Rescuing ‘Lone Survivor’ Marcus Luttrell and Jessica Lynch

First, the rescue of Jessica Lynch in March 2003 in Iraq, and secondly, the rescue of Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell in Afghanistan in July 2005, a dramatic mission which was the subject of the best selling book Lone Survivor, and the highly popular movie of the same name, starring Mark Wahlberg. Today, Nick is going to give us his unique perspective on both missions as someone who was actually on the ground and executed the rescues.

He's also going to talk about his riveting memoir "Run to the Sound of Guns". We're honored to feature Sergeant First Class Nicholas Moore of the 75th Ranger Regiment as today's hero behind the headlines. So I was born and raised in a small town in Kansas and grew up hunting, fishing, and just doing all the normal Midwest outdoor activities. And we just kind of always felt there was a little bit higher calling for what we are supposed to do.

And so junior year of high school, my brother decided that he was going to talk to the recruiters and sign a contract, and that's what he wanted to do. And I kind of mulled over for about a week and decided that I should go, too. And we didn't know anything about the Rangers at the time that we signed at 17 years old.

But speaking to the recruiters and the recruiter station, and they knew that we played sports and we were really active outdoors and stuff, he goes, you're going to have fun in the army, but you're never going to be happy if we didn't pursue your career. And they kind of told us how to work that through the map station where you go as a kid and sign all your paperwork and get your contract and all your legal documents. And so that went through. And then we graduated high school.

And then a week after we graduated high school, we're sitting down at Fort Benning, Georgia, for basic training and then ride over to airborne school and then the Ranger Indoctrination program as it was then. Now it's the Ranger assessment selection program. Yeah, that was all 1999. So that was June through December of 99, and then both of us got assigned to Second Ranger Battalion out here at Fort Lewis, Washington, which is now a joint base. Lewis McCord both assigned a Bravo company.

I went to first platoon and he went to third. And after about a year, I think he was asked to go to the sniper selection in the battalion. And so he got picked up to go over to sniper platoon and I stayed on the line and we continued to work together. And in that capacity he was a sniper assigned to the company or at times are platoon and through training scenarios. And then in 2001, it was my turn to go to Ranger school.

So I went down to Ranger school in August to do the pre Ranger course at the Ranger regiment and passed that on 911. And I was in Ranger school. It's kind of a joke that we have amongst guys in battalion prior to 911 actually happening was that something's going to kick off in the world and we're going to be stuck in the one place where we can't go participate and we're going to kind of get left behind. And so that actually happened. And it was kind of a comical moment when I got back.

But the battalion hadn't deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom yet. The battalion was actually deployed forward in Germany in graphenver doing the big training center over in Germany. And when 911 happened, it froze everything. So then go through Ranger school, pass the first phase of Ranger school, and then go up to the second phase of Ranger school. And the Ranger instructors at the time were kind of, well let me back up. So 911 happens.

It's like the second day of the course and we're standing in formation waiting to go do land navigation and some other check the box training things that you have to qualify for to continue to progress through the course and running around scurrying. And we're standing formation, kind of going, what's going on? And time hacks are being missed. And we're like, well, we're getting out of here kind of late.

And so they come out and they ask if anybody has family that works at the World Trade Center. And we're like, what does that have to do with anything? That's weird. And then about a half hour 45 minutes later, they come out and say, hey, seriously, this is a legitimate question. We're not trying to lie to anybody who has parents at work at the Pentagon. And so one kid raised his hand. He said, you need to go inside and call. And so luckily, that one Ranger, his dad was out of the office because

the plane actually destroyed his office. Oh my God. And so his dad was in Virginia at the time. Wow. And so he got lucky on that one. But he was kind of a mess for about a few days until his dad called the school. His dad's a colonel at the time and called the school and said, hey, no, please tell him that everything is okay and I'm good and I'll talk to him when he gets the chance. I know you guys are in the course. So that was good for him.

Pass the first phase of Rangers and go up to the second phase of Ranger school. And now we're looking at the end of September. October. And so finish all Ranger school for that phase and we're getting graded in evals and so the RIs wheel. The TV out on the cart and so this is right when Third Ranger Battalion is making the jump onto a Kandahar objective rhino. And so they let us watch and so all the guys from Third Battalion are crying because they're missing it and they're mad and upset.

It's kind of funny because we had gotten word that a First Battalion hasn't gone yet and Second Battalion hasn't gone yet. So we're just kind of sitting there laughing at us like we haven't missed our chance yet. And so we pass and go on down to Florida and wrap up Ranger School. Three weeks later, graduate, come back and get ready to go on our deployment in the spring of 2002.

And so it was interesting because we kind of got lessons learned from what 375 experienced in their initial push into Afghanistan. And then when First Battalion came over that's operation andacona in the early part of 2002 with Roberts Ridge and Takagar.

And that was a huge deal and the lessons learned and it was really interesting to talk to guys that I had been arranged school with and friends that I had at first the time that I went through basic training and Airborne School and rip with and said. Hey man. We're on that mission. And said. Hey dude. What was that all about? And so to hear that story firsthand account was kind of eye opening as to what could be happening.

And unfortunately for us, Operation Anaconda kind of pushed everybody, all the fighters back out of Pakistan because they were expecting us to play the same way the Russians did and we didn't. So that first appointment was kind of a bust, if you will, for us because we didn't really see anything. When we had one gunfight for the platoon, it lasted 5 seconds. What was your first impression of Afghanistan? Well, as a kid, I'd never been to, like, West Texas or New Mexico. Arizona.

I have no idea what the desert was other than pictures or whatever, but to experience that kind of dry heat and experience because we came from Washington in April and it was in the then we hit Afghanistan and it's in the high ninetys and hundreds in April and it's just getting hotter as the summer goes on. And so that was definitely eye opening, right? And what about the people? Have you ever seen anything as primitive oh, no. Even today, I've been there.

