Marcus Luttrell Speaks

raise these up this little bit that's an honor to be here and a lot of wonderful people I think the miss Olsen in the same room and then actually over in the corner over there I have a very special lady to me one of my teammates mothers who I actually lost in Iraq my name is Debbie Lee it's mama to me but mom I love you that's not only the soldiers who pay the ultimate sacrifice because you know we're once its own once it's said and done and it's over we're done there's nothing left of us we don't care I tell all my guys when we head out the door they're like I didn't you know that I get questions how do you do this how do you keep going back time after time I'm like I forget who I am I said I hang my hat hang everything else on the wall at the house when I go overseas and I become somebody else that enables me to do the things that I do sometimes good sometimes bad sometimes in between a lot of this stuff everybody likes to pretend that war is black and white it's not there's a gray area and being a Navy SEAL that's the world that I lived in ok I'm going to talk to you a little bit about Afghanistan normally when I talk to people about when they're asking about Navy SEALs and stuff like that if you have the tip of the spear a lot of a lot of military units don't like to refer to themselves as that well we're the razor's edge that was our job and in Afghanistan when they say you know most of the time we go after the head of the snake when going after bin Laden's like going after a dragon okay he's so protected I'm so loved and that there's a ring around him that stretches for miles and miles so once any anybody locates us in our position he's automatically moved ok I like to say that C stands for sea air and land specialists that's what we do no matter we're on the planet someone's hide and we'll come get you this is the one guy that we've unfortunately been able to to nab some lot of that has to be political and I'm going to tell you right now a gentleman I I'm very blunt and I don't lie and I will tell you how it is and if you don't like it you can talk to me later about it okay we'll see how that goes good and 2005 I was sent to Afghanistan I'd done a couple of two tours before then I wouldn't consider myself senior but I knew exactly what my job was I was you know kill the enemy that's what I did you know that's what I was good at I'm not a hero I you know I appreciate the fact that you say people say that and stuff like that but that title needs to be pushed to somebody else I'm not I'm just a patriot I'm an American I'm a Texan so and that was uh those roots run deep with me I'm six generation and every one it's customary in my family that every male and the family serves this country you have to do it you serve your country before thank you you have to serve your country before you can exploit it my father once said if you're going to take something earn something make a living off this country you need to give back to it and that's the way we did it you know then at 14 we decided I have a older brother he's seven minutes older than I am he's like yeah no we're gonna do we're gonna be Navy SEALs like what is that he's like that's great we get to blow stuff up and shoot guns and run around this at the other yeah I just want you all to know that that on TV the propaganda Discovery Channel that's real sexy looking but when you get to do it in real life it's not okay there's nothing cool about being in contrary to popular belief Navy SEALs do not like cold water okay and we don't like to have sand everywhere on top of us and and I don't like to sit somewhere for five days staring at a tree waiting for somebody to drive past me that's the job that's what you pay me for and that's what I was good at so for the last decade have been a Navy SEAL I got sent to Afghanistan I'll get straight to the point I had been out there for a few months and my main job was to track down and locate and either kill or capture on a man named Ahmad Shah it was a high-ranking individual and bin Laden's army and he had been creating a lot of a lot of havoc on the Afghani border and everyone knows the deal about Pakistan we can't go into their borders and whatever whatever whatever just depends on whose sneaker than the other I'll leave it at that but anyways they sent myself Michael Murphy and I just want to make one correction I started with 164 guys in my buds class and we graduated 10 so this is kinda like one of those right on okay well we were set out me myself me myself Lord no more Coronas for Marcus myself Michael Murphy Danny Dietz and Matt Axelsson who was actually my brother's Bloods glass my brothers a Navy SEAL he's overseas right now he's been over there for seven months and hopefully he'll get home here in a couple of weeks God willing but and good for thank you the four of us were set out to do I was on a special reconnaissance team sniper team our primary mission was to go out and just do that we set up and went and I the best way to describe it I had a lady one day she was she tried to ask me it's like what do you do and I'm like I mean picture this ma'am you're laying in your at your house whatever and I'll sneak into your backyard and I'll watch you anywhere from three to five days everything you do I'll write it down I'll take pictures of you and then maybe in the middle of the night when you're snuggled up in bed with your husband I'll come in there and snatch him away from you and you'll never see him again I was like that's my job she's like oh my god I was like pretty cool huh people like me do exist regardless of what you what you've heard that we do do that okay I'm standing up here barely but I'm standing up here telling you that so we went in to catch this guy Ahmad Shah and military intelligence you know that's kind of like jumbo shrimp or whatever other than anything else do you want to talk about it we're like the 80 to 200 Taliban fighters that's what we were up against and we were dropped into this mountain on like 80 to 200 that's kind of an obtuse number I'm gonna fight a little different if I'm fighting 80 guys with him fighting 200 because we didn't wear body armor or anything that you know we just I just had my weapon and some ammo so we packed up moved out dropped in pardon me and we were set up on side