July 2, 2025 • 33 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. So
Michael Very Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Twenty years ago, George W. Bush was the president. A
lot of folks you and I knew were serving in
Iraq and Afghanistan. The death toll was disturbing. Every community
(00:46):
in the country was affected. My how things have changed
in twenty years. I never forget the first reference I
heard to Loane Survivor. My brother Chris had read the
book and he said, have you read this book Loan Survivor?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
You know?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
He said, do you know who Marcus atrell Is said,
I don't. She's written this book called Loan Survivor. Okay,
it's about they went in Operation Red Wings, they went
into Afghanistan and he's the only one who came out.
It's a story, man, Wow, it is wow is It's incredible.
(01:31):
It's disturbing. Then they make the movie. Then we get
to meet Marcus, then we develop a friendship, and a
lot has happened in those twenty years. It's time to
revisit that twenty years later. Marcus atrell welcome back to
the program.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Thank you, good morning.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
What were you doing just before you came on the
show this morning?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
All right, with complete transparency.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
One of my lab got hit by a skunk the
other day yesterday, and I'm out here to shave her.
And I don't know when the last time you've had
that happen, but brother, it it's something so that that's
kind of what I'm dealing with right now.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I was thinking of a great headline for this discussion,
and I already have it. Uh Loan survivor Navy seal
Marcus Latrelle admitted douching before interview.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Right, I don't, because you know, the first thing she
did was she got hit was come in and get
on the couch. So when I walked in, I don't
know what smell it.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
They just do that, right, Yeah, what do you have
a what remedy do you use to get rid of
that punk?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Marcus? We had a place out in Carmene next to
Chapel Hill and we had two dogs get hit two
consecutive weekends, and we went to I called my buddies
that were veterinarians and they said, go get mass and
Gill Douche. That is the best. I came back and
talked about it on the air. I heard, I heard
(03:05):
every solution known to mankind. I think it's a mess.
No matter what you do. Have you decided what you're doing.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
So I go with the hydrogen peroxide.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
And the palm mallis okay?
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Yeah, an oil right oil base yep, yep.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
And the thing about it stuff when she goes it's good.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
They need to bottle that up and use it and
give it to people for defense. Let's talk about how
you're getting attacked and you smack somebody with that, they're
not gonna stick around.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah yeah, no, no, no, even a porcupine. You know,
you could hide behind a shield with a porcupine, But
that's skunk. That's bad stuff. Let's tell the story you've
told before. But I think people should know how you
and and Morgan decided you wanted to be Navy seals
and began training at a very young age. And the
man who put you through that program.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
It was Morgan's idea. He came down. I was feeding
the horses and he's like, hey, I know what we're
gonna do.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
We're gonna be Navy seald It's gonna be great.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
We get to jump out of airplanes, we get to
shoot guns, we get to blow things up, we get
the scuba dive and there's a really good chance we're
gonna die.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
And I was like, okay, you sign me up. You know.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Being a younger brother, I kind of followed him around
everywhere he came up with the idea, but I usually
had to go first, so that that's when that happened.
We were new teenagers, fourteen fifteen years old and there
was a gentleman who lived in town. We actually grew
up with his daughter. We were in the same grade,
and he would come into the high school and work
(04:38):
the kids out in the gym, and then he had
a reputation for training young men to go into the military,
into the special Forces. They was Billy. So we got
the courage.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
To go ask him to train us. I mean I
walked up on him.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
I'll never get it, and caught him during dinner time,
got peace fried chicken in his same and he's like,
what do you knock over the door? He's like, what
do you want? And I was like, well, sir, we
want to be Navy seals. We heard you train people
to do that. He was wondering if you would train us,
and he kind of looked at me for a little bit,
and I had some buddies with me, looked over my
shoulder and he told us four to thirty tomorrow and
he slammed the door in our face. So we left,
(05:17):
and then the next day we showed up at four thirty.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Matter of fact, this is my.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
First life lesson that I ever got taught with him.
Kind of stands true to this very day. You know,
someone tells you to be somewhere at a certain time,
you're always fifteen minutes early. When we were, we showed
up at four thirty, which is not on time, and
he man, he was out there waiting on us. I
remember running up to the yard. He was pointing at
us and at the ground. He's pointing at us, watching
(05:42):
at us and at the ground. And then when we
got within the yard that he was cussing us up
one side and down the other.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
I mean good. You know, some people just have a
gift for profanity. He does. He has that, and.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
They can apply it in certain ways to when it
and then it's really really impactful. I still remember it.
I mean, bro, this is over twenty years ago.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
And uh, he.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Stopped us in the street and he drew a line
in the dirt with a head with his bootheel, and
he said, every day you come here, I'm gonna I'm
gonna ask you to cross this line. He goes, what
you're wanting to do and where you're going is a
voluntary program putting time on. He goes, you should probably
quit right now, because if you cross this line, I'm
gonna I'm gonna beat you. I'm gonna do everything I
(06:25):
can to break you. He's like, I'm not your mother.
I don't care whether you live or die. And he said,
when a man goes to war, his brain turns the
water and runs out of his ears, and all he
has to go on is instinct in the guy to
the right and the left of him. He's like, if
you want a little bit of that across the line.
At that age, you know you're invincible still. I mean
you you walk around with immortality.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
You can feel it. When you're that age, everything heals
up the way it's supposed to. So we did.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
We cross the line, and I remember he dropped us
down to do some push ups. He's like, everybody on
your face, even three hundred push ups for being late.
And that's not a lot of push ups. But if
you got some guys who aren't in shape, you're gonna
be paying the man.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
So that's I know what happened to us.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
He started matching the deck, going down, up and down,
and we got out of sink. He started a teeter
totter a little bit, and he stopped us, and I'll
never forget. He goes, you know, as a team, you're
gonna go down together, and you're gonna come up together.
You're gonna live together, and you're gonna die together. He goes,
you're not a team.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Start over.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
And that's how it started for us. And he just
from that moment on he waded into us pretty hard.
I remember we we probably got an hour into it.
A couple of hours into it. We couldn't get those
push ups down. And he got so sick and tired
of us that he kicked us off his property.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
He's like, go home.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
He goes, you're you're, you know, you're, you're a disgrace
to your family. He goes, when you get home, walk
right up to you dad and punch him in the
face and tell him to start over because he fed
up on you. And uh, he said, if you want
to do this again, tomore, show up on time. Don't
ever be late. My time is the one thing I
can't control. I don't have any bearing over it, so
I'm not gonna waste it on you. If you're not
gonna you're not gonna show up on time. And that
(07:55):
was the first lesson he taught me, and all of us.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Actually got a very much how much older than you
is Morgan.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Seven minutes?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Oh, that makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
It would have been back in the day, it'd have
been the King.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Marcus Latrell is our guests, we're going to Afghanistan and
Operation Red Wings and Loan Survivor and all of that
coming up.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
Well, well, lucky you, Michael By continues your lucky day.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
That out.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Our guest is Loan Survivor, Marcus Latrel. Twenty years after
Operation Red Wings, Marcus, let's rocket forward to you getting
orders to go to Afghanistan. How did that come down?
