November 26, 2025 • 33 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. So
Michael Very Show is on the air. Marcus Petrel is
(00:36):
our last twenty years after Operation Redwings. So 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 guys from
(00:56):
that time that I grew to have such incredible, respectful
or were Marcus Aetrel 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 happens from there.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
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 we had to keep moving the entire time. The
hardest thing to hit of the moving target, but because
(01:44):
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 of
the day, I was I had slipped into this ravine
and kind of was laid in between these rocks, and
(02:06):
I just laid there. 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
(02:27):
day before the villagers found me. It was right next
to a waterfall in the river.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
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 (02:49):
So we know now they've gone to map study, and
I've gotten debriefed by everyone who had anything to do
with the mission. And I crawled about seven.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Miles and you started how much after after sundown or
after it got dark.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Probably about it almost a couple hours afterwards. I just
started making a movement when I couldn't hear anything, and
when I thought that day and Mata had returned to base,
I just started moving.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And there was zero chance you would have survived. If
you'd stayed there, they would have found you.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Right absolutely, because the helicopter had gotten shot down, which
brought more reinforcements from them, and so the mountain was
saturated with the Taliban and the al Qaeda. They kind
of worked together in that area. So 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
(03:39):
was saturated.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
When you saw the I'm assuming you saw the Chinook
shot down.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
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 hole
to me. They told me one of the guys was
(04:08):
wearing one of my 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 the seals 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
I when I got the news that was solid.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
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 (04:42):
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 it's the same premise of why your cell
phone while you lose signal in certain areas, we're like,
we don't. Why can I stand right here and then
go two feet to the right and not have or
(05:03):
I can make communications. It's the same principle, but go
way back. When you're get in the 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 the calm window,
then there's another checkpoints when we get to that we
can radio back in before everyone starts losing their mind
(05:25):
and trying to come get us.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Do you remember the first hit you took?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, I go, oh yeah. You don't forget it absolutely,
what's happened to get.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Well?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
You 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 flowed through me. It was my job when
we went out was to hunt things down. And then
it's a complete any different feeling when someone's hunting you
(06:02):
and there and and they got you in their site
to a lot of times you couldn't see where it
was so loud and at dice you couldn't You didn't
have any idea where the bullets were coming from. So
I remember thinking, 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,
(06:25):
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
then it just changed the dynamic the way you the
way you move.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
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 (06:55):
Bringing me out of there. If I if I could,
if there, if there'd be no 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 pull me out.
That that in itself is a story because it happened
at night. In the in the movie they made La Survivor,
(07:16):
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,
you think I'm getting rescued, but then there's a chance.
There's always a chance you can die. And when they
(07:39):
finally got me onto the helicopter we left out of there,
it was it was a roller coaster of emotions for sure.
But the one thing that we didn't capture in the film,
and like I said, it didn't have enough time, was
it 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 the follow on to get
(08:01):
all the guys off the mountain, and my remember our
team makes was still laying out there. We had a
helicopter go down and had fifteen guys on it. They
had to recover all those guys. They were taking fire.
It was it was a crazy scenario.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
And these chairs can roll them around. Damn it all right,
This is Mark Chestnut and jar Bizaar of Talk Radio.
Marcus till Treil 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
(08:38):
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
incredible life. Marcus till Trail is our guest. Marcus, you
mentioned that the extrication of you, the rescue of you,
(09:00):
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 (09:08):
Okay? So I was the green. There's a Hodge posit
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. It
was an event just just to find me. And then
once they found me, they had the they surrounded the village,
(09:31):
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 and it was dark, so by
now the sun had gone down, and the helicopter had
to come in from the base of the mountain, and
(09:51):
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 the guys who found me were out
of water. And then a firefight ensuited, and then above
the mountain where a bunch of fixed wing aircraft were
dropping the ordnance down on the bad guys. And then
(10:11):
in the distance at the base of the mountain, so
down the mountain was a river, and the helicopter was
kind of coming up the river, and the call found
a guy who was flying the bird's name of spanking
Jeff Peers, some great, great fricking 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 feeling any
(10:31):
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
(10:52):
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 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.
(11:13):
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. 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,
(11:34):
and I was dressed up in man Jamie, so I
looked like an app game 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. They told me that later. I was like,
I'm glad you didn't shoot me. And then they threw
(11:57):
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 annount 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 I
(12:17):
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 fire fight. 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 flew me from there to to boggerm
(12:39):
Air Force Base where the rest of my platoon and
all the seals are waiting on me to get back.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
But yeah, then how does that look when they bring
you in? What tell me about that?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
So the ramp dropped off the helicopter or shooting on
the back of the plane, and they had to take me.
I couldn't really walk, so they picked me up and
we're carrying me down. I had ivy 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. I guess
I looked worse than I thought. And then they trained
(13:12):
forered me to the van. There was 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
(13:32):
for a minute.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Go ahead, are you able to talk at that point?
And what does that look like?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I was 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, banaged
my wounds, made sure my pain tarrant and my pain
was down. So I was really I had a doctor
in the village and they just they saved my life
for sure. And then when I got back the all
(14:02):
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 (14:15):
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 just like that.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
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 Gulah. 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 villageho were trying to sell me, because the Taliban
(14:54):
would show up every day negotiating for my head. And
they would tell me about it sitting down in my
room and have these little pow wows 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 saying,
but I could get the concept of what was going down.