I was there back and forth for the better part of 15 years of my life. And it's just you never get used to that primitive lifestyle. And I guess for us as a Western culture, it's weird. They're okay with that. They're huts and chunky cars. There's one paved road in Afghanistan, and it runs from Kandahar to Bagram up to Kabul, and then up to Bagram, which is not very far outside Kabul. And that's it. Everything else is just country, dirt roads. That's how they live.

And it's like man. Yeah. It's like going back in time. Yes, it really is. You can still go over there, and if you know where to look, you can still find stuff from, like, Alexander to Great that's still left from the Romans. Yeah. That's crazy. And it's odd. And at that point, there was almost no resistance. No, there wasn't anything. Everybody was great, they were happy.

And even later in the winter of 2003, we went over there, and we were kind of up in the Konar and up in the mountains and stuff. There are still people that at that point, and I'm sure there are people farther up in Nangahar and the provinces up in the mountains. I still believe the Russians are there. Yeah. Because they don't get any news. So it was odd to go, oh, you're here to chase the Russians away. Congrats. Thank you for you guys, and thank you for helping us.

And then you come back just a couple of years later, and kids are throwing rocks at you. They're happy 1 minute, and they're mad the next, that now you're here and you're occupying them the same as the Russians. Yeah. And it's hard to understand things from their point of view because it's so very different from ours. Right, well, and they're a country that has basically always been invaded by somebody and occupied by somebody whether they want them to or not.

So there's no way they understand the bigger, like. No, you can try it and explain it to them, but it's like trying to explain something to somebody from the American old west. They just aren't going to get it right. Okay, your deployment in Afghanistan ends, and then a few years later, you end up in Iraq. Yes. So we finished our deployment in 2002, and we thought, okay, great. That's going to be our only the whole thing in Afghanistan is going to be wrapped up in like, six months or so.

We're just going to call it done and good. And so then we came home, and then everything started winding up with Saddam Hussein and everything in Iraq, and we're like, oh, okay, great, awesome. I guess we're going to go over here and play. So then everything started to fall apart there around Thanksgiving, Christmas time, 2002. So everything started coming along that, hey, look, this is going to happen. And we're going to go.

And so we started leaning forward for all the planning and prepping to be a part of the invasion for Iraq, which was for us, it was kind of cool because like, okay, great, we're going to go play somewhere else. We let the monster out of the box and we're not going to contain it now. So pushed over. We were initially launching out of cross border ops into western Iraq and stuff, and so there was no resistance out there.

And that was for the first couple of weeks of the invasion, maybe the first ten days or so. And then we come back off a 24 hours patrol. So at this time that's like a third ranger Battalion made another combat jump into H one and some of the other outlying places. And so our job of that last patrol that we did on vehicles was to go bring them back because they didn't have to escort them and make the convoy bigger.

And so we went and tied in with them, turn around, drove the trucks back on a 24 hours turnaround and got back in, drove the trucks right up to the tent and the company CP is right there. And then we're all climbing off the trucks and the commander's like, hey, you got 3 hours and we're getting ready to, we're going to go do a POW rescue. On March 23, 2003, shortly after the US. Led invasion of Iraq, US Army private first class Jessica Lynch was riding in a convoy of the US.

Army's 507th maintenance company near the city of Nasiriya, 250 miles southwest of Baghdad, when they took a wrong turn and were ambushed. The Humvee Miss Lynch was riding in was hit by a rocket propelled grenade and she was seriously injured. She and five other soldiers were taken prisoner and another eleven were killed in action, raped. And sodomized during her 1st 3 hours of captivity, ms. Lynch was later moved to a hospital in this area where she was treated for a

broken arm, broken thigh and dislocated ankle. Ms. Lynch's capture immediately became headline news across the United States. Her rescue was the subject of a popular TV movie called Saving Jessica Lynch.

And I was like, what is in Nazarea? That's where the marines are. They're getting handed to him up there because we were getting all the battle updates and it's like, how come we don't ever get anything where anything's fun. We're out here patrolling through the open desert on a highway. Yeah. Did you know anything about what had happened? We knew that the convoy had gotten disoriented and lost and then they kind of got off the route somehow.

And I'm thinking to myself, how is a maintenance unit getting ahead of the forward line? I was like, how does that happen? You stop thinking about the reality of, okay, now we have missing Americans and we have one confirmed POW. And you start thinking, how did the circumstances lead to this? You start trying to figure that out and it's like, it's nothing against her. It's just things happen. It really is. Well, you're in a strange place and you don't know where anything is.

Well, at the time so 2003 support elements, not all of them at the time, had not all the units had the funding and the equipment granted for night vision goggles so that everybody can see they're still driving the same way that guys are driving old school blackout lights. And then you just drive really slow. And so we're used to as a combat unit, special ops combat unit. So we have all the latest gear, got the best night vision that's available, lasers, optics, all this stuff.

And they're still like mid 90s technology for the support units. And it's like, how do we invade the country? Not everybody has the correct equipment. And it's just the funding wasn't there and the equipment hadn't been built yet. So we've jumped on and flew up to the Marine controlled base outside nasarea on the airfield. And basically, I will call it was a down and dirty helipad 24 hours plan on how this was going to get done.

And in football terms, we kind of sent one of the companies from 175, kind of did an end around, and they went all the way east of the city, way out and around. And then they came in and dropped in from the north to kind of lock everything off from the north.