Speaker 4 (08:54):
So they split the platoon in half, and there's still teams,
there's there's troops, and there's platoons. And since there was
two wars going down at the same time, there was
more than enough work to go around. And our particular
platoon was specialized in reconnaissance I was with special deliveries,
so we were a smaller unit. But what would happen
is they would split us down the middle and kind
(09:16):
of temple us out to the other seal teams because
of our specialty. So when it came time to see
who was going where, my half of the platoon was
tasked to go to Afghanistan and the rest of our
guys went to Iraq.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
And that's how that was up.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Was there Were you and Morgan intentionally split?
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Absolutely?
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Oh? Yeah, absolutely, Especially in the beginning. I went through
field training before him, so I was ahead of him
a little bit. But eventually we wound up back together.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
And the only.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Stipulation on that was especially in the beginning, as we
weren't allowed to ride in the same helicopters or the
same hum And when I got when I got initially
into the teams, I got sent to Iraq. First he
got sent to Afghanistan, and then when I got back
from Iraq, I got sent to Afghanistan.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
So it was it was one of those deals.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
We were kind of missing each other back and forth.
Eventually we wound up together in Iraq, but in the
beginning we were separated by awards.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
So tell me about the training for Red Wings.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
We started, well, the thing about Navy seals is we're
constantly training. If we're not sleeping or eating or working out,
then it's always training, work up for training. And then,
like I said, our job was special reconnaissance. We were
doing a lot of direct action missions, village takes, down, snatching, grabs,
sniper overwatches. Meaning it was desolate country out there, completely
(10:48):
different fighting than we're talking about in Iraq and the city.
So we were doing a lot of helicopter reconnaissance and
then then we would fast rope in and they would
drop us off in the mountains and leave us anywhere
from five to ten days, maybe two weeks, and then
they would reach supplies.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
By air drop.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
So we were kind of the eyes on if any
any unit does a hit or they go in, they're
always going to have eyes on the target first to
kind of get an idea of what was going on,
and that was our job. So it was constantly working
with the helicopter units getting that online. The satellite imagery
was getting pretty good back in two thousand and five.
(11:25):
It's not like it is now where you could see
everything and through walls, but back then the imagery was
getting pretty good, so we were doing a lot of
map studies, switching up our gear, making sure everything was
good enough, and we were well prepared for whatever environment
when we got in, because the terrain would change with
the miles, so it was constant preparation and training.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
So take me through the moment. You're on the side
of the mountain and you're there to get the bad guy,
and these goat herders come upon you.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
So we were separated probably about enough to where we
could we could barely see each other, so not enough
to where we were sitting right beside each other to
make a big signature, but far enough to way away
from each other that if we needed to get to
each other, we could, And the terrain really wasn't conducive
for a perfect setup, so we had perched up. We
(12:20):
were well over ten thousand feet on the side of
this mountain. So imagine a volcano with a village stuck
down at the bottom of it, and we came in
over the top of it. So what we did was
we kind of rope down and climbed down inside of
the volcano itself so we could get a better vantage
point on what was going on in the village. We
set up in a triangle formation. I was at the
(12:41):
top of it. The top of the mountain was probably
fifteen to twenty meters above my head, and then Danny
and Mikey was right under actly right underneath me, and
then on my right left flank was Danny and Age.
I maybe saying that wrong. I think Mike he might
have been underneath. It's been a minute now, but anyways,
(13:03):
we set up, started watching the target and the sun
had come up. We'd been there overnight and we were
just monitoring all the activity when we had to move,
so we relocated onto a finger that we was sitting
off the side of the mountain so we could get
(13:23):
a better vantage on some of the houses.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
And when we did that, about an.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Hour after set up, a shepherd walked up on us,
and I mean he walked right up on it. And
now I'll never get to look on this news face because.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
He didn't he had no idea we were there at all.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
And we grabbed him and pulled him off the side
and started to interrogate him. And then about that time
two more came up the mountain and we snatched them
up and sat them down and then the herd of goats.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Came walking up.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
I remember there was a dog there, which was kind
of odd because these gonna keep dogs. But I remember
there was a big old, kricking, angy dog that we
bark in, and so we started going through the numbers
of what to do, and eventually what happened was we
turned them loose and then they left. We watched them leave,
and then we relocated back into a different position back
on the side of the mountain. Right after that, about
(14:18):
an hour or so.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Is when the main body came up on top of us,
and there was h.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
And when they came up on top of you, you
know they've come up on top of you. You didn't
see them or hear them. You just bullets start whizzing.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
But so they're extremely quiet and you can't take anything
away from from from them as an enemy because they
are great at what they do. They know that terrain.
They were a formidable force, and I'll always pay them
respect like that.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I mean, they can fight.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
So at first I kind of looked down and it
was actually was below me, and I remember him looking
past me. He was cut down behind this rock and
he had his rifle up. So I kind of looked
around and looked back up above me, and there was
a huge tree and this guy I saw an AK
muzzle come around it. And then the guy was he
was hooded up, turned around and looked at it, looked
(15:11):
down into us. So I rolled my rifle up and
when I went to take a shot, he pulled his
head back.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Around the tree.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
And after when I came off my scope, I could
look right above me, to my left and right, and
there was guys setting up over the top of us
and down on the side of it.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
And then I remember looking over at Mikey.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
I said, get back on the clock and fixed and
get it on, and then I turned back around and waited,
and eventually what happened was that guy pulled.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
His head around that tree to take a shot.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
And when he did, I dumped him. And when I
dumped him, it just it was game on. They kind
of unleashed and the fight commenced, and eventually what happened
was is we got pushed out of that position and
the terrain was so violent that it just we kind of.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Started tumbling down the mountain.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
How long was it until one of you had been hit?
Speaker 4 (16:06):
That was probably on the initial while we were still
in there, so pretty quick, and then systematically he's gott got.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Hold on just a moment. Marcus Latrell's our guest.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Smart devices from Michael's brain, one of them to your ears.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
This is the Michael Very Show.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Marcus Latrell is our guest. Twenty years after Operation Red Wings,
of course his diary would be published and Lone Survivor
would be a bestseller, the movie would be made, and
a nation was riveted. We were at war in Iraq
and Afghanistan, and I think that really humanized. The two
(16:56):
guys from that time that I grew to have such
incredible respect for were Marcus Aetrell and his peers, his
Navy seals, and Chris Kyle. And I think the entire
country was absolutely and still is riveted by this story.
So it has become a firefight. Tell me, Marcus, what
(17:18):
happens from there.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Once that thing started, it was kind of a free
for all because they had us covered on three sides,
so the only way we could go was down the mountain.
