July 3, 2025 • 34 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Time time, time, luck and load. The Michael Verie Show
is on the air.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Marcus Latreel is our last twenty years after Operation Redwings.
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
(00:55):
guys from that time that I grew to have such
a credible 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
(01:17):
happens from there.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Once that thing started, it was kind of a free
for all that 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. There wasn't really anywhere we could go, which
means you had to keep moving the entire time. The
hardest thing to hit of the moving target, but because
(01:45):
of the terrain and the altitude, just making the movement
was tough enough. 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 of the day,
I was I had slipped into this ravine and kind
of was laid in between these rocks, and I just
(02:07):
laid there. I was paralyzed from the waist down. I've
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
(02:28):
day before the villager fell me. It was right next
to a waterfall in a river.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
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 2 (02:50):
So we know now they've done a map study and
I've gotten debriefed by everyone who had anything to do
with the mission, and I crawled about seven.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Miles and you started how much after after sundown or
after it got.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Dark, Probably about it almost a couple hours afterwards. I
just started making a movement when I couldn't hear anything,
and when I thought the day of Thatta had returned
to base, I just started moving.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And there was zero chance you would have survived. If
you'd stayed there, they would have found you.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Right absolutely, because the helicopter had gotten shot down, which
brought more reinforcements from them in. So the mountain was
saturated with the Taliban and the al Qaeda. They kind
of worked together in that area. So the Hornet's 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
(03:39):
was saturated.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
When you saw the I'm assuming you saw the Shinok
shot down.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I didn't. 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
(04:09):
wearing one of my wedding ring. He said it was
from one of my buddies. He was trying to tell
me that they had shot a helicopter down and that
a bunch of the steals had died. But I didn't
I wouldn't believe it. 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 1 (04:28):
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, was the equipment not good enough or what
was the issue?
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Now, all that has to do with location and 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 to why
your cell phone while you lose signal in certain areas,
like we don't. Why can't I stand right here and
then go two feet to the right and not have
(05:04):
so I can make communications. It's the same principle, but
go way back, and when you're get into two thousand
and five, you're dealing with the Tatcom 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 checkpoint when we get to
that we can radio back in before everyone starts losing
(05:25):
their mind and trying to come get us.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Do you remember the first hit you took?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, I guess, oh yeah, you don't forget it absolutely,
what's happened to 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
(05:53):
like it kind of 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 got you in there.
See a lot of times you couldn't see where. It
was so loud and at this and you couldn't didn't
any idea where the bullets were coming from. So I
remember thinking when I got hit that first time and
(06:15):
I fell and knocked me out, and when I came
to the smell, that's the one thing that they 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 in me pretty hard. And
then it just changed the dynamic the way you the
(06:35):
way you move.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
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 2 (06:56):
Bringing me out of there. If I if I could,
for 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 pay respect and give
acknowledgement to everything that went to pull me out. That
that in itself is a story because it happened at night.
In the in the movie they made lo Survivor, it
(07:17):
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,
you think I'm getting rescued, but then there's a chance.
There's always a chance you can die. And when they
(07:40):
finally got me onto the helicopter and we left out
of there, it was there was a lower coaster of
emotions for sure. But the one thing that we didn't
capture in the film, like so it just didn't have
enough time, was was the ending how they actually had
and what they had to go through to rescue me.
Everyone who was in theater was involved in getting me
out of there for sure, and then to follow on
(08:01):
to get all the guys off the mountain, and my
remember our teammate with still Land out there. We had
a helicopter go down and had kicking guys on it.
They had to recover all those guys they were taking fire.
It was it was a crazy scenario.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
And these chairs can rolling around.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Damn it? All right, This is Mark Chestnutt and Jar
Bizaar of Talk Radio.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Marcus till Trail 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
(08:52):
incredible life. Marcus all Trail 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 2 (09:09):
Okay? So I was the great There's a hodge pods
of guys who finally found me. And if you if
you could have seen them, I mean, it looks something
straight 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
(09:30):
the village, and then the village was surrounded by the
Taliban and the al Qaeda, just to keep me safe.
And then they had moved me down the mountain into
this little ravine area. I had thought about this in
a minute, and we sat up. It was dark, so
by now the sun had gone down, and the helicopter
had to come in from the base of the mountain,
(09:51):
and it was we were so high up on the
mountain that they had. All it was was fuel and ammo.
And I remember they had some water on there for
the guys, because they the guys who found me were
out of water. And then a firefighting suited and then
above the mountain where a bunch of fixed wing aircraft
were dropping ordnance down on the bad guys. And then
(10:12):
in the distance at the base of the mountain, so
down the mountain it was a river, and the helicopter
was kind of coming up the river, and the Colsignd
a guy who was flying the bird's name of Spanking
and Jeff Pearson, great great freaking guy. And and here
you'll tell you 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
(10:32):
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.
And then that helicopter boy came up over the side
(10:53):
of that cliff and the dust kicked up, and so
it called a brown eye. We couldn't see anything when
he came to land. The the ravine we were on
was about as wide as the helicopter itself, and he
goes to that dust came up. I couldn't see nothing.
And then there was Pj's in the back of the
bird trying to land it, trying to tell them how
far from the ground they were, and nobody could see anything.
(11:14):
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 that was on the
side of the mountain. He goes, I was kind of
looking at that thing and I just sat it down,
and he did. He stuck it well. The Green Berets
they picked me up and were carrying me towards the HILO,
(11:35):
and I was dressed up in man jamie, so I
looked like an Afghan and they pulled me up at
the tail so you don't come up on the tail rotor.