And then our plan was to jump on Marine Corps forty sixes and just ten minute flight across the river, drop west of the city and then run and lock down the main roads leading in and out of hospital and just kind of own that as an exfiltration route. A helipad so as we're launching in on the first push of American forces to do this, the Seals are launching in on a Black Hawk to land on the hospital and then come down and pull her up right on the roof of the hospital. I couldn't see it.

I don't remember exactly that part of their plan, but I believe, yes, that is because there was a hill pad on top of the hospital. But yes, we had human intelligence from I can't remember the name 20 years later, but the guy that came across and told Americans, hey, there's an american being held hostage in the hospital and she's in this room on this floor. The whole thing happened from the time we landed on the ground to the time the Seals hit the hospital.

They were exfilling her by the time we established our blocking positions. It was fast, precise. And so then it was a whole operational lasted about three and a half hours. And what made it take that long was because we were trying to find where the rest of that convoy element was. And so it led to searching and digging and things along those lines. And then we had accountability of everybody. And they had been killed. They were dead. They were dead. Yes. She was just recovering survivors.

So it's just a recovery effort to make sure that they were accountable and got to come home. So then we called exfill and that was it. That was it. Yeah. Well, we've come back from it and as a 21 year old, you're not really thinking about not the ramifications but kind of the significance of what you've just accomplished. That was the first successful POW rescue since Vietnam. Yeah, it was good news. And so everybody was all super excited about it.

And guys that were my leadership, the magnitude of what we just accomplished and the fact that for the most part we didn't fire any shots. There were just a few shots that were fired. So there wasn't much resistance. There wasn't any resistance at all. Okay, so the hospital people just the hospital was empty. It was empty. We had eyes on the intelligence gathering.

Marines were watching the hospital from their positions and there were lots of people going in the hospital and military people going in the hospital and then turn around and there was a lot of civilians leaving the hospital. So what we were figuring is they were going in and taking off their military uniforms and basically surrendering. And then they were just dispersing into the population. They didn't want any trouble. Yeah, they didn't want any part of it.

And so we got back and everybody's kind of high fiving and back slapping. The great part of it was and we got to be a part of that successful piece of history that had happened. And it didn't really hit me for a few years that that was something super significant. And I hate to say it this way, but this is kind of the way that we all feel about these kinds of things. It's just another day at the office for us. Right.

And so as time has progressed, I think of the significance of what I got to be a part of. On the night of April 1st 2003 US Marines staged a diversionary attack to draw Iraqi troops away from the hospital where Jessica Lynch was being held. Meanwhile, Joint Operations Task Force 121, comprised of members of Delta Force, Special Forces and Army Rangers, including Sergeant Nick Moore, swung into action.

According to Sergeant Moore, special Forces cleared the hospital while he and the Rangers held the area with blocking positions to prevent potential enemy reinforcements and provide additional muscle in case of a firefight. Moore and the Rangers faced only light resistance. Inside the hospital, green berets discovered that private first class jessica lynch was the only US Captive still alive. The rest of those killed during the ambush had been buried in shallow graves.

Recovery was left to the first Ranger battalion to rescue. A private First Class Jessica Lynch turned out to be the first successful rescue of a serving member of US. Forces in approximately four decades. So push forward and then we established the operating bases there in Baghdad and sped up the initial footprint and then running around chasing the deck of cards. The original 52 Saddam Qusay the rest of the players in the deck and I wish I still had one now. They're worth a lot of money, I bet.

Yeah, well, just kind of put it up on the wall. I got to do this. Victory is declared. And that didn't really mean anything because operations are still going on. But presidents declared victory. Right. Victory was declared and then the war started. Yeah. And it went on and on and on. Same in Afghanistan. It was kind of over in 2002 and then it started building up again. Right. One of the companies in the battalion got tasked. So we went to Iraq with what we call Battalion Minus.

So we went with two of the companies and then one of the companies ended up going over to Afghanistan and they were tasked with shutting down those Special operations footprint in Afghanistan. And so then they packed everything up and it was ready to shut it down. And then they said, no, unpack it. We're staying. And so then they had to turn around and unpack everything and reset everything back up. And then we figured out that we were kind of going to be in this for the long haul.

But at that point, early 2003, 2004, and even in 2005 in Afghanistan, we would go over there and it's like, what are we doing here? We would spend a lot of time just training. And what it was is that we just didn't have the same way to target in Afghanistan as we were in Iraq. And there was a technological difference in the infrastructure in the countries that led to things kind of being slow there for a while in Afghanistan.

And you go from Iraq and Iraq is a super fast paced it's like running and gunning every night on a SWAT team in the States and in any major US Metropolitan city. I mean, it is busy for us. Like, cops are serving search warrants and doing all their thing on a nightly basis.

Now you might not see it as the general public and that's kind of the same way that we were in Iraq is we're just running through these cities and we're just scooping up bad guys and trying to dive into these networks and cells as all this stuff is starting to develop for resistance, fighting against everything. And then you go to Afghanistan and you're like, crickets. Crickets. Because the targeting was different.

It was a lot of human intelligence based targeting and Afghanistan, so you have to vet all that information through multiple sources and some of it pans out and a lot of it doesn't pan out. And then we would spin up on a lot of missions and then we'd get halfway to the target and they would say, no scratch come back. And so it's like kind of irritating on the shooter's part. All the boys that are amped up to get on target, right? And then it's like, why

is the helicopter turning around? Yeah. And then you go, we found out it's bad intel, and so we're going to start over. And it's like following Sergeant Nick Moore's first deployment to Iraq in 2003 came multiple deployments to both Afghanistan and Iraq. As the fighting ramped up in both places and the role of the Rangers started to evolve. The 75th Rangers, of which Nick was a member, was considered an elite airborne light infantry combat formation within the US.