And then a couple hours into that, they had come
up from the base of the mountain from the village,
so they had us in a three hundred and sixty
degree loop.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
There wasn't really anywhere we.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Could go, which means you had to keep moving the
entire time. The hardest thing to hit as a moving target,
but because of the terrain and the altitude, just making
the movement was tough enough. By a couple hours into it,
everyone was so exhausted that and shot up that they
just systematically picked us apart one by one as we
were going down the mountain. And then at the end
(17:58):
of the day, I was I had slipped into this
ravine and kind of was laid in between these rocks,
and I.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Just laid there.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
I was paralyzed from the waist down. I'd been shot
up pretty bad and fragged, and my back was broken
and stuff. And as the sun went down, I just
laid there and I couldn't move. I waited and waited,
and then eventually I started to crawl out of there
and just started moving. And I crawled all night into
the next morning and halfway through the next day before
(18:31):
the villager sell me it was right next to a waterfall.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
In the river.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
You've talked about not knowing how far you went, and
you know you weren't at yourself as my grandmother would say,
but if you were to estimate how far you crawled,
what would that be?
Speaker 4 (18:50):
So we know now they're going to map study, and
I've gotten debriefed by everyone who had anything to do
with the mission. And I crawled about seven miles.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
And you started how much after after sundown or after
it got dark, Probably.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
About almost a couple of hours afterwards. I I just
started making movement when I couldn't hear anything, and when
I thought that they and Matta had returned to base,
I just started moving.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
And there was zero chance you would have survived. If
you'd stayed there, they would have found you.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
Right absolutely, because the helicopter had gotten shot down, which
brought more reinforcements from them into the mountain was saturated
with the Taliban and the al Qaeda. They kind of
worked together in that area of the Hornets nest is
where we were at, and we had slipped in there
under the cover of darkness. So when the sun came
up and everybody was making movement, it was it was saturated.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
When you saw the I'm assuming you saw the Chinook
shot down.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
I didn't.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
That's how loud it was that I couldn't hear it.
Or see it get shot down and roll down the mountain.
I had my ear drums have been busted out. I
was bleeding out everywhere, so I didn't I didn't know that.
I found that out when I was in the village
and the Taliban got a hold to me. They told
me one of the guys was wearing one of a
(20:11):
wedding ring he said was from one of my buddies.
He was trying to tell me that they had shot
a helicopter down and that a bunch of seals had died.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
But I didn't I wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
And then when I got back to when y'all finally
found me and brought me back, is when I when
I got the news that that was solid.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
I'm gonna ask a stupid question. Why couldn't they get
the coms up? You know, you talk about this in
the book, and that's a central theme to the movie.
Why couldn't they manage to get comms back to the base?
I mean, but was the equipment not good enough or
what was the issue?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Now?
Speaker 4 (20:44):
That has to do with location where we were set up,
and they're just intermittent. Sometimes they come in and sometimes
they come out. There's no really solid answer for why
that happens. I know today with technology you can you can.
It's the same premise why your cell phone while you
lose signal in certain areas, like we don't, how can
I stand right here and then go two feet to
the right and not have so I can make communications.
(21:06):
It's the same principle. But go way back and when
you're get in two thousand and five and you're dealing
with the Statcom radio and then the planes moving overhead
and the relays that we had back and forth, it
was just intermittent. That's just the way it works. That's
why we have checkpoints and waypoints as we're going along.
So if we do miss a calm window, then there's
another checkpoints when we get to that we can radio
back in before everyone starts losing their mind and trying
(21:27):
to come get us.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Do you remember the first hit you took?
Speaker 4 (21:33):
Yeah, oh yeah, we don't forget it absolutely well, until
you get hit, you don't know. You just have this
anticipation of what it feels like. And now there's a
difference between when you have this mentality of when you're
hunting men. I remember having that like it kind of
(21:56):
flowed through me. It was my job when we went
out was to hunt things down. And then it's a
completely different feeling when someone's hunting you and there and
and they've got you in the side to a lot
of times you couldn't see where any it was so
loud and at this as you couldn't didn't have any
idea where the bullets was coming from.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
So I remember thinking.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
When I got hit that first time and I fell
and knocked me out when I came to the smell,
that's the one thing that he couldn't You can't duplicate
as the smell of death when that's around, and how
the ground was on fire too, and I remember the
smoke and all that stuff like that. It just kind
of hit me, hit me pretty hard, and and then
(22:35):
it just changed the dynamic.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
The way the way you move.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Told me. You told me one time that as brutal
as the movie is, it's two hours long, and the
firefight lasted far longer than that, and of course you're
in the middle of it, and the smells and the
sounds and all that. What is the thing that the
movie was least able to convey that you remember vividly.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
Bringing me out of there. If I if I could,
if there'd be another movie made, it would be about
the ending, the way that what it took to get
me out of there, and and pay respects and give
acknowledgement to everything that went to pulling me out.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
That that in itself was is a story because it
happened at night.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
In the In the movie they made Low Survivor, it
was a daytime rescue, and in reality it was at night,
and I mean it was a free for all, crazy
scenario storms and everyone was out there. It was probably
the most intimidated, intimidating time because I didn't you know,
(23:37):
you think I'm getting rescued, but then there's a chance.
There's always a chance you can die. And when they
finally got me onto the helicopter and we left out
of there, it was there was a roller coaster of
emotions for sure. But the one thing that we didn't
capture in the film, and like I said, just didn't
have enough time, was the ending, how they actually had
(23:59):
in what they had to go through the rescue. Everyone
who was in theater was involved in getting me out
of there for sure, and then to follow on to
get all the guys off the mountain, I remember our
teammates were still laying out there. We had a helicopter
go down and had sixteen guys on it. They had
to recover all those guys. They were taking fire.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
It was it was a crazy scenario for sure.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
The letter that you wrote that was carried to the
American military. What was on there?
Speaker 4 (24:32):
It had my name, what operation I was with, and
what condition I was in. And then it also told
them that the guy who delivered the message the message
was one of the guys that rescued me.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
And was kind of saved my life.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
And you wrote all that out wounded as you were.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
I did. I had a little help. Yeah, they brought
me some a pencil and a pizza. I had a
paper already, and then yeah, I got that done.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Hold on, Marcus Trell's our guests.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
I know what's the name? We say, Michael Buddy.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Marcus Lill Trell is our guest twenty years after Operation
Red Wings. Hard to believe it's been twenty years. He
has agreed to stay with us a little extra because
everything I want to know won't make it into this segment.
I could talk to him for hours on end and
have There's so many things he can't tell or doesn't
tell that are fascinating about all of this and his
(25:36):
incredible life. Marcus will Treill is our guest. Marcus, you
mentioned that the extrication of you, the rescue of you,
didn't get covered properly in the movie because you couldn't
give everything justice. What are some things we didn't see?