So the PGAs turned around to actually take a shot
at us, and they had their lasers up and their
lasers hit our glint tape and that's how they knew
that not to shoot. So almost got killed on the rescue,
which is they told me that later. I was like,
I'm glad you didn't shoot me. And then they threw
(11:58):
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 an OUNTA because they had
to go on a follow on mission. They didn't even
come home with me, 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 and I was like Spider Man, and
(12:18):
I asked him my dog's name. I told him that
this 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 from a
helicopter to a C one thirty medical bird and kind
of laid me down and started going to work on me.
And then they slew me from there to to Boggam
(12:40):
Air Force Base where the rest of my platoon and
all the seals are waiting on me to get back.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
But yeah, then how does that look when they bring
you in? What tell me about that?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
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 carrying me down. Had ivy stuck out of me,
and they said they abandoned me up and uh, I
remember there was a lady standing by the rabbit. She
covered her face and started crying. I guess I looked
worse than I thought. And then they transferred me to
(13:13):
these van there's a bunch of vans sitting there, and
they put me in one of those, and then they
took me to the hospital. 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 relationship where they thought we were,
and it just it all started from there. And then
I was in the hospital for a minute.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Go ahead, are you able to talk at that point?
And what does that look like?
Speaker 2 (13:41):
I was? I was, I was able to talk. Uh.
The villagers did a great job of taking care of me.
I mean, they doctored me up twice a day, a
bandaged my wounds, made sure my pain tir my pain
was down. So I was really I had a doctor
in the village and they just they they saved my
life for sure. And then when I got back the
(14:02):
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. And
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 1 (14:16):
In the movie, there is a conflict within the village
of the you know, Gulab 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 2 (14:32):
Just like that. Well, there were 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 Gulab.
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
(14:53):
in the village wo were trying to sell me, because
the Taliban would show up every day negotiating for my head.
And they would tell me about me sitting down in
my room and have these little powwows and these meetings.
And then, which is kind of frustrating because I didn't
speak the language. 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
(15:14):
rangers found me, I was tucked in underneath this rock
in a riverbed, 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 a beat
on the room that I was in and they started
shooting in there or firing RPG at the wall, and
then the villagers would move me somewhere else. So it
was it was kind of chaotic and stressful, for sure.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
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?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
So I called my name out. I'll never forget it.
I heard it in English for the first time. And
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, I
just seems very vividly, and I grabbed that guy. I mean,
I never heard a man like that. I was gonna
get in here, bro. I just want to make sure
he was real, because I was real sick by then,
(16:16):
and uh, and he called me by my name, and
uh they picked me up and and took me into
this this stable. Uh, right underneath on the side of
the mountain, there was a stable down there that they
would pick the huels in. And they laid me down in.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
There and tried to bandage me up. And then that's
when the beeped me for the first time. And uh
they got me out of there. Yeah, that happened, but
it was it was It was crazy, for sure.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Michael Barry Show wants to tell is our guest. Our
conversation continues about the rescue. If you've read the book
and seen the movie, obviously in a matter of minutes,
they can't capture what actually happened. You know, you've alluded
to a number of things, Smarcaus, I'd like to rewind
and let's talk about how Gulab discovers you at the water.
(17:07):
You know, there's a scene in the movie where you
threaten to pull a pin. You have no belief that
this guy is going to drag you to his village
and that they're going to care for you, which they
did and save your life. Walk me through that process
from you interacting with him, to you getting to the
village and then the eventual rescue and how long all
this takes.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
So the sun had come up the following day and
I somehow had crawled and Michael, I don't know how
I did this, but I managed to get to the
top of this cliff where there's a waterfall. But I
couldn't I was so thirsty. This is what was driving me.
I didn't want to die thirsty. I know that sounds absurd,
but when you thirst will do something completely different to
(17:52):
a man than pained and hunger. I mean, I'd never
been that thirsty. And when I try I had to
reach into the waterfall. I started sliding down the side
of the mountain and I kind of took off and
I flipped into the river and I actually knocked myself
out again. And when I came to, I crawled into
(18:13):
I remember I crawled back up a little ways because
I had seen a place that looked pretty, pretty inviting
to drink some water. And I got there and I
probably had two steps out of that waterfall before someone
was screaming at me. And they were screaming at me
on the ledge that I had just fallen off of
so I kind of like thought that they were following me.
(18:35):
And then above that there was a couple of guys
with a k's maneuvering around and I could hear him
screaming and like they were trying to track me down.
So they started hunting me. So I made a move
and started crawling down into the lake, into the river
and through over these rocks and stuff, and I managed
to get into this crevice into this ravine. It's hard
to explain, and I couldn't go anywhere. They bottled at me,
(18:58):
and I turned around to shoe and the guy saw
me and he dug and then I swung around on
the other two and they saw me, so they sat down.
And then right after that happened right over the ravine
I was sitting under is when Gulac came over the rocks.
He was kind of just sitting there and he was
screaming at me, and he was screaming American. He's an American.
(19:20):
American man thought about this a minute. So they thought
I was the Taliban. They were trying to hunt me
down and kill me because they thought I was the enemy.
But in reality, when they found out when they got
it close enough they realized I was an American, so
that's what he was telling him, don't shoot he's an American.
And I kind of wasn't putting that together. I turned
around to engage to shoot him, and he put his
(19:41):
hands up and he was saying, okay, okay, it's okay.
And I don't know why I didn't kill him. I
don't know why I didn't kill this guy. My I mean,
I had my faith. Yet what weapon did you have
left at that point? I had my rifle.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
That's the only your rifle.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Okay, I still had him. I couldn't throw that thing away.
I mean it would leave my body and slide down
the mountain or flip off of me, and I tore
my lanyard, but I would always manage to get God
was like, you know you need that. So when I
turned around, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Go ahead, I'm sorry, no, no, you go ahead.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Well, he finally walked up on me and I lowered
my weapon, and he was he was like okay, okay, okay, okay,
and he's like, shampoo hydrate is saying to me, shampoo hydrate,
I'll never forget that. I was like, I mean that
sounds really good. I was like, I need some water.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So why do you think you didn't kill him? What
did you know about him that he wasn't out to
do you harm?