Army Special Operations Command. Previously, 75th Ranger deployments added muscle to Army Special Forces, Delta Force and teams of Navy Seals in order to provide security and blocking positions, while the Tier One operators executed surgical strikes on high value targets. But as the pace of deployments quickened and the Rangers earned the respect and confidence of their Tier One counterparts, they ran more side by side missions. The pace was relentless.

Typically, the Rangers were running four to six ops a night. By 2005, Nick was a 24 year old staff sergeant and Ranger squad leader. In late June, he received word that a four man team was going out on a reconnaissance mission known as Red Wings in the mountains of Kunar province of Afghanistan. At first mention, it seemed to Nick that a four man mission in a mountainous area controlled by the Taliban was ill advised.

We were in the transitioning point as far as what the roles of the Rangers were, what was being asked of us. Instead of being more of the Special Operations support element to go in and plus up the Delta Force and the Seal teams to provide them outter security, now we're being asked to kind of run the same target decks as them because through the course of that year we kind of shown that, hey, look, just because it's not our task, we can do this.

We just bring more people to the table when we do it. Seal team is going to run in there with about half the numbers that arrangeable team is going to run in there with and so we just bring more people when you talk about a Ranger platoon, you're talking like 20 guys or no, Ranger tune is typically somewhere between 45 and 50. Okay? And So Seal team is going to run in there with a lot less than that, and the same with Delta Force guys, but we can do the same thing.

And so we started to work through the progression of that and so we started to operate on some of the same target decks. So, like 2005 rolls around. There's still not a whole lot going on in the late spring, summer 2005. And so Marcus Luttrell's field team with Mike Murphy, Danny Dietz and Matt Axelson. And those guys, they were chasing a target set that had been beaten the crap out of the Marines out in Konar. And there was several fatalities from that. Konar is northeast.

It's kind of east near the border. Yes, that's where the mountains kind of start climbing up north. North of Kabul. Right? It's northeast of Kabul and kind of north of like a Asadabad and the little combat outposts that are there. So you're getting into the serious mountains. They came in and had this reccy plan to get eyes on, what is it? Ahmed Shah. And he's a high level, mid level guy. He was the leader of his little Taliban element out there.

So he had between two and 400 fighters that were fighting for him. So he's commanding quite a large element. So they worked out the plan to do this reconnaissance mission and they briefed it, and then we got the briefing on it. And our reccy platoon had kind of got that strange look on their face like, you're going to go in here right in the middle of this where they just killed like 14 Marines a week before, and you're going to go in with four guys. It was like, okay, well, great.

You're Navy Seals. You can do what you want. You can pitch that plan. And so we always talk about if it was our mission, what would we do sitting around the dinner table. And so I asked one of the reccy platoon sergeant, who is I've known him for several years at this point in my career, and I was like, hey, what would you do if this was your mission? How would you do it?

He's like, Well, I'd go in with a full reccy element with the whole reccy section, and I'd have one range of rifle platoon sitting three to 5 km off that way. It's not just four people. He said that's kind of ludicrous for this type of mission. He says the train is terrible, communications is even worse for satellite communications via radio, and it's hard to get rescued. He said it's just hard.

And he said if you take a large element in, but you don't take it all the way to the target, you still have the ability to either fight forward or fight back. And then you. Have a stronger element to be able to take these on. I said, okay, great. Awesome. It sounds like it makes sense to me. And so we didn't think anything else of it. We heard they were going, and so they were infilling, and we're like, cool.

I guess we'll watch it on the TV through the feeds, and we were supposed to go to the range the next day. So we loaded up in the trucks and started business as usual. In the morning, we're in Bagram, and so we used to go out to mountain range. We call it east river range because it's east of the base, so you have to drive through the little town room to get off the base. And then you just kind of drive for a few more minutes, and then you're out on this big flat.

And so we just throw the targets, and then the mountain range was the backstop for the bullets, and we're driving along and getting everything set up, throwing target stands and targets off the truck, because that was the easiest way to do it, is just drive down the line and start throwing the gear off the truck. And then you just hop off, and everybody spreads out and we start shooting. And we had no sense throwing all the targets and everything off the truck.

And they said, hey, get back on the truck. We're going back. I was like, well, are we picking this stuff up? They said, no, leave it. Just leave the targets there. Just leave it. And I was like, okay, what's going on? They said, we got to go back. I was like, well, what's going on? Why are we going back? And they're like, shut up. Get on the truck. Why are we going back? Asked the two main questions. And they're like, we had a helicopter that's been shot down. I was like, are you serious?

Nick learned that on the night of June 28, 2005, the four man Seal red wings reconnaissance team had encountered heavy taliban contact near the surreyac valley in kunar province. A quick reaction force comprised of members of seal team ten attempted an immediate rescue, but as they approached, their chinook was shot down and all aboard were killed.

Sergeant nick moore was among 30 heavily armed rangers who were tasked with securing the crash site, recovering the bodies, and searching for any remaining men from the original fourman Seal reconnaissance team. He would soon learn that one of the four seals was still alive. That badly injured man was Seal petty officer Marcus Luttrell, subject of the very popular book and movie lone survivor.

Nick was among the first rangers to reach him, and I thought it was really stupid that they weren't giving us any information because they're calling us back to be on quick reaction for us to go in and still going to find out soon enough. Yeah, well, I would figure this out a few years down the road. Why that happens is that when helicopters get shot down, it is a huge deal and there are thousands of people that are trying to gather as much information as possible.

And so the guys who are going to go do something, you don't need to know right now because we don't know and we're trying to figure it out. So all we need you to do is to get back here and be on standby to go when we say go. So we get back and we're sitting there and now we're all amped up because this is real, this is happening, but we're not doing anything. And it's like, what is taking so long?