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (25:52):
So I was the greed, the hodge pods of the
guys who finally found me, And if you could have
seen them, I mean, it looks something right out of
a movie. When they came in there, they were beat
up just to get to me. Was was was an event,
just just to find me. And then once they found me,
they had the they surrounded the village, and then the
(26:13):
village was surrounded by the Taliban and the al Qaida.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Just to keep me safe. And then they had moved
me down the mountain.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
Into this little ravine area that I had thought about
this in a minute.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
And we sat up and it was dark, so by
now the.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Sun had gone down, and the helicopter had to come
in from the base of the mountain, and it was
we were so high up on the mountain that the
all it was was fuel and Ammo and remember they
had some water on there for the guys, because the
guys who found me were out of water.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
And then a firefight ensued.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
And then above the mountain where a bunch of sixteen
aircraft were dropping ordnance down on the bad guys. And
then in the distance at the base of the mountain,
so down the mountain it was.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
A river, and the helicopter was coming up the river,
and the.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Colsign a guy who was flying the Burthen name of
span Jeff Pearson, great, great freaking guy.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
And and here you'll tell you.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
It was so dark, and by this time they had
juiced me up, so I was kind of having a
good time, Like I wasn't feel any pain anymore, and
I was just kind of sitting there watching all of
our guys do their thing, and it was it was
the most amazing thing to watch them work. Normally, when
you're in something you don't you can't anticipate with that.
But when I had a chance to step back and
actually watch our guys go to war, and it was awesome.
(27:27):
And then that helicopter boy came up over the side
of that cliff and the dust kicked up and so
it called a brown eye we couldn't see anything.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Well, when he came to land, the ravine we were
on was about as wide as the helicopter itself. Eric
and he goes, and that dust came up. I couldn't
see nothing.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
And then there was Pj's in the back of the
bird trying to land it, trying to tell them out
far from the ground they were, and nobody could see anything.
And the helicopter actually had rotated, so when the nose
came over, it had spun around and the tail was
facing us. And then he goes, there was a plant
hanging from one of the houses. It was on the
side of the mountain. Because I was kind of looking
at that thing, and I just sat it down and
(28:05):
he did.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
He stuck it. Well.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
The green Bereats they picked me up and were carrying
me towards the Hilo, and I was dressed up in
man Jamie, so I looked like an ap game and
they pulled me up at the tail so you don't
come up on the tail roader. So the pgs turned
around to actually take a shot at us, and they
had their lasers up and their lasers hit our glint pape,
and that's how they knew that not to shoot, so
almost got killed on the rescue, which is they told
(28:29):
me that later.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
I was like, I'm glad you didn't shoot me.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
And then they threw me on the helicopter and we
sat there for a while because they had to unload
the water for all the guys who were still on
the mountains because they had to go on a follow
on mission.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
They didn't even come home with me.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
And then we sat there, and then the helicopter I remember,
dumped off the side of the mountain that PJ came up.
He asked me, He's like, who's your superhero? I was like,
Spider Man, and I asked him my dog's name. I
told him that it's kind of verification code. And we
went back and we landed and they're still in a firefight.
We landed on a base and then they transferred me
(29:03):
from a helicopter to a C one thirty medical bird
and kind of laid me down and started.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Going to work on me.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
And then they flew me from there to Toboggam Air
Force Base, where the rest of my platoon and all
the seals are waiting on me to get back.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
But then, how does that look when they bring you
in What tell me about that?
Speaker 4 (29:23):
So the ramp dropped off the helicopter or shooting on
the back of the plane and they had to pick me.
I couldn't really walk, so they picked me up and
we're tearing me down at ivy stuck out of me
and they they said they abandoned me up and uh,
I remember there was a lady standing by the ramp
and she covered her face and started crying.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
I guess I looked worse than I thought.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
And then they transferred me to these van There's a
bunch of vans sitting there, and they put me in one.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Of those, and then they took me to the hospital.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
And then while I was in the hospital, they was
when we kind of started the debrief. I tried to
tell them because all my guys were still out there.
I tried to tell them where I was and in
relations to where they thought we were, and it just
it all started from there.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
And then I was in the hospital for a minute.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Go ahead, are you able to talk at that point?
I mean, what does that look like?
Speaker 3 (30:10):
I was was? I was able to talk.
Speaker 4 (30:12):
The villagers did a great job of taking care of me.
I mean, they doctored me up twice a day, a
bandaged my wounds, make sure my pain tirrant, my pain
was down. So I was really I had a doctor
in the village and they just they.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Saved my life for sure. And then when I got
back the.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
All the army guys started working on me, and then
we started doing the debriefs so they could go out
and find our other guys and bring them back. I
think that took about two weeks to find all the guys.
I'm not mistaken, so and then I got transferred back
to the States.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
In the movie, there is a conflict within the village
that you know, Gulah brings you back and that not
everyone in the village wants you there because that brings
problems on them. Tell me a little bit about your
reception in the village to the extent you remember it.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Just like that.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Well, there was some in there that didn't want me
in there, and I could tell immediately who they were.
They weren't trying to hide that for sure. And then
there were the villages and the elder and Doulab. They
were making sure that I stayed safe, and they put
a rotating guard on me. I was in there for
almost five days, and then there was some people in
the village who were trying to sell me, because the
(31:21):
Taliban would show up every day negotiating for my head,
and they would tell me about it, sit down in
my room and have.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
These little powwows and these meetings and then.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Which was kind of frustrating because I didn't speak the language.
Uh well, I didn't understand what they were in, but
I could get the concept of what was going down.
And then eventually when the when the Green Berets and
the rangers found me, I was tucked in underneath this
rock and a river bed, and they were they moved
me around the village systematically and strategically all day and
every day through the night. So the Taliban would get
(31:53):
a beat on the room that I was in and
they start shooting in there or firing RPG at the wall,
and then the villagers would move me somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
So it was it was kind of chaotic and stressful,
for sure.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
It's amazing to think that after everything you had survived,
that you could have been killed at that moment, or
at the moment you're being rescued. I mean that that's
just just just insane. So the moment they came to
get you. Do you remember the first thing they said
to you, call.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
My name out. I'll never forget it. I heard it
in English for the first time. And uh, I was
draped over these two guys and my head was down.
They were having to drag me through the through the mountains,
and I looked up and this old boy came down
the mountain and two of them.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
I could see it very vividly, and.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
I grabbed that guy. I mean, I never heard the
man like that. I'm gonna get in here, but I
was going to make sure he was real because I
was real sick by then. And uh, hey he called
me by my name, and uh, they picked me up
and and took me into this this stable. Uh, right
in the on the side of the mountain. There was
(33:01):
a stable down there that they were peeping mules in
and they laid me down in there and started a
bandaging me up. And then that's when that jeps me
for the first time.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
And uh they got me out of there. Yeah, that happened,
but it was it was It was crazy, for sure.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Yeah, I'd say mark so many details like that. Go ahead,
Marcus Petrel is our guest. We're going to talk off
air and we will post that to the podcast within
the hour. Coming up, Stay tuned.