Speaker 2 (20:44):
I don't know. A look on his face. He just
had this look on his face like he didn't want to,
like he wasn't there to hurt me. You can tell.
And once you're out there long enough and you hunt hunt,
you know, we fight these guys long enough, you can tell.
Even when we capture them and have them with us,
they would still look at you like they want to
kill you. And once you see that, you'll never forget it.
You can anticipate with a man stinking, just by the
(21:05):
look on his face and within his eyes, his eyes
kill a lot. And then these kids started coming out
from behind him. Two and then some more adults started
walking up. And I lowered my weapon and I had
a grenade with me, and I pulled that thing and
I pulled the pin. I kind of put it down
by my hip, and then they brought me some water,
so I started drinking that, and they started looking at
(21:27):
my wounds and like patching me up. And then they
picked me up and carried me down into the village.
They sat me down, they gave me more water, and
then they picked me up and carried me into this
room and they stripped me naked, and there wasn't much
left in my uniform anyway. Well, and they docked me up,
cleaned all my wounds, and then dressed me up instead
(21:49):
of Man Jamie's. That was almost the first.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Day, and what was hurting the worst at that point.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
I had a lot of facial damage and then I'd
broken my right hand. My thumb had been separated from
the from the where it was supposed to be. I
couldn't feel my lower extremities. It was weird. I busted
my back up real bad, and I've been shot in
the button that frag hanging out of my legs, but
I couldn't really feel that. Because I didn't, I was
kind of paralyzed. Was it was a blessing and.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
A curse that are you at that moment do you
think you're going to die? You're just fighting on for
some crazy reason, but do you are you certain you're
going to die or are you holding out hope?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
No, that would only cross my mind when I was
in a gunfight, and then even then on the first day,
for sure, But the second day, I just kind of
got it in my head that I was getting out
of there. I wasn't gonna it wasn't gonna lay down
and die. I was just going to the way our
training goes and everything that kicks in a lot of
(22:54):
people they can't anticipate that, like what do you do
when this happened? And what do you think when this happens?
Does a custom me it kicks in? And I just
kept that. Ultimately, I did change the diplomatee. I mean,
I kind of changed my attitude a little bit just
because they were helping me and I wanted them to
know that I appreciated all that. So I you know,
I was on my managers and then I was real polite.
(23:16):
I did everything I could. I started throughout the week
I started doctor and their kids like they would bring
their kids to me. I never told him I was
a steal. I told him I was a doctor. Okay,
I'm I'm not a stealing a doctor. And I don't
know if they bought that or not, but you do
have it. I did, and I did, and that helped
me because when I would work on them, Uh, in
(23:37):
the beginning, I didn't know if it was working or not.
But they kept bringing me people, so it worked in
my advantage. And then they were calling me doctor Marcus.
That weren't doctors.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Universal talk to me about the original the core for guys, Danny, Axe,
Murph and you. Why was each one of you chosen?
What was your role with in the group, What were
your skill sets?
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Danny was our communicator. He could work the radios real well.
We weren't on the same delivery team, but he was
East Coast, I was West coast. But it doesn't matter.
When we throw us together, we worked well together. I'd
known Danny since we were in pre training, so we've
been buddies for a while. Acts as our primary sniper
and our point man. It was his job to get
(24:25):
us in and out of the target, and then he
was obviously had the overwatch with the sniper rifle. Michael
was our lieutenant. He was our officer in charge, so
he was overall command and control. And then I was
also the medic and rear security. And then I was
the LPO of the platoons, so I was running it
and then that was our team. That's how we were
set up. Recon teams are really small, usually four to
(24:45):
six men, and.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Are there particular skill sets that brought you all together.
I mean, you know, of all the guys that could
have been chosen, how were you four guys chosen? They
had to have a strategy behind that, I'm assuming yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
It was a qualification is that we have through in
the seal teams you get you get to go to
multiple schools. So me being the medic, and then I
was also a sniper, and I was also a calm guy,
and then I was also a jatach which means I
could talk to the planes and drop bombs, so that
that was really useful in that environment. And then acts
being a sniper and a point man Danny with the
(25:21):
with the comms and the communication. So we kind of
like redundancy. So if one of us gets or goes down,
the other guy can step up and do his job.
And we had just trained up together. It was our
it was our primary mission set. So they utilize us
in that capacity.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
You got Michael Berry's show Marcus Latrell is our guest
twenty years after operation on Red Wings. When when this
was over and you came home, you convert your diary
to what becomes a book. You go back to Iraq
and the first time I ever talked to you about this,
(25:57):
which is well over ten years ago. The thing that
really just wrenched my gut was that you committed to
go and talk to Patsy, to go and talk to
the families about what had happened. You wanted them when
did that happen and how did that go down?
Speaker 2 (26:15):
I'd gotten back. It happened pretty quick, and I was
sitting I was in the hospital for a while, and
then the rest of my platoon came back from Iraq,
and then they had like a week or two of downtime,
and then the command actually facilitated that movement. They lined
out where we were going, when we were going, and
(26:35):
how we were going to get there. So they flew
us back to the States. We were in Hawaii. They
flew us back into the States and we started and
we went from family, each FAMI member and told them
what happened. I told him face to face them. I
wanted they needed to hear it from the command. Wanted
that to make sure there was all kinds of stories
going around about what had happened, how it went down.
I mean still to this day, but they know the
(26:58):
real story.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
How hard was that to do.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
That was rough. That was rough. Just yeah, it's just tough.