So when this happens, it's not that we're not going to recommit America forces into that space because we are. The problem is that we have to get enough assets over there that it becomes an unfair fight in our advantage. And so it's getting helicopter attack helicopters and fighter jets and all of these things have to come to bear on station and get coordinated. Finally getting towards late afternoon, kind of early evening time frame, they said, all right, we're loading up and going.

And by this point we've been through several rounds of planning on this. And they said, okay, well, the altitudes that we're going at, you only have this much weight that you could put on the back of the helicopter because it's the end of June. And what people don't understand when we talk about aviation in the military is that even though these helicopters are ready to carry a large amount of equipment, it becomes an issue with air density.

And so the hotter it gets outside, the less dense the air is, so there's less lift for these aircraft. So we have to cut the weight on the amount of people that we can bring. So we were one Ranger of tune going in at, I think we were rolling probably, we were a little up on Manning at the time and so probably like 55, 60 guys in arrangement platoon at the time. And we went in with three squads of five, the platoon command unit element, and then machine guns.

We're going in just two guys per machine gun, and that's normally a three man crew. So we're going in like 27 people, spread it across two helicopters and so half the young guys are sitting in the back. They can't do anything and it makes a cut to get on the aircraft and not they did anything bad.

It's kind of one of those things where you take the best guys that you can take and so that's yourself as a leader and then you're taking your next two subordinate leaders and then they each get to take one guy. And you're a sergeant at this point. I'm a staff sergeant. At this time, a brand new staff sergeant, so a Ranger squad leader. So I'm in command of between at that time I had like eleven guys I think, but normally it's about nine.

So it's two fire teams of four normally, but we were running like two fire teams of five. Plus myself would make about eleven guys, plus or minus, I don't remember. You guys are going on the helicopter, right? And so we launched to go. And so people live in the mountains or they know anything about weather in the summertime in the mountains, you get random weird weather patterns in the mountains.

So we're flying target and has weather's rolled in and we've got rain and fog and all kinds of stuff and so the helicopters can't fly into that. They have to be able to have a certain level of visibility and so we had to abort infill that night. So we diverted over to Jalalabad to stage at Jalalabad and we ended up sitting on the flight line for 24 ish hours to be able to launch in that next night and launched in just after sunset. What do you know about the Seals at this point?

We knew that the helicopter was shot down the whole time and it was presumed based on the feeds that there were no survivors because there wasn't anybody moving around it and that it was a fireball when it crashed. There's no communication, there's no communication with anybody on the ground. It's crickets on that end. There's no communication with Murphy's team and there's no communication with that helicopter. There's no movement outside of that helicopter.

You just think it's going and you're going to go in and pick up some. Right? So we're going in on basically what we call a combat search and rescue with the anticipation that there are no survivors based on all the activity that we've seen over like the 36 hours that this has been going on now. And so on the board, Mike Murphy's team just kind of gets a question mark because we got to deal with these 16 Americans that have been killed in this helicopter crash.

We have to confirm, deny any possible survivors out of that crash. We have to account for everybody that's in that crash. So that's the task at hand, the crashes first, it's priority because we know where it is. We don't know where anything is going on with Murphy's team. So we'll figure that out. We knew what we were going into.

We knew it was going to be, well, we got to deal with this first and hopefully intelligence comes around or if there's any survivors out of Murphy's team, maybe they'll make their way up kind of towards the crash site and we'll be able to link up with them. And you also know that there's enemy in the area because they got down there. Right. We know that there's the potential for a large enemy force in the area.

So we finally get the clearance to launch out of Jalalabad and launch up and they said, hey, we're going to. The only insertion is fast rope. So that's a big four inch diameter rope. We kick out of the back of the helicopter and then slide down the rope like a fireman's pole. And we try to do it normally in training and in all tactical situations, we try to do it at under 40ft. It's faster for us. And if guys were to fall, it's not they're not going to get as hurt. But this one was at 60 plus.

It started at 60 and then kind of as the helicopter will drift, because static cover for helicopters never perfectly stable. They're moving around a little bit and it feels like it's perfectly stable until you're sitting on the ground and you're staring at it. And I was like, wow, that thing's dancing a little bit. But when you're doing that, when you're fast roving in at like 8000ft elevation on the ground and you're roped in on the side of on a ridge, that rope just kind of drifts.

And so the more it drifts off the side, the longer the rope gets. And wearing leather work gloves that we're supposed to wear, and their hands are getting burnt and they're blisters. And so guys, some of the guys get about ten to 15ft off towards the bottom of the rope and they can't hold on anymore. Their hands are all blistered up and so they just drop off the open. A lot of twisted ankles. And there were a couple of twisted ankles for us.

The other team that came in behind us, they were the actual we were kind of the advanced party, so we were there to fight through any resistance so they could come in with the recovery equipment, body bags and the equipment that we carry for smash web crash actions and things like that, that have to get brought up on target. And that stuff is not popular to what people might think. That stuff is heavy and it's compressed and it's not awkward. A body bag weighs 35 lbs. Yeah, around 35 lbs.

Because it's a thick lined, heavy plastic bag and it's waterproof, and because of what's going in, it is biohazard, is human and things like that. I don't mean to be grotesque, but you can't have those bags leaking with 35 lbs. People are like, oh, 235 pounds. Well, strap that onto the other 70 lb of junk that you're already wearing and then let's get out of a helicopter at 8000ft and walk to 10,000ft. It hurts. We're acclimated.

I mean, Bagram Air Force Base is sitting at, like, 5500ft of elevation, so we're not going that much. But it's a big change, it's a drastic change, even for that. And we're adrenaline going and you're carrying. Right, so we finally get in and we start walking and start I'm sorry, this is daylight or night time. This is the night of the 29 July. Okay, so drop in at night. Yes. So the crash happened on june 28. And so with the weather delay on the night of the 28th, we sat all day on the 29th.