of this mountain and watching this target it wasn't much going on and just like the gentleman said we were compromised soft compromised basically is what's called goat-herders walked up on us some villagers were out walking their herd so if you can imagine picture this in your head a top-secret Navy SEAL most mission with the US just standing out in the middle of open with a hundred goats standing around you and I'm holding my rifle like this on this this can be happening you know and our nearest platform for rescue was at least 35 to 40 minutes away that was our job we're more like a lerp team like a long-range or conscious team they just drop us off and we'll say we'll see in five days that was our bread and butter and I loved every minute of it well we turned them loose long story short some stuff went down and then now we relocated and about all 200 of those Taliban militia showed up on the four of us and we were on the side of the mountain and anybody who skis knows what a double black diamond is if you don't yet we had to kick the ground out from underneath us and just lean against the mountain and to watch the target I'd lean against some trees and pull up my binoculars or my scope or whatever and watch the guys well I turned around my Kia had actually seen what was going down and I rolled over and the first guy I saw had to a k47 and an RPG excuse me to RPGs on his back on ak-47 and then there was about 40 guys standing in front of me and then I could see him coming down both our flanks and I was like all right let's go town let's get it on you know I got that sick feeling I could smell them you could smell them and they don't bathe regularly which is a good thing because once we picked them up man I knew it was go time well there's a first guy pulled his head around the tree I pulled the trigger and that was the end of him and then it unleashed hell on us and here come the firefight and they pushed us out of this tree line and we pinball it in there and then we fell 70 meters to a tree line and then 50 meters through some boulders and rocks and now I have to tell you they had the upper hand on us I mean this is their backyard you got no thing about Afghanistan is it they've lived there and fought there for thousands of years they know where to step in order to run they know where the plant or water plant their ammo their their guns everything and they pushed us into a bottleneck you know or an hourglass whatever you want to call it and we've well we fought hard my friend Danny was shot immediately he had the radio and I was just like hey did you get that radio call off he was like manly they blew my thumb off when he held his hand up and was hanging down by a piece of skin he's like can you help me I'm like I was the medical nut can't help you can he fight he's like I'll fight so he jammed the mag in and we kept going only thing was the only place we go was 40 feet office the side of this Boulder so we fell off that thing and they came over the top of us started spraying a ak-47 on top of hit Danny two more times we moved around and finally spread out on the mountain where we could start fighting somewhat and it was like Hill had come down on top of us I mean four against 200 is not very good odds but we did damage I mean we fought and fought and fought but we kept getting shot I think by the time Danny I was holding him up moving around I picked him up and was kind of moving around he couldn't walk anymore his legs have been annihilated I was like I got you man and I was fixing to jump up this Boulder about 15 feet and it took her round to the ear and blew the back of his head off and I hit me in the back of the neck and dropped me down I broke my nose and bit my tongue in half and that was the worst part the man shot because I couldn't breathe through my nose I kept swallowing my tongue and I spent most of the time trying to pull that out plus all the dirt and everything the grass stuff of that swallowed fought our way down and I'm about an hour two hours have been had went by and this is a constant fight they don't load Adonis with RPGs and mortars and plus the small arms fire and there was nowhere we could go we couldn't push up the side of the mountain because they had they consolidated and by this time they had come underneath this so they had us in a 360-degree pen there was nowhere we could go so Danny we had lost Danny and Mikey had pushed out just like the gentleman said to the middle and called back her reinforcements and when he went back he pushed back to the left in front of me and now I normally don't talk about this but you know he you know there's a certain tone that a man doesn't you know when your man screams that you should never hear well you know I fear you know he was just started screaming my name he was like help Marcus kept calling for help but I couldn't get back up there you know I mean that you know once you fall off one of those boulders I couldn't climb back of it I was the only one left really and he just kept yelling for me and yelling for me I was okay to the point where I was trying to pin my ears I was like just quit screaming my name you know stop he was my best friend you know he was the officer in charge I was a team leader and he was just like just kept yelling my name you know and I was finally I got quiet and they killed him I think he'd been shot 17 times 18 times and I turned around I seen that and um he actually it's sitting he had sat down behind beside me you know and I was like hey what are you doing why don't you keep moving he's like they they shot me bro they blew the front of my head off and I turned around and looked at him you know and sure enough he'd taken around to the front of his head and bone his skull off and I was just like he's like I can't see him line I was like just start walking down the mountain I'll catch up with you so he did we pushed down I caught up with him and we were sitting underneath this rocking bangin RPG to come in and hit both of us and blew us out from underneath a time bank and by the time I I came to I was upside down paralyzed from the waist down and I didn't know where Matt was so I started crawling and a lot of stuff happened me through that night you know I had broken my back my pelvis tore my rotator cuff and gunshot wounds in my back cross the