Like our CaCO officers, the officers that are actually in
charge of go around and tell the families that your
son has been injured or dead. I mean, I don't
That's got to be probably the hardest job in the military.
(27:23):
So I really wasn't trained for that. And I you know,
I love those guys. So when their families, I understand. Look,
if I if I could lose, if I had to
lose everything I had right now, just to bring all
of them back to their family members that have in
my would that may sound mean or crazy, but I
(27:43):
because they're great people and their sons are great men,
and I that was that's harder than combat. But the
families have always been great to me. They're they're they're
good to me. They've watched out for me. They never,
you know, never try to turn down. So that was
a blessing to me.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
You know, the book and then the movie and your
story and you as the frontman for all of this
has to have been the greatest boon to recruiting before
Donald Trump was president, in Sincevil War two, I would
imagine there were a lot of young Marcus Otrell wannabes
(28:25):
who said I want to do what that guy has done?
Has the Navy ever told you that.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yes, sir, all the time. That's why I carry myself
the way I do. I realized the opportunity and the
position that I was put in. God has a plan
for everything. I had no idea I was going to
be doing this. But it may have been twenty years,
but I think about it every day, but a minute
I wake up, the minute I go down. I'm constantly
(28:51):
trying to better myself, collect wisdom, starting my discipline, starting
my manners, and everything that I do. Since I am
an example and once they put that cross on me,
that changed my life forever. See, those are usually kind
of in the shadows, but I was. I was brought up,
you know, kind of into the light in front of everybody,
and I had extensive training from the military that I'm
(29:13):
still with them. I mean, they've been watching out for
me forever and they still do. And I, you know,
thank you doesn't really do it. It works on almost
everything else in there. I don't have any words to
describe how how how much it means to me and
how thankful I am. Not only put a military but
for our people, like the American people and especially Texas.
(29:34):
I mean, you've been around me for a long time,
you see it. One of the reason I'm going on public, man,
it's it's so overwhelming how nice people are to me
and what they do for me and I and it
only it keeps getting stronger. It hasn't faded away. So uh.
And I'm trying to be a good father and raise
my kids. But then and turn that around. The one
(29:56):
thing I've preached them is how great our people are. Hey, look,
that's why I'm so hard on him. I was like,
when you walk out in public and you run across
one of our people, man, you better show some because
of what they They saved my life. Y'all saved my life.
Y'all brought me back and gave me everything I got.
So I never anticipated that. I didn't grow up to
expect that. It just kind of I got put into it,
(30:18):
and and I'm so thankful for it. I don't even
know what to say most of the time.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Marcus so Trell is our guest for those who don't
know what became of you after all of that talk
about your personal life, Melanie, the whole story.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Okay, So anybody who still runs around me and knows anything.
That was the one thing that I got in the
hook up, the greatest hookup I got with my wife,
and she's absolutely, hands down the most amazing thing ever.
And then I have three kids. My oldest son, Hunter,
he's twenty seven, he's out of college and got a
great job in the world Traveler was it was a
(30:57):
blessing day to get him. And then and I have
acts and then Adelaide. So most of my day is
spent when I get up in the morning, I'm really
trying to be a good father. I want to do that.
I want to be good at that so bad I
work hard at it and I actually study it. So
right when I got back, I was on the road
(31:17):
so much. I lived out of a suitcase city road
three hundred days out of the year. And then when
you bring a wife and a family into the picture,
it kind of changes everything. So she does a great
job of watching out for me every single day. She's
she's such a blessing to me. And then and then
those kids make me a better human being. They're definitely
phases in a man's life when he's growing up, the
(31:38):
life that I had before being a teen guy, I'm
running a gun and is not conducive to being a
family man out in civilian world. Those two things kind
of butt heads. So the hardest thing I've probably had
to go through was getting rid of that, was letting
go of that old being a steel, that whole ego
that goes with that, the bravado and everything that comes
(32:01):
into that package. I mean, I don't wear the same
watches anymore, the same sunglasses. I try not to talk
like that anymore. Matter of fact, when I get around
my teammate, you want to talk about dragging me back
to the old days, I get so fired up when
I see them that I know I can't stay around
very long because how much I loved that life. It
was my heart and my soul. When I got done
(32:21):
with that, I literally had to retrain myself to be
a civilian again, starting with just who I was, and
then trying to be a good husband and what that
looked like, and then a good father. I know, I
get on the internet and around the people that I
see who are great fathers. You're a good father, I
mean your boys, look at them, and then Rick Perry,
(32:44):
all that just you know, I've got to take examples
of the men that are around us, the pillars that
are around us, and copy that kind of mimic what
they do and put that into my routine and live
it out, not year by year, but kind of moment
by moment and then transfer to the next one. And
it's it's been great. I clearly love it you.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
I've been at your father in law's home when you
host a lot of Navy seals, and I've described to
you as the mayor of Silville. Uh, it really feels
to me and I'm a complete outsider that this experience
and all the public attention because you know the scenes
where y'all are training as Navy seals. People have a
lot better understanding. As you've told me, people die in
(33:28):
Navy Seal training and are brought back to life the
difficulty of this training.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
You know.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
I think back to Officer and a Gentleman and that
Apocalypse now and what movies do to to really make
the public focus on these sorts of things, and I
think your case and then Chris Kyle got folks really
aware of the personal toll these things take and the
preparation these things take. It's not a movie it's real
(33:55):
life and and I guess there's not a question there,
but I would ask for your reaction to that.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
For sure. What we let y'all see is one thing
and the behind the scenes, just like watching the regular movies.
I mean, you see the the overall finished product, but
you want to know what what it took to make
that thing, and that's where we The only way you
can actually see that is to be in the community itself,
and it's it's the greatest fraternity that that I was
(34:22):
able to be a part of, being in the field
to unity. Thank you and good night.