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. So
Michael Very Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Twenty years ago, George W. Bush was the president. A
lot of folks you and I knew were serving in
Iraq and Afghanistan. The death toll was disturbing. Every community
(00:46):
in the country was affected. My how things have changed
in twenty years. I never forget the first reference I
heard to Loane Survivor. My brother Chris had read the
book and he said, have you read this book Loan Survivor?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
You know?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
He said, do you know who Marcus atrell Is said,
I don't. She's written this book called Loan Survivor. Okay,
it's about they went in Operation Red Wings, they went
into Afghanistan and he's the only one who came out.
It's a story, man, Wow, it is wow is It's incredible.
(01:31):
It's disturbing. Then they make the movie. Then we get
to meet Marcus, then we develop a friendship, and a
lot has happened in those twenty years. It's time to
revisit that twenty years later. Marcus atrell welcome back to
the program.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Thank you, good morning.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
What were you doing just before you came on the
show this morning?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
All right, with complete transparency.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
One of my lab got hit by a skunk the
other day yesterday, and I'm out here to shave her.
And I don't know when the last time you've had
that happen, but brother, it it's something so that that's
kind of what I'm dealing with right now.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I was thinking of a great headline for this discussion,
and I already have it. Uh Loan survivor Navy seal
Marcus Latrelle admitted douching before interview.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Right, I don't, because you know, the first thing she
did was she got hit was come in and get
on the couch. So when I walked in, I don't
know what smell it.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
They just do that, right, Yeah, what do you have
a what remedy do you use to get rid of
that punk?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Marcus? We had a place out in Carmene next to
Chapel Hill and we had two dogs get hit two
consecutive weekends, and we went to I called my buddies
that were veterinarians and they said, go get mass and
Gill Douche. That is the best. I came back and
talked about it on the air. I heard, I heard
(03:05):
every solution known to mankind. I think it's a mess.
No matter what you do. Have you decided what you're doing.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
So I go with the hydrogen peroxide.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
And the palm mallis okay?
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Yeah, an oil right oil base yep, yep.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
And the thing about it stuff when she goes it's good.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
They need to bottle that up and use it and
give it to people for defense. Let's talk about how
you're getting attacked and you smack somebody with that, they're
not gonna stick around.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah yeah, no, no, no, even a porcupine. You know,
you could hide behind a shield with a porcupine, But
that's skunk. That's bad stuff. Let's tell the story you've
told before. But I think people should know how you
and and Morgan decided you wanted to be Navy seals
and began training at a very young age. And the
man who put you through that program.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
It was Morgan's idea. He came down. I was feeding
the horses and he's like, hey, I know what we're
gonna do.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
We're gonna be Navy seald It's gonna be great.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
We get to jump out of airplanes, we get to
shoot guns, we get to blow things up, we get
the scuba dive and there's a really good chance we're
gonna die.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
And I was like, okay, you sign me up. You know.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Being a younger brother, I kind of followed him around
everywhere he came up with the idea, but I usually
had to go first, so that that's when that happened.
We were new teenagers, fourteen fifteen years old and there
was a gentleman who lived in town. We actually grew
up with his daughter. We were in the same grade,
and he would come into the high school and work
(04:38):
the kids out in the gym, and then he had
a reputation for training young men to go into the military,
into the special Forces. They was Billy. So we got
the courage.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
To go ask him to train us. I mean I
walked up on him.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
I'll never get it, and caught him during dinner time,
got peace fried chicken in his same and he's like,
what do you knock over the door? He's like, what
do you want? And I was like, well, sir, we
want to be Navy seals. We heard you train people
to do that. He was wondering if you would train us,
and he kind of looked at me for a little bit,
and I had some buddies with me, looked over my
shoulder and he told us four to thirty tomorrow and
he slammed the door in our face. So we left,
(05:17):
and then the next day we showed up at four thirty.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Matter of fact, this is my.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
First life lesson that I ever got taught with him.
Kind of stands true to this very day. You know,
someone tells you to be somewhere at a certain time,
you're always fifteen minutes early. When we were, we showed
up at four thirty, which is not on time, and
he man, he was out there waiting on us. I
remember running up to the yard. He was pointing at
us and at the ground. He's pointing at us, watching
(05:42):
at us and at the ground. And then when we
got within the yard that he was cussing us up
one side and down the other.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
I mean good. You know, some people just have a
gift for profanity. He does. He has that, and.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
They can apply it in certain ways to when it
and then it's really really impactful. I still remember it.
I mean, bro, this is over twenty years ago.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
And uh, he.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Stopped us in the street and he drew a line
in the dirt with a head with his bootheel, and
he said, every day you come here, I'm gonna I'm
gonna ask you to cross this line. He goes, what
you're wanting to do and where you're going is a
voluntary program putting time on. He goes, you should probably
quit right now, because if you cross this line, I'm
gonna I'm gonna beat you. I'm gonna do everything I
(06:25):
can to break you. He's like, I'm not your mother.
I don't care whether you live or die. And he said,
when a man goes to war, his brain turns the
water and runs out of his ears, and all he
has to go on is instinct in the guy to
the right and the left of him. He's like, if
you want a little bit of that across the line.
At that age, you know you're invincible still. I mean
you you walk around with immortality.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
You can feel it. When you're that age, everything heals
up the way it's supposed to. So we did.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
We cross the line, and I remember he dropped us
down to do some push ups. He's like, everybody on
your face, even three hundred push ups for being late.
And that's not a lot of push ups. But if
you got some guys who aren't in shape, you're gonna
be paying the man.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
So that's I know what happened to us.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
He started matching the deck, going down, up and down,
and we got out of sink. He started a teeter
totter a little bit, and he stopped us, and I'll
never forget. He goes, you know, as a team, you're
gonna go down together, and you're gonna come up together.
You're gonna live together, and you're gonna die together. He goes,
you're not a team.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Start over.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
And that's how it started for us. And he just
from that moment on he waded into us pretty hard.
I remember we we probably got an hour into it.
A couple of hours into it. We couldn't get those
push ups down. And he got so sick and tired
of us that he kicked us off his property.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
He's like, go home.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
He goes, you're you're, you know, you're, you're a disgrace
to your family. He goes, when you get home, walk
right up to you dad and punch him in the
face and tell him to start over because he fed
up on you. And uh, he said, if you want
to do this again, tomore, show up on time. Don't
ever be late. My time is the one thing I
can't control. I don't have any bearing over it, so
I'm not gonna waste it on you. If you're not
gonna you're not gonna show up on time. And that
(07:55):
was the first lesson he taught me, and all of us.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Actually got a very much how much older than you
is Morgan.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Seven minutes?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Oh, that makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
It would have been back in the day, it'd have
been the King.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Marcus Latrell is our guests, we're going to Afghanistan and
Operation Red Wings and Loan Survivor and all of that
coming up.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
Well, well, lucky you, Michael By continues your lucky day.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
That out.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Our guest is Loan Survivor, Marcus Latrel. Twenty years after
Operation Red Wings, Marcus, let's rocket forward to you getting
orders to go to Afghanistan. How did that come down?