And so this is the night of the 29th. We're finally getting inserted into to be able to put American forces around this crash site and start making accountability and giving a visual first hand assessment. Is the helicopter still burning at this point? It is, yes, it is. So we get infilled and so it's like, okay, where are we going? And they say, you see that fire? Yeah. That's where we're going. Yeah, start walking. Nick from third platoon fast rope from a blackhawk helicopter at 8000ft.

The Chinook, they soon learned, had gone down 2000ft higher at the crest of the mountain. Now they had to climb up a small nasty goat trail in the inky blackness of a rural Afghanistan night while carrying their regular combat gear along with heavy body bags and other equipment. Once they secured the ridge, they went about the gruesome job of recovering 16 bodies from the Chinook crash site. The only recognizable parts of the helicopter were the rotor blades and turbine engines.

Then they split up and started searching for the four missing Seals. Nick was leading a 13 man Ranger element that was joined by a special forces A team when they spotted a small village ahead. And so we start walking and guys try to take off at this rabbit pace and it's like that's not going to work for very long. And so that you can see the first little bit, we're walking at a pretty good clip and then you're going uphill. Yeah, we're going uphill. It's pretty steep.

Well, it's just off the top of the ridge and we're about halfway up the ridge for this and so I'm back up a little bit. So all of this is happening on the 28th and I've just kind of put this in there. I know I put it in my book as well, but so there was a rifle team that was stationed out of Jalalabad. And so when all this happened, they just jumped in the trucks and they took off. They said, hey, we're not waiting for you to ask us to go, we're going.

And so they started driving up there to the base of the mountain and so then they're in the bottom of the valley, in the big valley. And so then they literally started walking up the entire mountain to get to the top. And so even with that, a whole 24 hours of that, they still haven't even made it as high as we had gotten being inserted and they wouldn't show up for another day. Oh my God, that tells you how bad it was walking up there.

And they left all their trucks and stuff down at the bottom? Well, no, the gun crews and so the vehicle crews, they stayed on the truck, so driver, gunner, and then one other individual. And so what they did was once they did the infiltration for those guys to drop off, then they turned around and took the trucks back to Jalalabad. They could have went to Camp Blessing, I'm not sure. It's kind of a moot point where they went. I know they didn't sit down there for two weeks.

So they're walking up and we've finally got infield and now we're starting our walk and we're walking towards the fire and maybe about an hour before sunrise when we finally get up on the top and kind of push through and secure what we are calling the objective area. And so we own the top of the ridge where all this stuff is happening and we've got guys that have swept through and make sure there's no fighters hiding in wait. And then we just locked down.

Our platoon was responsible to lock down the entire perimeter and so we locked it down and then waited and then the sun had come up. Now their platoon finally started to make their way onto the objective and there was no rest for them. They didn't stop. They just pushed through. They pushed through. Give the platoon sergeant and PL at the time, they gave the guidance of what needed to be done. And the boys started to go to work. And come about noon, one local, we had everybody accounted for.

And how many people had been on that? There were 16. Wow. And they all died. There were no survivors. Yeah, there were no survivors. And so the next tasking that came was we have to make a way for these guys to get out here. So we had a small clearing that we could fit a small helicopter on, but it wasn't anything big enough to get a transport helicopter in to get the remains out.

So we ordered a supply pallet of explosives and started blowing trees off the mountain and created a helicopter landing zone large enough for a Ch 47 to come in and be able to load the remains. So that's the way you do it? You just start clearing an area? Yeah. Even if there hadn't been a clearing, we would have made one. And so we had just finished our breachers training course. And so we don't always use timber charges and things like that. It's very rare that we actually do.

But since we had just finished the course, it was fresh in everybody's mind. It's just something that we always train on when we teach people how to do this because it's a very basic task, but it's also a very complicated task. It's like being a lumberjack and falling a tree the correct way, but instead of using an accident, a chainsaw and wedges, we're using explosives to do it. So there's a few more tricks to doing it with explosives, but we have a lot of fun doing it.

It's kind of something that kept us from thinking about what had just happened and so far you don't see any resistance at all? No, there's nothing. I mean, we're not seeing anybody up there, so we're like, okay, awesome. I guess nobody wants to play. So we finished that up and come late, late afternoon or the evening sun is still up, finally got clearence to bring in the helicopter to load the remains on and fly them out.

So then they flew out, and then we had got basically the daily intelligence dumped for what was going on, and there was a random push to talk that had been triangulated, that it was somewhere down the mountain, like a walkie talkie almost. Well, it's one of our radios. And so somebody was just pushing the push button to Kia, not Morse code or anything, but they were just pushing it.

And so after so many times of doing that, you could use technology to triangulate the location or an approximate location. That location got passed up. And we got tasked with two squads and our platoon leaders element down the mountain at night to figure out what was going on. And so, like we were saying earlier, mountain weather comes in. So we ended up walking down the mountain in this massive rainstorm. You haven't slept, right? No, not really.

I mean, caught a few little cat naps here and there, but kind of the best thing to do in situations like that is to not stop doing things. And it's not because you just want to run on adrenaline, but when you have downtime, then your mind starts actually thinking about the ramifications of what has just happened here. And so if you can keep the boys busy and keep them doing things, then their mind doesn't think about what just happened there. In helicopters.

We're going to fly out on helicopters. Interesting. So you just keep moving. So just keep moving. And so we got the tasking and started walking in the rain. It's coming down, and it's wet and slick, and we almost lost a couple of guys off the side of the ridge. And I was like, hey, we might want to stop for a while because Nate almost fell off the mountain. And that's all we need to do is have somebody else. Now we have to go find somebody else, one of our own, right?