It's that time.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Time time, time, luck and load. The Michael Verie Show
is on the air.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Marcus Latreel is our last twenty years after Operation Redwings.
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
(00:55):
guys from that time that I grew to have such
a credible 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
(01:17):
happens from there.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Once that thing started, it was kind of a free
for all that 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. There wasn't really anywhere we could go, which
means you had to keep moving the entire time. The
hardest thing to hit of the moving target, but because
(01:45):
of the terrain and the altitude, just making the movement
was tough enough. 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 of the day,
I was I had slipped into this ravine and kind
of was laid in between these rocks, and I just
(02:07):
laid there. I was paralyzed from the waist down. I've
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
(02:28):
day before the villager fell me. It was right next
to a waterfall in a river.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
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 2 (02:50):
So we know now they've done a map study and
I've gotten debriefed by everyone who had anything to do
with the mission, and I crawled about seven.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Miles and you started how much after after sundown or
after it got.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Dark, Probably about it almost a couple hours afterwards. I
just started making a movement when I couldn't hear anything,
and when I thought the day of Thatta had returned
to base, I just started moving.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And there was zero chance you would have survived. If
you'd stayed there, they would have found you.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Right absolutely, because the helicopter had gotten shot down, which
brought more reinforcements from them in. So the mountain was
saturated with the Taliban and the al Qaeda. They kind
of worked together in that area. So the Hornet's 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
(03:39):
was saturated.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
When you saw the I'm assuming you saw the Shinok
shot down.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I didn't. 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
(04:09):
wearing one of my wedding ring. He said it was
from one of my buddies. He was trying to tell
me that they had shot a helicopter down and that
a bunch of the steals had died. But I didn't
I wouldn't believe it. 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 1 (04:28):
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, was the equipment not good enough or what
was the issue?
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Now, all that has to do with location and 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 to why
your cell phone while you lose signal in certain areas,
like we don't. Why can't I stand right here and
then go two feet to the right and not have
(05:04):
so I can make communications. It's the same principle, but
go way back, and when you're get into two thousand
and five, you're dealing with the Tatcom 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 checkpoint when we get to
that we can radio back in before everyone starts losing
(05:25):
their mind and trying to come get us.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Do you remember the first hit you took?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, I guess, oh yeah, you don't forget it absolutely,
what's happened to 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
(05:53):
like it kind of 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 got you in there.
See a lot of times you couldn't see where. It
was so loud and at this and you couldn't didn't
any idea where the bullets were coming from. So I
remember thinking when I got hit that first time and
(06:15):
I fell and knocked me out, and when I came
to the smell, that's the one thing that they 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 in me pretty hard. And
then it just changed the dynamic the way you the
(06:35):
way you move.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
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 2 (06:56):
Bringing me out of there. If I if I could,
for 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 pay respect and give
acknowledgement to everything that went to pull me out. That
that in itself is a story because it happened at night.
In the in the movie they made lo Survivor, it
(07:17):
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,
you think I'm getting rescued, but then there's a chance.
There's always a chance you can die. And when they
(07:40):
finally got me onto the helicopter and we left out
of there, it was there was a lower coaster of
emotions for sure. But the one thing that we didn't
capture in the film, like so it just didn't have
enough time, was was the ending how they actually had
and what they had to go through to rescue me.
Everyone who was in theater was involved in getting me
out of there for sure, and then to follow on
(08:01):
to get all the guys off the mountain, and my
remember our teammate with still Land out there. We had
a helicopter go down and had kicking guys on it.
They had to recover all those guys they were taking fire.
It was it was a crazy scenario.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
And these chairs can rolling around.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Damn it? All right, This is Mark Chestnutt and Jar
Bizaar of Talk Radio.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Marcus till Trail 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
(08:52):
incredible life. Marcus all Trail 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 2 (09:09):
Okay? So I was the great There's a hodge pods
of guys who finally found me. And if you if
you could have seen them, I mean, it looks something
straight 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
(09:30):
the village, and then the village was surrounded by the
Taliban and the al Qaeda, just to keep me safe.
And then they had moved me down the mountain into
this little ravine area. I had thought about this in
a minute, and we sat up. It was dark, so
by now the sun had gone down, and the helicopter
had to come in from the base of the mountain,
(09:51):
and it was we were so high up on the
mountain that they had. All it was was fuel and ammo.
And I remember they had some water on there for
the guys, because they the guys who found me were
out of water. And then a firefighting suited and then
above the mountain where a bunch of fixed wing aircraft
were dropping ordnance down on the bad guys. And then
(10:12):
in the distance at the base of the mountain, so
down the mountain it was a river, and the helicopter
was kind of coming up the river, and the Colsignd
a guy who was flying the bird's name of Spanking
and Jeff Pearson, great great freaking guy. And and here
you'll tell you 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
(10:32):
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.
And then that helicopter boy came up over the side
(10:53):
of that cliff and the dust kicked up, and so
it called a brown eye. We couldn't see anything when
he came to land. The the ravine we were on
was about as wide as the helicopter itself, and he
goes to that dust came up. I couldn't see nothing.
And then there was Pj's in the back of the
bird trying to land it, trying to tell them how
far from the ground they were, and nobody could see anything.
(11:14):
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 that was on the
side of the mountain. He goes, I was kind of
looking at that thing and I just sat it down,
and he did. He stuck it well. The Green Berets
they picked me up and were carrying me towards the HILO,
(11:35):
and I was dressed up in man jamie, so I
looked like an Afghan and they pulled me up at
the tail so you don't come up on the tail rotor.
