with Dr. Dickens. Clint and I have been closest friends forever, and the journey passed pretty quickly. We traveled in a C-17 cargo plane, upstairs in first class...well, nearly. But in seats. It was great. And we touched down nine hours later in Maryland. Then the navy hitched a ride for us in a Gulfstream private jet owned by a senator.

And I guess I arrived back in some style to San Antonio Airport, Texas, which stands almost two hundred miles west of Houston, right along Route 10 and over the Colorado River. Back home I guess there had been some talk that I might be taken on to San Diego, but apparently Morgan just said, “You can forget all about that. He’s coming home, and we’re going to get him.”

They saddled up the family Suburban, Morgan and my kid brother, Scottie, plus the SEALs Lieutenant JJ, and JT. And they set off across the Lone Star State to collect the brother they had been told by the media was dead. I couldn’t believe it when I saw them all waiting there when my private jet landed.

There were a few tears from all of us. Just tears of happiness, I guess, because they had all lived with the darkest of threats, that we would not see one another ever again. I have to say the thought had also crossed my mind a few times as well.

But mostly I remember the laughter. “Jesus, you look awful,” said Morgan. “Mom’ll have a nervous breakdown when she sees you.” It reminded me of what I’d said to Axe when he’d been fatally wounded on the mountain — “Hey, man, you’re all fucked up.”

It’s just the way we talk to each other. Remember, Morgan was a SEAL, and his words, even to his twin brother, were tempered with humor, like all of our words among ourselves. One day it could be Morgan trapped on the mountain and me waiting for him, beside myself with worry and fear for his life. I recall he did tell me he loved me, though, and so did Scottie. And that meant a lot to me.

In the absence of Commander Pero, Scottie rustled up a bagful of cheeseburgers for the five-hour journey home, and we guffawed our way across Texas; me making light of my ordeal, telling ’em it wasn’t much really, none of them believing me. I guess it’s impossible to look as bad as I did when it wasn’t much really.

But we had some fun, and in the end, I told them a few of the bits that were on the serious side of horrendous. Morgan wept like a child when I told him about Axe. We all went pretty quiet while that was happening, because there were no words which could comfort him, nothing that could ever be said to ease his sadness. In my view, nothing ever will. Same with me and Mikey.

Eventually we ran into our little corner of East Texas. Everyone pulled together as we drove down that wide, red dirt road to the ranch, the home I thought I might never see again. Those big oaks still towered over the place, and Dad’s dogs came running out to meet us, barking like hell, with Emma unusually out in the lead, wagging her tail, as if she knew something the others didn’t.