Speaker 4 (08:54):
So they split the platoon in half, and there's still teams,
there's there's troops, and there's platoons. And since there was
two wars going down at the same time, there was
more than enough work to go around. And our particular
platoon was specialized in reconnaissance I was with special deliveries,
so we were a smaller unit. But what would happen
is they would split us down the middle and kind
(09:16):
of temple us out to the other seal teams because
of our specialty. So when it came time to see
who was going where, my half of the platoon was
tasked to go to Afghanistan and the rest of our
guys went to Iraq.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
And that's how that was up.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Was there Were you and Morgan intentionally split?
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Absolutely?
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Oh? Yeah, absolutely, Especially in the beginning. I went through
field training before him, so I was ahead of him
a little bit. But eventually we wound up back together.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
And the only.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Stipulation on that was especially in the beginning, as we
weren't allowed to ride in the same helicopters or the
same hum And when I got when I got initially
into the teams, I got sent to Iraq. First he
got sent to Afghanistan, and then when I got back
from Iraq, I got sent to Afghanistan.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
So it was it was one of those deals.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
We were kind of missing each other back and forth.
Eventually we wound up together in Iraq, but in the
beginning we were separated by awards.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
So tell me about the training for Red Wings.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
We started, well, the thing about Navy seals is we're
constantly training. If we're not sleeping or eating or working out,
then it's always training, work up for training. And then,
like I said, our job was special reconnaissance. We were
doing a lot of direct action missions, village takes, down, snatching, grabs,
sniper overwatches. Meaning it was desolate country out there, completely
(10:48):
different fighting than we're talking about in Iraq and the city.
So we were doing a lot of helicopter reconnaissance and
then then we would fast rope in and they would
drop us off in the mountains and leave us anywhere
from five to ten days, maybe two weeks, and then
they would reach supplies.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
By air drop.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
So we were kind of the eyes on if any
any unit does a hit or they go in, they're
always going to have eyes on the target first to
kind of get an idea of what was going on,
and that was our job. So it was constantly working
with the helicopter units getting that online. The satellite imagery
was getting pretty good back in two thousand and five.
(11:25):
It's not like it is now where you could see
everything and through walls, but back then the imagery was
getting pretty good, so we were doing a lot of
map studies, switching up our gear, making sure everything was
good enough, and we were well prepared for whatever environment
when we got in, because the terrain would change with
the miles, so it was constant preparation and training.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
So take me through the moment. You're on the side
of the mountain and you're there to get the bad guy,
and these goat herders come upon you.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
So we were separated probably about enough to where we
could we could barely see each other, so not enough
to where we were sitting right beside each other to
make a big signature, but far enough to way away
from each other that if we needed to get to
each other, we could, And the terrain really wasn't conducive
for a perfect setup, so we had perched up. We
(12:20):
were well over ten thousand feet on the side of
this mountain. So imagine a volcano with a village stuck
down at the bottom of it, and we came in
over the top of it. So what we did was
we kind of rope down and climbed down inside of
the volcano itself so we could get a better vantage
point on what was going on in the village. We
set up in a triangle formation. I was at the
(12:41):
top of it. The top of the mountain was probably
fifteen to twenty meters above my head, and then Danny
and Mikey was right under actly right underneath me, and
then on my right left flank was Danny and Age.
I maybe saying that wrong. I think Mike he might
have been underneath. It's been a minute now, but anyways,
(13:03):
we set up, started watching the target and the sun
had come up. We'd been there overnight and we were
just monitoring all the activity when we had to move,
so we relocated onto a finger that we was sitting
off the side of the mountain so we could get
(13:23):
a better vantage on some of the houses.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
And when we did that, about an.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Hour after set up, a shepherd walked up on us,
and I mean he walked right up on it. And
now I'll never get to look on this news face because.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
He didn't he had no idea we were there at all.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
And we grabbed him and pulled him off the side
and started to interrogate him. And then about that time
two more came up the mountain and we snatched them
up and sat them down and then the herd of goats.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Came walking up.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
I remember there was a dog there, which was kind
of odd because these gonna keep dogs. But I remember
there was a big old, kricking, angy dog that we
bark in, and so we started going through the numbers
of what to do, and eventually what happened was we
turned them loose and then they left. We watched them leave,
and then we relocated back into a different position back
on the side of the mountain. Right after that, about
(14:18):
an hour or so.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Is when the main body came up on top of us,
and there was h.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
And when they came up on top of you, you
know they've come up on top of you. You didn't
see them or hear them. You just bullets start whizzing.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
But so they're extremely quiet and you can't take anything
away from from from them as an enemy because they
are great at what they do. They know that terrain.
They were a formidable force, and I'll always pay them
respect like that.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I mean, they can fight.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
So at first I kind of looked down and it
was actually was below me, and I remember him looking
past me. He was cut down behind this rock and
he had his rifle up. So I kind of looked
around and looked back up above me, and there was
a huge tree and this guy I saw an AK
muzzle come around it. And then the guy was he
was hooded up, turned around and looked at it, looked
(15:11):
down into us. So I rolled my rifle up and
when I went to take a shot, he pulled his
head back.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Around the tree.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
And after when I came off my scope, I could
look right above me, to my left and right, and
there was guys setting up over the top of us
and down on the side of it.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
And then I remember looking over at Mikey.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
I said, get back on the clock and fixed and
get it on, and then I turned back around and waited,
and eventually what happened was that guy pulled.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
His head around that tree to take a shot.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
And when he did, I dumped him. And when I
dumped him, it just it was game on. They kind
of unleashed and the fight commenced, and eventually what happened
was is we got pushed out of that position and
the terrain was so violent that it just we kind of.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Started tumbling down the mountain.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
How long was it until one of you had been hit?
Speaker 4 (16:06):
That was probably on the initial while we were still
in there, so pretty quick, and then systematically he's gott got.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Hold on just a moment. Marcus Latrell's our guest.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Smart devices from Michael's brain, one of them to your ears.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
This is the Michael Very Show.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Marcus Latrell is our guest. Twenty years after Operation Red Wings,
of course his diary would be published and Lone Survivor
would be a bestseller, the movie would be made, and
a nation was riveted. We were at war in Iraq
and Afghanistan, and I think that really humanized. The two
(16:56):
guys from that time that I grew to have such
incredible respect for were Marcus Aetrell and his peers, his
Navy seals, and Chris Kyle. And I think the entire
country was absolutely and still is riveted by this story.
So it has become a firefight. Tell me, Marcus, what
(17:18):
happens from there.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Once that thing started, it was kind of a free
for all because they had us covered on three sides,
so the only way we could go was down the mountain.