So the PGAs turned around to actually take a shot
at us, and they had their lasers up and their
lasers hit our glint tape and that's how they knew
that not to shoot. So almost got killed on the rescue,
which is they told me that later. I was like,
I'm glad you didn't shoot me. And then they threw
(11:58):
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 an OUNTA because they had
to go on a follow on mission. They didn't even
come home with me, 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 and I was like Spider Man, and
(12:18):
I asked him my dog's name. I told him that
this 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 from a
helicopter to a C one thirty medical bird and kind
of laid me down and started going to work on me.
And then they slew me from there to to Boggam
(12:40):
Air Force Base where the rest of my platoon and
all the seals are waiting on me to get back.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
But yeah, then how does that look when they bring
you in? What tell me about that?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
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 carrying me down. Had ivy stuck out of me,
and they said they abandoned me up and uh, I
remember there was a lady standing by the rabbit. She
covered her face and started crying. I guess I looked
worse than I thought. And then they transferred me to
(13:13):
these van there's a bunch of vans sitting there, and
they put me in one of those, and then they
took me to the hospital. 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 relationship where they thought we were,
and it just it all started from there. And then
I was in the hospital for a minute.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Go ahead, are you able to talk at that point?
And what does that look like?
Speaker 2 (13:41):
I was? I was, I was able to talk. Uh.
The villagers did a great job of taking care of me.
I mean, they doctored me up twice a day, a
bandaged my wounds, made sure my pain tir my pain
was down. So I was really I had a doctor
in the village and they just they they saved my
life for sure. And then when I got back the
(14:02):
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. And
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 1 (14:16):
In the movie, there is a conflict within the village
of the you know, Gulab 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 2 (14:32):
Just like that. Well, there were 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 Gulab.
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
(14:53):
in the village wo were trying to sell me, because
the Taliban would show up every day negotiating for my head.
And they would tell me about me sitting down in
my room and have these little powwows and these meetings.
And then, which is kind of frustrating because I didn't
speak the language. 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
(15:14):
rangers found me, I was tucked in underneath this rock
in a riverbed, 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 a beat
on the room that I was in and they started
shooting in there or firing RPG at the wall, and
then the villagers would move me somewhere else. So it
was it was kind of chaotic and stressful, for sure.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
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?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
So I called my name out. I'll never forget it.
I heard it in English for the first time. And
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, I
just seems very vividly, and I grabbed that guy. I mean,
I never heard a man like that. I was gonna
get in here, bro. I just want to make sure
he was real, because I was real sick by then,
(16:16):
and uh, and he called me by my name, and
uh they picked me up and and took me into
this this stable. Uh, right underneath on the side of
the mountain, there was a stable down there that they
would pick the huels in. And they laid me down in.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
There and tried to bandage me up. And then that's
when the beeped me for the first time. And uh
they got me out of there. Yeah, that happened, but
it was it was It was crazy, for sure.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Michael Barry Show wants to tell is our guest. Our
conversation continues about the rescue. If you've read the book
and seen the movie, obviously in a matter of minutes,
they can't capture what actually happened. You know, you've alluded
to a number of things, Smarcaus, I'd like to rewind
and let's talk about how Gulab discovers you at the water.
(17:07):
You know, there's a scene in the movie where you
threaten to pull a pin. You have no belief that
this guy is going to drag you to his village
and that they're going to care for you, which they
did and save your life. Walk me through that process
from you interacting with him, to you getting to the
village and then the eventual rescue and how long all
this takes.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
So the sun had come up the following day and
I somehow had crawled and Michael, I don't know how
I did this, but I managed to get to the
top of this cliff where there's a waterfall. But I
couldn't I was so thirsty. This is what was driving me.
I didn't want to die thirsty. I know that sounds absurd,
but when you thirst will do something completely different to
(17:52):
a man than pained and hunger. I mean, I'd never
been that thirsty. And when I try I had to
reach into the waterfall. I started sliding down the side
of the mountain and I kind of took off and
I flipped into the river and I actually knocked myself
out again. And when I came to, I crawled into
(18:13):
I remember I crawled back up a little ways because
I had seen a place that looked pretty, pretty inviting
to drink some water. And I got there and I
probably had two steps out of that waterfall before someone
was screaming at me. And they were screaming at me
on the ledge that I had just fallen off of
so I kind of like thought that they were following me.
(18:35):
And then above that there was a couple of guys
with a k's maneuvering around and I could hear him
screaming and like they were trying to track me down.
So they started hunting me. So I made a move
and started crawling down into the lake, into the river
and through over these rocks and stuff, and I managed
to get into this crevice into this ravine. It's hard
to explain, and I couldn't go anywhere. They bottled at me,
(18:58):
and I turned around to shoe and the guy saw
me and he dug and then I swung around on
the other two and they saw me, so they sat down.
And then right after that happened right over the ravine
I was sitting under is when Gulac came over the rocks.
He was kind of just sitting there and he was
screaming at me, and he was screaming American. He's an American.
(19:20):
American man thought about this a minute. So they thought
I was the Taliban. They were trying to hunt me
down and kill me because they thought I was the enemy.
But in reality, when they found out when they got
it close enough they realized I was an American, so
that's what he was telling him, don't shoot he's an American.
And I kind of wasn't putting that together. I turned
around to engage to shoot him, and he put his
(19:41):
hands up and he was saying, okay, okay, it's okay.
And I don't know why I didn't kill him. I
don't know why I didn't kill this guy. My I mean,
I had my faith. Yet what weapon did you have
left at that point? I had my rifle.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
That's the only your rifle.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Okay, I still had him. I couldn't throw that thing away.
I mean it would leave my body and slide down
the mountain or flip off of me, and I tore
my lanyard, but I would always manage to get God
was like, you know you need that. So when I
turned around, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Go ahead, I'm sorry, no, no, you go ahead.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Well, he finally walked up on me and I lowered
my weapon, and he was he was like okay, okay, okay, okay,
and he's like, shampoo hydrate is saying to me, shampoo hydrate,
I'll never forget that. I was like, I mean that
sounds really good. I was like, I need some water.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So why do you think you didn't kill him? What
did you know about him that he wasn't out to
do you harm?