back of my neck and 11 through and throughs in my knees and my shins plus all the frag and stuff I crawled all night long I actually fell off the mountain one time all right and I kept thinking in my head I mean you just keep going that's my job that's what y'all pay me for and this is what my guys would want this is what being a seal is all about and finally I son had come up I was working around they had been following me all night the Taliban and they shot me again and I fell 1,500 feet and I was done was blacking out and whatever started crawling up the mountain again and just kept going we got into a gunfight exchange I'm gonna you know I like I won that obviously Here I am it's gonna take more than that to bring this boy down but uh I crawled by this time I had no legs left you know I crawled seven more miles through the mountains and came into the village I had wandered into this village making long story short and this is the point I'm trying to make him I understand that and trust me nobody got more upset than I did or as upset I did when they decided to park those jet liners and the twin towers you want to talk about that's not proper terminology but I was mad I remember I cut a picture of a guy odd that died in the Twin Towers I laminated and kept in my pocket when I went over there and I was ruthless to those people I didn't care anything about him anything they stood for nothing my main objective was to create as much havoc and terror and chaos on them as they did to those people in twin towers and I this is where I got caught into my dilemma because when I got cut when I got pulled into this village on Afghan village they saved me they harbored me from the Taliban however the Taliban did come in they bust in the door about an hour later once I was in the village and had a hold they got a hold of me for a day and a half and you can probably use your imagination what happens to American soldier when they have you but you know that's you know let's water off a duck's back right water under a bridge or whatever thoughts trying to think about it too much but they did a pretty good job on me and then the villagers they were coming down to cut my head off villagers snuck me out of there and moved me around and threw me in this cave for another four and a half days moving around this village and Harvard me from the Taliban and I remember sitting in that room with them one day and thinking this is kind of my moral conundrum you know I was like I've spent the better part of this appointment out here just beating the hell out of you guys and just doing everything I could to hurt you and I didn't care about your customs or your religion or nothing like that but they saved my life I'm not crawling they're bleeding and I can walk outside right now and get a ride to the hospital if I was laying on the side of bleeding and these people were taking I mean they're you know their relatives and everybody were getting killed by the Taliban because they didn't certainly encircle the village I was like I just wanted to say I don't know I didn't speak any pashtu and they didn't speak any English so that was a we had a steep learning curve I just wanted to say I'm sorry and that's the trouble with it with Afghanistan is there are good people there and there's good people that hate the Taliban and al-qaeda however they're relatives of Taliban and al-qaeda they take refuge in those villages when the storm gets bad or when they need food or water it's such a dynamic war it's it's you know I like to say the only thing good comes out of Afghanistan is you know and nothing really mean opium I remember this old man hit me with a shot I hope you and when I was screaming Rove and they were pulling the shrapnel on my legs he hit me I could talk about I don't care of it he's like takes it you know you take this I put in my lip I wanted to run home hey ain't ya I mean now I know why they can drive down a road with a car full of explosives and blow themselves up because you don't care it's like the best thing in the world he hit me with that and I was just like mmhmm yeah got any more but uh there are good people out there and that's the main thing that you know these people saved my life and who the heck I was and they brought me in there and did everything they could fought the Taliban and you know all my life however there are very very bad people there and there are very very bad people here and I just want to if I can deliver one message to you guys I mean I can't tell my whole story I'm under a time crunch but you have to realize that they're here and in the United States they just busted a alqaeda cult in my hometown in Willis Texas population under a thousand all right they're going to hit us again they're relentless and what they care of all they care about is their religion it's kind of funny you can't you're like eh yeah we you know I'm this religion and I believe this and we're taking it back 2,000 years ago hold on let me answer my cell phone like what you got a cell phone I thought you wanted to take it back 2,000 years what are you talking about you know it's just like one of those kind of things so everybody has their own degree of what they believe in it's just a tough fight all I ask you know when I come out and speak is just have patience you know we're trying as hard as we can but once the government steps in and puts the leash around my neck then I can't do my job that's just the way it is my philosophy on that is like hey look if you're in the government you do whatever you can you talk you negotiate you debate everything you can do to keep me from going over there once you get me over there turn your back close your eyes because I'm gonna freakin wreck shop but but but the good things are getting done I mean I just got back from Iraq and Ramadi in Al Anbar and I mean you can rock down walking down the road rent you know I wouldn't but I got places a hole but uh but we're winning we are winning so please just know the American public keep your chins up and we'll take care of it we'll win it thank you

Channel: Rycast

Views: 114,552

Rating: 4.8571429 out of 5

Keywords: Marcus Luttrell (Military Person), Operation Red Wings (Military Conflict), War (Quotation Subject)

Id: W_cvZrdVKys

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2015