And then a couple hours into that, they had come
up from the base of the mountain from the village,
so they had us in a three hundred and sixty
degree loop.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
There wasn't really anywhere we.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Could go, which means you had to keep moving the
entire time. The hardest thing to hit as a moving target,
but because of the terrain and the altitude, just making
the movement was tough enough. By a couple hours into it,
everyone was so exhausted that and shot up that they
just systematically picked us apart one by one as we
were going down the mountain. And then at the end
(17:58):
of the day, I was I had slipped into this
ravine and kind of was laid in between these rocks,
and I.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Just laid there.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
I was paralyzed from the waist down. I'd been shot
up pretty bad and fragged, and my back was broken
and stuff. And as the sun went down, I just
laid there and I couldn't move. I waited and waited,
and then eventually I started to crawl out of there
and just started moving. And I crawled all night into
the next morning and halfway through the next day before
(18:31):
the villager sell me it was right next to a waterfall.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
In the river.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
You've talked about not knowing how far you went, and
you know you weren't at yourself as my grandmother would say,
but if you were to estimate how far you crawled,
what would that be?
Speaker 4 (18:50):
So we know now they're going to map study, and
I've gotten debriefed by everyone who had anything to do
with the mission. And I crawled about seven miles.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
And you started how much after after sundown or after
it got dark, Probably.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
About almost a couple of hours afterwards. I I just
started making movement when I couldn't hear anything, and when
I thought that they and Matta had returned to base,
I just started moving.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
And there was zero chance you would have survived. If
you'd stayed there, they would have found you.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
Right absolutely, because the helicopter had gotten shot down, which
brought more reinforcements from them into the mountain was saturated
with the Taliban and the al Qaeda. They kind of
worked together in that area of the Hornets nest is
where we were at, and we had slipped in there
under the cover of darkness. So when the sun came
up and everybody was making movement, it was it was saturated.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
When you saw the I'm assuming you saw the Chinook
shot down.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
I didn't.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
That's how loud it was that I couldn't hear it.
Or see it get shot down and roll down the mountain.
I had my ear drums have been busted out. I
was bleeding out everywhere, so I didn't I didn't know that.
I found that out when I was in the village
and the Taliban got a hold to me. They told
me one of the guys was wearing one of a
(20:11):
wedding ring he said was from one of my buddies.
He was trying to tell me that they had shot
a helicopter down and that a bunch of seals had died.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
But I didn't I wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
And then when I got back to when y'all finally
found me and brought me back, is when I when
I got the news that that was solid.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
I'm gonna ask a stupid question. Why couldn't they get
the coms up? You know, you talk about this in
the book, and that's a central theme to the movie.
Why couldn't they manage to get comms back to the base?
I mean, but was the equipment not good enough or
what was the issue?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Now?
Speaker 4 (20:44):
That has to do with location where we were set up,
and they're just intermittent. Sometimes they come in and sometimes
they come out. There's no really solid answer for why
that happens. I know today with technology you can you can.
It's the same premise why your cell phone while you
lose signal in certain areas, like we don't, how can
I stand right here and then go two feet to
the right and not have so I can make communications.
(21:06):
It's the same principle. But go way back and when
you're get in two thousand and five and you're dealing
with the Statcom radio and then the planes moving overhead
and the relays that we had back and forth, it
was just intermittent. That's just the way it works. That's
why we have checkpoints and waypoints as we're going along.
So if we do miss a calm window, then there's
another checkpoints when we get to that we can radio
back in before everyone starts losing their mind and trying
(21:27):
to come get us.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Do you remember the first hit you took?
Speaker 4 (21:33):
Yeah, oh yeah, we don't forget it absolutely well, until
you get hit, you don't know. You just have this
anticipation of what it feels like. And now there's a
difference between when you have this mentality of when you're
hunting men. I remember having that like it kind of
(21:56):
flowed through me. It was my job when we went
out was to hunt things down. And then it's a
completely different feeling when someone's hunting you and there and
and they've got you in the side to a lot
of times you couldn't see where any it was so
loud and at this as you couldn't didn't have any
idea where the bullets was coming from.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
So I remember thinking.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
When I got hit that first time and I fell
and knocked me out when I came to the smell,
that's the one thing that he couldn't You can't duplicate
as the smell of death when that's around, and how
the ground was on fire too, and I remember the
smoke and all that stuff like that. It just kind
of hit me, hit me pretty hard, and and then
(22:35):
it just changed the dynamic.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
The way the way you move.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Told me. You told me one time that as brutal
as the movie is, it's two hours long, and the
firefight lasted far longer than that, and of course you're
in the middle of it, and the smells and the
sounds and all that. What is the thing that the
movie was least able to convey that you remember vividly.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
Bringing me out of there. If I if I could,
if there'd be another movie made, it would be about
the ending, the way that what it took to get
me out of there, and and pay respects and give
acknowledgement to everything that went to pulling me out.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
That that in itself was is a story because it
happened at night.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
In the In the movie they made Low Survivor, it
was a daytime rescue, and in reality it was at night,
and I mean it was a free for all, crazy
scenario storms and everyone was out there. It was probably
the most intimidated, intimidating time because I didn't you know,
(23:37):
you think I'm getting rescued, but then there's a chance.
There's always a chance you can die. And when they
finally got me onto the helicopter and we left out
of there, it was there was a roller coaster of
emotions for sure. But the one thing that we didn't
capture in the film, and like I said, just didn't
have enough time, was the ending, how they actually had
(23:59):
in what they had to go through the rescue. Everyone
who was in theater was involved in getting me out
of there for sure, and then to follow on to
get all the guys off the mountain, I remember our
teammates were still laying out there. We had a helicopter
go down and had sixteen guys on it. They had
to recover all those guys. They were taking fire.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
It was it was a crazy scenario for sure.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
The letter that you wrote that was carried to the
American military. What was on there?
Speaker 4 (24:32):
It had my name, what operation I was with, and
what condition I was in. And then it also told
them that the guy who delivered the message the message
was one of the guys that rescued me.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
And was kind of saved my life.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
And you wrote all that out wounded as you were.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
I did. I had a little help. Yeah, they brought
me some a pencil and a pizza. I had a
paper already, and then yeah, I got that done.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Hold on, Marcus Trell's our guests.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
I know what's the name? We say, Michael Buddy.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Marcus Lill Trell is our guest twenty years after Operation
Red Wings. Hard to believe it's been twenty years. He
has agreed to stay with us a little extra because
everything I want to know won't make it into this segment.
I could talk to him for hours on end and
have There's so many things he can't tell or doesn't
tell that are fascinating about all of this and his
(25:36):
incredible life. Marcus will Treill is our guest. Marcus, you
mentioned that the extrication of you, the rescue of you,
didn't get covered properly in the movie because you couldn't
give everything justice. What are some things we didn't see?