Speaker 2 (20:44):
I don't know. A look on his face. He just
had this look on his face like he didn't want to,
like he wasn't there to hurt me. You can tell.
And once you're out there long enough and you hunt hunt,
you know, we fight these guys long enough, you can tell.
Even when we capture them and have them with us,
they would still look at you like they want to
kill you. And once you see that, you'll never forget it.
You can anticipate with a man stinking, just by the
(21:05):
look on his face and within his eyes, his eyes
kill a lot. And then these kids started coming out
from behind him. Two and then some more adults started
walking up. And I lowered my weapon and I had
a grenade with me, and I pulled that thing and
I pulled the pin. I kind of put it down
by my hip, and then they brought me some water,
so I started drinking that, and they started looking at
(21:27):
my wounds and like patching me up. And then they
picked me up and carried me down into the village.
They sat me down, they gave me more water, and
then they picked me up and carried me into this
room and they stripped me naked, and there wasn't much
left in my uniform anyway. Well, and they docked me up,
cleaned all my wounds, and then dressed me up instead
(21:49):
of Man Jamie's. That was almost the first.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Day, and what was hurting the worst at that point.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
I had a lot of facial damage and then I'd
broken my right hand. My thumb had been separated from
the from the where it was supposed to be. I
couldn't feel my lower extremities. It was weird. I busted
my back up real bad, and I've been shot in
the button that frag hanging out of my legs, but
I couldn't really feel that. Because I didn't, I was
kind of paralyzed. Was it was a blessing and.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
A curse that are you at that moment do you
think you're going to die? You're just fighting on for
some crazy reason, but do you are you certain you're
going to die or are you holding out hope?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
No, that would only cross my mind when I was
in a gunfight, and then even then on the first day,
for sure, But the second day, I just kind of
got it in my head that I was getting out
of there. I wasn't gonna it wasn't gonna lay down
and die. I was just going to the way our
training goes and everything that kicks in a lot of
(22:54):
people they can't anticipate that, like what do you do
when this happened? And what do you think when this happens?
Does a custom me it kicks in? And I just
kept that. Ultimately, I did change the diplomatee. I mean,
I kind of changed my attitude a little bit just
because they were helping me and I wanted them to
know that I appreciated all that. So I you know,
I was on my managers and then I was real polite.
(23:16):
I did everything I could. I started throughout the week
I started doctor and their kids like they would bring
their kids to me. I never told him I was
a steal. I told him I was a doctor. Okay,
I'm I'm not a stealing a doctor. And I don't
know if they bought that or not, but you do
have it. I did, and I did, and that helped
me because when I would work on them, Uh, in
(23:37):
the beginning, I didn't know if it was working or not.
But they kept bringing me people, so it worked in
my advantage. And then they were calling me doctor Marcus.
That weren't doctors.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Universal talk to me about the original the core for guys, Danny, Axe,
Murph and you. Why was each one of you chosen?
What was your role with in the group, What were
your skill sets?
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Danny was our communicator. He could work the radios real well.
We weren't on the same delivery team, but he was
East Coast, I was West coast. But it doesn't matter.
When we throw us together, we worked well together. I'd
known Danny since we were in pre training, so we've
been buddies for a while. Acts as our primary sniper
and our point man. It was his job to get
(24:25):
us in and out of the target, and then he
was obviously had the overwatch with the sniper rifle. Michael
was our lieutenant. He was our officer in charge, so
he was overall command and control. And then I was
also the medic and rear security. And then I was
the LPO of the platoons, so I was running it
and then that was our team. That's how we were
set up. Recon teams are really small, usually four to
(24:45):
six men, and.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Are there particular skill sets that brought you all together.
I mean, you know, of all the guys that could
have been chosen, how were you four guys chosen? They
had to have a strategy behind that, I'm assuming yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
It was a qualification is that we have through in
the seal teams you get you get to go to
multiple schools. So me being the medic, and then I
was also a sniper, and I was also a calm guy,
and then I was also a jatach which means I
could talk to the planes and drop bombs, so that
that was really useful in that environment. And then acts
being a sniper and a point man Danny with the
(25:21):
with the comms and the communication. So we kind of
like redundancy. So if one of us gets or goes down,
the other guy can step up and do his job.
And we had just trained up together. It was our
it was our primary mission set. So they utilize us
in that capacity.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
You got Michael Berry's show Marcus Latrell is our guest
twenty years after operation on Red Wings. When when this
was over and you came home, you convert your diary
to what becomes a book. You go back to Iraq
and the first time I ever talked to you about this,
(25:57):
which is well over ten years ago. The thing that
really just wrenched my gut was that you committed to
go and talk to Patsy, to go and talk to
the families about what had happened. You wanted them when
did that happen and how did that go down?
Speaker 2 (26:15):
I'd gotten back. It happened pretty quick, and I was
sitting I was in the hospital for a while, and
then the rest of my platoon came back from Iraq,
and then they had like a week or two of downtime,
and then the command actually facilitated that movement. They lined
out where we were going, when we were going, and
(26:35):
how we were going to get there. So they flew
us back to the States. We were in Hawaii. They
flew us back into the States and we started and
we went from family, each FAMI member and told them
what happened. I told him face to face them. I
wanted they needed to hear it from the command. Wanted
that to make sure there was all kinds of stories
going around about what had happened, how it went down.
I mean still to this day, but they know the
(26:58):
real story.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
How hard was that to do.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
That was rough. That was rough. Just yeah, it's just tough.