So we held up underneath some of the big mountain pine trees there for the last couple of hours of the night and just shaking and shivering. We're hot and sweaty from walking, but we're also soaking wet. And then when you stop moving and it's just miserable. And so guys try to catch a little bit of sleep, but you can't really catch any sleep. And so you just kind of turn in your head, looking under your night vision and just seeing what's out on the landscape.

And there were some little spot fires, little camps and things like that, and we were assuming they were Taliban or farmers with goats. They'll push the goats up in the mountains and let them graze on whatever grass and vegetation is up that they'll eat. And all you're going on is this ping of this rate, right? And a grid that we had basically walking to a grid down to this little village and trying to find the answer to this American equipment in control by Taliban fighters, right.

Which of course is it just people who just happened to cross it and do they know what happened to the individuals that are still missing? Right. And there's still no word from right. There's no word from Mike Murphy's Seal team. It's just no comms at all. And so push down. And there was a Special Forces team that had infilled at the same time as the Ranger team, and they have come up a different spur on the mountain and trying to see which way was the fastest split forest type deal.

And so we tied in with them after the sun came up and the rain stopped and we're kind of trying to dry our gear out for just a few minutes. We got food coming in on a cargo delivery system, so a big pallet of gears get kicked out of the back of the C 130 and we're just kind of waiting for breakfast to show up and try our gear out before we keep walking. So we tied with them, have a little bit something to eat.

Got dried off a little bit and get it it back up and then started walking down to the little village. What size village are we talking? Oh, it's tiny. I mean, we're talking maybe one or two city blocks. It's nothing big, maybe 100 people, 200 people. Okay. And it's all like sheep herders. They're farmers, so they terrace the side of the mountains and they'll farm in agriculture and that stuff. And so we start rangers don't do the nice, Ask questions first and then look later.

We just smash things. Special Forces guys? Yeah. Right? So we let the Special Forces guys go talk to the village elders. And then so me and the boys and my buddy Jason, who's the other squad, later his squad, we start kicking in doors and we're speaking English. Where's the Americans? Where's the Americans? They're speaking Pashto and Farsi and whatever else they're speaking over there. Some things all you can do is just point. So we're just pointing on the shoulder to

our American flag and like, where is he? Where is he? Where are they? So then they figured out what we were doing while we were there. And so then the village people kind of helped marcus up from where they were hiding him from the Taliban and they brought him up to us. And so when we stopped smashing stuff and went over to the SF guys and we're like, hey, you probably got to pay for a few doors. Yeah, right. Then we started asking marcus questions. How was Marcus? What condition was he in?

He was walking. I'm sure he had some injuries. We knew he had been shot in the back end and some bruises and scrapes. Yeah, he was pretty bruised up, but he's walking under his own power. It's just come to find out later from falling and all that stuff. He had cracked a rib right or two or something in his back, but he was walking on his own power. Was he still armed? He didn't have his rifle. He had his tactical gear, and then that led us to that. Okay, so that was his radio.

And so the medics went over and kind of did what they could do for him and all that stuff. And so then we start asking questions. Hey, what happened? And so then he starts explaining what happened, and then the question is, okay, well, if you're here, where is everybody else? And he goes, they're dead. I was like, okay, but where? He's like and he just points up on the side of the mountain. He goes there. Up there. I was like, can you be a little bit more specific?

And he's like, no. What was his mental state? I mean, he was coherent, if that's what you're asking, but you could tell that he was kind of I guess he was in his own thoughts about what had happened, and he's trying to think, but he's been in a running gunfight. And then he comes in and he tells us that, okay, well, while you guys were weathered out and the 29th, the Taliban actually came down here and they grabbed him up and they took him up on the mountain.

They showed him all the fighting positions and said, when your friends come in here to get you, we're going to shoot them down, too, and all this stuff he's saying that the Taliban had grabbed him. Right. They came into the village and they grabbed him at gunpoint and threatened the villagers that if they didn't let him take them, but then they were going to kill everybody in the village, so they let him take him. But there's part of Afghan culture I don't remember the exact term.

pashtunwali Yes, thank you. Pashtunwali, where they're responsible for him now because they've accepted him into the village and they've offered him care and attention. And so then they are by their culture, they're required to fight for him. And so the Taliban knew that as well.

And so that's why after they did their thing with him and kind of threatened him, trying to intimidate him about what was going to happen when everybody else came in, then they brought it back and they handed him back over, and that's when they decided they were to hide him.

And so he was kind of in a root seller type, so the villagers were hiding him right down in the bottom of the draw, and a little root seller type thing that they had down there, and they were just kind of keeping him out of the village, but safe. And so when we got down there shooting them and stuff, right? So we start trading information with him and he's explaining all this stuff that's happened, and we're passing information back up the mountain to our guys.

And so then basically, we're tasked with just babysitting him and securing that village until nightfall, when they can fly into Medevac helicopter and put him on the medevac and fly him out. So we're two days into this op now, and so that starts twelve more days of us, twelve more days combing this mountainside, looking for three missing Navy Seals who are presumed dead, according to Marcus, and he has no idea where they are. He knows generally they're up from him, so they're up on the mountain.

So what happened was we had our small element where we were, and the rest of our element was on the top. So then those guys were climbing from the top of the mountain halfway down, and we were climbing from the bottom halfway up and meeting in the middle. And so one pass would take about all day. And so then we were combing through all of this and leadership is keeping track of what sections of the mountains that we've covered.

And we thought we were going to be real quick about it because the first day that we actually search so it'd be like the 30th as we're searching through. Or actually it's probably July 1. We make our first push halfway up the mountain and tie in with the guys coming from the top down and high five and hey. I've seen a couple of days. How's it going? Kind of have a five minute break and just talk with your friends and stuff and then split back. They go back up the mountain.