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (25:52):
So I was the greed, the hodge pods of the
guys who finally found me, And if you could have
seen them, I mean, it looks something right out of
a movie. When they came in there, they were beat
up just to get to me. Was was was an event,
just just to find me. And then once they found me,
they had the they surrounded the village, and then the
(26:13):
village was surrounded by the Taliban and the al Qaida.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Just to keep me safe. And then they had moved
me down the mountain.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
Into this little ravine area that I had thought about
this in a minute.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
And we sat up and it was dark, so by
now the.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Sun had gone down, and the helicopter had to come
in from the base of the mountain, and it was
we were so high up on the mountain that the
all it was was fuel and Ammo and remember they
had some water on there for the guys, because the
guys who found me were out of water.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
And then a firefight ensued.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
And then above the mountain where a bunch of sixteen
aircraft were dropping ordnance down on the bad guys. And
then in the distance at the base of the mountain,
so down the mountain it was.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
A river, and the helicopter was coming up the river,
and the.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Colsign a guy who was flying the Burthen name of
span Jeff Pearson, great, great freaking guy.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
And and here you'll tell you.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
It was so dark, and by this time they had
juiced me up, so I was kind of having a
good time, Like I wasn't feel any pain anymore, and
I was just kind of sitting there watching all of
our guys do their thing, and it was it was
the most amazing thing to watch them work. Normally, when
you're in something you don't you can't anticipate with that.
But when I had a chance to step back and
actually watch our guys go to war, and it was awesome.
(27:27):
And then that helicopter boy came up over the side
of that cliff and the dust kicked up and so
it called a brown eye we couldn't see anything.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Well, when he came to land, the ravine we were
on was about as wide as the helicopter itself. Eric
and he goes, and that dust came up. I couldn't
see nothing.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
And then there was Pj's in the back of the
bird trying to land it, trying to tell them out
far from the ground they were, and nobody could see anything.
And the helicopter actually had rotated, so when the nose
came over, it had spun around and the tail was
facing us. And then he goes, there was a plant
hanging from one of the houses. It was on the
side of the mountain. Because I was kind of looking
at that thing, and I just sat it down and
(28:05):
he did.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
He stuck it. Well.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
The green Bereats they picked me up and were carrying
me towards the Hilo, and I was dressed up in
man Jamie, so I looked like an ap game and
they pulled me up at the tail so you don't
come up on the tail roader. So the pgs turned
around to actually take a shot at us, and they
had their lasers up and their lasers hit our glint pape,
and that's how they knew that not to shoot, so
almost got killed on the rescue, which is they told
(28:29):
me that later.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
I was like, I'm glad you didn't shoot me.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
And then they threw me on the helicopter and we
sat there for a while because they had to unload
the water for all the guys who were still on
the mountains because they had to go on a follow
on mission.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
They didn't even come home with me.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
And then we sat there, and then the helicopter I remember,
dumped off the side of the mountain that PJ came up.
He asked me, He's like, who's your superhero? I was like,
Spider Man, and I asked him my dog's name. I
told him that it's kind of verification code. And we
went back and we landed and they're still in a firefight.
We landed on a base and then they transferred me
(29:03):
from a helicopter to a C one thirty medical bird
and kind of laid me down and started.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Going to work on me.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
And then they flew me from there to Toboggam Air
Force Base, where the rest of my platoon and all
the seals are waiting on me to get back.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
But then, how does that look when they bring you
in What tell me about that?
Speaker 4 (29:23):
So the ramp dropped off the helicopter or shooting on
the back of the plane and they had to pick me.
I couldn't really walk, so they picked me up and
we're tearing me down at ivy stuck out of me
and they they said they abandoned me up and uh,
I remember there was a lady standing by the ramp
and she covered her face and started crying.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
I guess I looked worse than I thought.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
And then they transferred me to these van There's a
bunch of vans sitting there, and they put me in one.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Of those, and then they took me to the hospital.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
And then while I was in the hospital, they was
when we kind of started the debrief. I tried to
tell them because all my guys were still out there.
I tried to tell them where I was and in
relations to where they thought we were, and it just
it all started from there.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
And then I was in the hospital for a minute.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Go ahead, are you able to talk at that point?
I mean, what does that look like?
Speaker 3 (30:10):
I was was? I was able to talk.
Speaker 4 (30:12):
The villagers did a great job of taking care of me.
I mean, they doctored me up twice a day, a
bandaged my wounds, make sure my pain tirrant, my pain
was down. So I was really I had a doctor
in the village and they just they.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Saved my life for sure. And then when I got
back the.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
All the army guys started working on me, and then
we started doing the debriefs so they could go out
and find our other guys and bring them back. I
think that took about two weeks to find all the guys.
I'm not mistaken, so and then I got transferred back
to the States.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
In the movie, there is a conflict within the village
that you know, Gulah brings you back and that not
everyone in the village wants you there because that brings
problems on them. Tell me a little bit about your
reception in the village to the extent you remember it.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Just like that.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Well, there was some in there that didn't want me
in there, and I could tell immediately who they were.
They weren't trying to hide that for sure. And then
there were the villages and the elder and Doulab. They
were making sure that I stayed safe, and they put
a rotating guard on me. I was in there for
almost five days, and then there was some people in
the village who were trying to sell me, because the
(31:21):
Taliban would show up every day negotiating for my head,
and they would tell me about it, sit down in
my room and have.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
These little powwows and these meetings and then.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Which was kind of frustrating because I didn't speak the language.
Uh well, I didn't understand what they were in, but
I could get the concept of what was going down.
And then eventually when the when the Green Berets and
the rangers found me, I was tucked in underneath this
rock and a river bed, and they were they moved
me around the village systematically and strategically all day and
every day through the night. So the Taliban would get
(31:53):
a beat on the room that I was in and
they start shooting in there or firing RPG at the wall,
and then the villagers would move me somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
So it was it was kind of chaotic and stressful,
for sure.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
It's amazing to think that after everything you had survived,
that you could have been killed at that moment, or
at the moment you're being rescued. I mean that that's
just just just insane. So the moment they came to
get you. Do you remember the first thing they said
to you, call.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
My name out. I'll never forget it. I heard it
in English for the first time. And uh, I was
draped over these two guys and my head was down.
They were having to drag me through the through the mountains,
and I looked up and this old boy came down
the mountain and two of them.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
I could see it very vividly, and.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
I grabbed that guy. I mean, I never heard the
man like that. I'm gonna get in here, but I
was going to make sure he was real because I
was real sick by then. And uh, hey he called
me by my name, and uh, they picked me up
and and took me into this this stable. Uh, right
in the on the side of the mountain. There was
(33:01):
a stable down there that they were peeping mules in
and they laid me down in there and started a
bandaging me up. And then that's when that jeps me
for the first time.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
And uh they got me out of there. Yeah, that happened,
but it was it was It was crazy, for sure.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Yeah, I'd say mark so many details like that. Go ahead,
Marcus Petrel is our guest. We're going to talk off
air and we will post that to the podcast within
the hour. Coming up, Stay tuned.
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