Like our CaCO officers, the officers that are actually in
charge of go around and tell the families that your
son has been injured or dead. I mean, I don't
That's got to be probably the hardest job in the military.
(27:23):
So I really wasn't trained for that. And I you know,
I love those guys. So when their families, I understand. Look,
if I if I could lose, if I had to
lose everything I had right now, just to bring all
of them back to their family members that have in
my would that may sound mean or crazy, but I
(27:43):
because they're great people and their sons are great men,
and I that was that's harder than combat. But the
families have always been great to me. They're they're they're
good to me. They've watched out for me. They never,
you know, never try to turn down. So that was
a blessing to me.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
You know, the book and then the movie and your
story and you as the frontman for all of this
has to have been the greatest boon to recruiting before
Donald Trump was president, in Sincevil War two, I would
imagine there were a lot of young Marcus Otrell wannabes
(28:25):
who said I want to do what that guy has done?
Has the Navy ever told you that.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yes, sir, all the time. That's why I carry myself
the way I do. I realized the opportunity and the
position that I was put in. God has a plan
for everything. I had no idea I was going to
be doing this. But it may have been twenty years,
but I think about it every day, but a minute
I wake up, the minute I go down. I'm constantly
(28:51):
trying to better myself, collect wisdom, starting my discipline, starting
my manners, and everything that I do. Since I am
an example and once they put that cross on me,
that changed my life forever. See, those are usually kind
of in the shadows, but I was. I was brought up,
you know, kind of into the light in front of everybody,
and I had extensive training from the military that I'm
(29:13):
still with them. I mean, they've been watching out for
me forever and they still do. And I, you know,
thank you doesn't really do it. It works on almost
everything else in there. I don't have any words to
describe how how how much it means to me and
how thankful I am. Not only put a military but
for our people, like the American people and especially Texas.
(29:34):
I mean, you've been around me for a long time,
you see it. One of the reason I'm going on public, man,
it's it's so overwhelming how nice people are to me
and what they do for me and I and it
only it keeps getting stronger. It hasn't faded away. So uh.
And I'm trying to be a good father and raise
my kids. But then and turn that around. The one
(29:56):
thing I've preached them is how great our people are. Hey, look,
that's why I'm so hard on him. I was like,
when you walk out in public and you run across
one of our people, man, you better show some because
of what they They saved my life. Y'all saved my life.
Y'all brought me back and gave me everything I got.
So I never anticipated that. I didn't grow up to
expect that. It just kind of I got put into it,
(30:18):
and and I'm so thankful for it. I don't even
know what to say most of the time.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Marcus so Trell is our guest for those who don't
know what became of you after all of that talk
about your personal life, Melanie, the whole story.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Okay, So anybody who still runs around me and knows anything.
That was the one thing that I got in the
hook up, the greatest hookup I got with my wife,
and she's absolutely, hands down the most amazing thing ever.
And then I have three kids. My oldest son, Hunter,
he's twenty seven, he's out of college and got a
great job in the world Traveler was it was a
(30:57):
blessing day to get him. And then and I have
acts and then Adelaide. So most of my day is
spent when I get up in the morning, I'm really
trying to be a good father. I want to do that.
I want to be good at that so bad I
work hard at it and I actually study it. So
right when I got back, I was on the road
(31:17):
so much. I lived out of a suitcase city road
three hundred days out of the year. And then when
you bring a wife and a family into the picture,
it kind of changes everything. So she does a great
job of watching out for me every single day. She's
she's such a blessing to me. And then and then
those kids make me a better human being. They're definitely
phases in a man's life when he's growing up, the
(31:38):
life that I had before being a teen guy, I'm
running a gun and is not conducive to being a
family man out in civilian world. Those two things kind
of butt heads. So the hardest thing I've probably had
to go through was getting rid of that, was letting
go of that old being a steel, that whole ego
that goes with that, the bravado and everything that comes
(32:01):
into that package. I mean, I don't wear the same
watches anymore, the same sunglasses. I try not to talk
like that anymore. Matter of fact, when I get around
my teammate, you want to talk about dragging me back
to the old days, I get so fired up when
I see them that I know I can't stay around
very long because how much I loved that life. It
was my heart and my soul. When I got done
(32:21):
with that, I literally had to retrain myself to be
a civilian again, starting with just who I was, and
then trying to be a good husband and what that
looked like, and then a good father. I know, I
get on the internet and around the people that I
see who are great fathers. You're a good father, I
mean your boys, look at them, and then Rick Perry,
(32:44):
all that just you know, I've got to take examples
of the men that are around us, the pillars that
are around us, and copy that kind of mimic what
they do and put that into my routine and live
it out, not year by year, but kind of moment
by moment and then transfer to the next one. And
it's it's been great. I clearly love it you.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
I've been at your father in law's home when you
host a lot of Navy seals, and I've described to
you as the mayor of Silville. Uh, it really feels
to me and I'm a complete outsider that this experience
and all the public attention because you know the scenes
where y'all are training as Navy seals. People have a
lot better understanding. As you've told me, people die in
(33:28):
Navy Seal training and are brought back to life the
difficulty of this training.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
You know.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
I think back to Officer and a Gentleman and that
Apocalypse now and what movies do to to really make
the public focus on these sorts of things, and I
think your case and then Chris Kyle got folks really
aware of the personal toll these things take and the
preparation these things take. It's not a movie it's real
(33:55):
life and and I guess there's not a question there,
but I would ask for your reaction to that.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
For sure. What we let y'all see is one thing
and the behind the scenes, just like watching the regular movies.
I mean, you see the the overall finished product, but
you want to know what what it took to make
that thing, and that's where we The only way you
can actually see that is to be in the community itself,
and it's it's the greatest fraternity that that I was
(34:22):
able to be a part of, being in the field
to unity. Thank you and good night.
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