We turn around and come back to the bottom. And as they're going back up to the top, they stumble across two of them. And it was just stupid luck. Somebody happened to slide into a little wash, lost his footing and fell in. Unfortunately for him, he's like, laying on top of them face to face. So I felt bad for those guys because they had found him. And so they're still going up in elevation to get back to the top.

So now they've got to carry two sets of remains all the way up to the top, and then they have to carry them down the ridge to the helicopter landing zone, and then we've got to get the helicopter back into Medevac, those remains out, and then now it's looking for one person on the side of a mountain. So we just searching, searching, searching, and there's a little small spur kind of in the middle of this bigger draw. The big draw is kind of wise as the mountain came up, and so we had.

Searched for a couple of days on the side where the village was, where we picked up Marcus. And so we thought, well, maybe we need to take part of the element and shift over to the other side, because he couldn't remember where anybody was. And guys get separated in this type of a gun fight and this kind of terrain, and if he slipped and fell and nobody saw it, he might be over here. So we were spending on the other side.

And so we just spent a day or so and kind of searched that other side and said, well, he's not here. And so then we just kept continuing the search. And so at this time, in the big picture of everything that's going on, our deployment window had ended, and we're on the side of this mountain. And so our replacement Battalion third Ranger Battalion had just showed up. And so they were getting kitted up and briefed up on what's going on. So you were supposed to leave Afghanistan. Yeah.

And so we're ten days into this now, and we're worn out. Some of the guys have gotten sick because at this point, we're not getting bottled water dropped in for us or anything. We're just kind of trying to purify our own water through the mountain stream systems. And I think some of the guys didn't quite get the mix of iodine drops to quarts of water. Correct. And so they kind of got in the runs. Yeah, that's not good.

And upset stomach, and I got sick too, but I had eaten a bad MRE, so I had food poisoning for about 14 hours. Oh, God. So all this is going on three of the times, getting their stuff together and getting straightened up, and we're trying to work out the relief and place on the mountain and all this stuff. And finally the call comes that, hey, you're out tonight.

And so we pushed over to where we could get a helicopter in on our location, and Third Battalion guys jumped off, we jumped on, flew back, and after everybody had gotten back from our platoon and our company was probably about maybe 8 hours, they had recovered the final missing American that and it just happened. It just wasn't a place that we hadn't looked yet. And they were fresh eyes, and we weren't taking the assumptions that we were from first hand account.

They were just kind of going, okay, yeah, right. And they're looking at it like first Platoon and Third party Charlie Company have searched this much area, and so there's well, there's no point in searching that again. So let's look just outside of where they searched, and they found him pretty much right away. These guys had died. Just gunshot wounds. Yeah. Okay. So from your perspective, was it a big battle that had taken place? Was there, like, evidence of a lot of combat?

No, not from our perspective of what we had seen, according to what was passed over on the radio from Murphy when everything was first jumping off for them versus even when the helicopter got shot down. We found a lot of Soviet brass and things like that from machine guns and them shooting, but not so much on the NATO American five, five, six and four ammunition or pistol ammunition or anything like that. It wasn't there, or at least we just didn't see it.

So they were probably it sounds like they encountered the enemy and it was over pretty quickly. It wasn't like a prolonged battle that went on. You can still pull up some of the feed. Some of the video clips are still available on YouTube. You can search it and you can actually see it and hear the gunfight that's going on. It's nothing graphic, nothing's shown. It's just from the Taliban's perspective of what they're doing. So that was that. Now, when you saw the movie, what was your reaction?

Oh, I fought not watching that for a long time. I was at an Advanced non commissioned officers course. When I finally decided to try and read Marcus book, because we had a school got shut down for a day and I went into town and sat at Barnes and Nobles drinking coffee, and I was like, well, let's give this a try. And I was like, well, tried reading it and I read a little bit of it and I put it back on the shelf and I was like, Well, I don't need to read it, I lived it.

I give Hollywood credit, dramatize things and add things. It's based on a true story. But I think the end of the movie is not the way it should have been. I think you had a better dramatic effect if you actually had a shown the actual course of events that happened and the amount of effort that went into finding him and yeah, well, just recovering everybody.

Not just helicopter, but the amount of effort that was put into finding not only Marcus, but Murphy, Dietz and Axelson, and making sure that they came home. Did you ever see Marcus after that? No. I did the warfighter segment on this piece a few years ago with the History Channel and just timing work out. He filmed his piece the day before we filmed ours. Myself, Brian and Mario came in and filmed it. I personally don't hold any animosity to the guy. No, of course not.

He was clearly deeply affected by whatever happened. Yeah, that story, from my perspective, on my side of sitting there on the ground and enjoying two weeks on the side of a mountain. After rescuing Marcus Luttrell and confirming his identity, nick and his fellow Rangers asked him about the location of the rest of his four man Seal reconnaissance team.

Luttrell told them how the Seals had shifted their observation post early on to better see their target, but that he and his teammates had been compromised by goat herders who had stumbled upon their new location. Their decision to release the locals would, Marcus inform them, have dire consequences. Luttrell was unable to give them even the most general location of where the Seals had encountered the enemy.

Still, Nick and his Ranger colleagues scoured the mountain for two more weeks until they were able to identify and recover the bodies of Luttrell teammates petty Officer Danny Dietz, petty Officer Matthew Axelson, and team leader Lieutenant Michael Murphy. We thank Nick Moore for his incredible tenacity and bravery and his wonderful book Run to the Sound of Guns. He is today's hero behind the headlines. Thanks for listening. I'm your host, Ralph Pezzullo.

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