And then eventually when the when the Green Berets and
rangers found me, I was cucked in underneath this rock
(15:16):
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 (15:35):
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's just
just just insane. So the moment they came to get you,
do you remember the first thing they said to.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
You, Sook you call my name out. I'll never forget it.
I heard it in English for the first time, and
I was great. There were 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 can seems very vividly, and I grabbed that guy.
I mean, I never heard a man like that. I'm
gonna get in here, but I was want to make
(16:12):
sure he was real, because I was real sick by then.
And uh, and they called me by my name, and uh,
they picked me up 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 there and
started a bandaging me up. And then that's when that
(16:35):
beats me for the first time. And uh they got
me out of there. Yeah, that happened, but it was
it was, it was crazy.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Michael Arry Show. Our conversation continues about the rescue. If
you 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, Mart
because I'd like to rewind and and let's talk about
how Gulab discovers you at the water. You know, there's
(17:04):
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 (17:21):
So the sun had come up the following day and
I somehow had crawled and 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
I'm surd but when you thirst will do something completely
different to a man than pained than hunger. I mean,
(17:44):
I'd never been at thirsty. And when I tried to
reach into the waterfall, I started sliding down the side
of the mountain, took off and I flipped into the
river and I actually knocked myself out again. But when
I came to, I got crawled into. I crawled back
up a little ways because I had seen a place
that looked pretty pretty inviting to drink some water. And
(18:06):
I got there and I probably had two stiffs 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, and then above that
there was a couple of guys with eight k's whenevern't
around that. I could hear him screaming and like they
were trying to track him down, so they started hunting me.
So I made a move and started crawling down into
(18:27):
the lake into the river and threw over these rocks
and stuff, and I managed to get into this crevice
into this ravine. Hard to explain, and I couldn't go anywhere.
They bottled at me, and I turned around to shoot,
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
(18:47):
right over the ravine I was sitting under is when
Gulag came over the rock. He was kind of just
sitting there and he was screaming at me, and he
was screaming American. He's like American, an American, And I
thought about this cement, so I thought I was the Taliban.
They were trying to hunt me down and came because
they thought it was the enemy. But in reality, when
they found out and they got 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
(19:08):
wasn't putting that together. I turned around to engage to
shoot him, and he put his hands up and he
was saying, okay, okay, okay, And I don't know why
I didn't kill him. I don't know why I didn't
kill this guy. My got. I mean, I had my bathy.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
What weapon did you have left at that point?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I had a rifle.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
That's you still had your rifle?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Okay, I still have 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.
It was like, you know you need that. So when
I mean I turned around, go.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Ahead, go ahead, I'm sorry, no, no, you go ahead.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
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 hydrates. He was saying to me,
shampoo hydrate. I'll never forget that. I was like, I
mean that sounds really good, but I was like, I
need some water.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
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 (20:06):
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, you 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 thinking just about to
look on his face and within his eyes, his eyes
and kill a lot. And then these kids started coming
(20:30):
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
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
(20:52):
then they picked me up, carried me into this room
and they stripped me naked, and there wasn't luck left
in my uniform anyways. Well, and they docked me up,
cleaned on my wounds, and then dressed me up instead
of a man Jamie's. That was almost the first day.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
And what was hurting the worst at.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
That point, Well, I had a lot of facial damage
and then I 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.
I couldn't really feel that because I think I was
(21:25):
kind of paralyzed. Was it was a blessing and a.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Curse at that or 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 of hope?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
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 were going to lay
down and die. I was just going to like the
way our training goes and everything that kicks in a
lot of people they can't anticipate that, like what do
you do when this happened? And what do you think
(21:58):
when this happen? Does a trust me? It kicks in
and I just kept that. Ultimately, I did change the diplomacy.
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 you know,
I was on my manners and then I was real polite.
I did everything I could. I started throughout the week
I started doctor and their kids, they would bring their
kids to me. I never told him I was a
(22:19):
steel I told him I was a doctor, but day
I'm not a seal on the 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 in the beginning,
I didn't know if it was working or out, but
they kept bringing me people, so it worked in my advantage.
And then they were calling me, doctor Marcus, that weren't
(22:41):
doctors universal talk to me about.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
The original the core for guys, Danny, Axe, Murph and you.
Why was each one of you chosen? What was your
role within the group, What were your skill sets?
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Danny's 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 threw us together, we worked well together. I've
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
us in and out of the target, and then he
(23:14):
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 in
and then that was our team. That's how we were
set up. Recon teams are really small, usually four to
six minutes.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
And are there 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.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah, absolutely, it was the qualifications 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 JA tech,
which means I could talk to the planes and drop bombs.
That was really beautiful in that environment. And then acts
being a sniper and a point man nanny with the
(24:09):
commn and the communication. So we have kind of like redundancy,
so if one of us get or goes down, the
other guy can step up and do his job.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
And we had just trained up together.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
It was our primary mission set. So they utilize us
and that could happen.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
You got the Michael Berry's show. Marcus Latrell is our guest.
Twenty years after operation on Red Wings, 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,
(24:44):
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? How did that go down?
Speaker 2 (25:03):
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 a little 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 how we were going to get there. So they
(25:25):
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 family 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. There's about what had happened, how it
went down. I mean still to this day, but they
know the real story.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
How hard was that to do?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
That was rough? That was rough. Just yeah, it's just tough.
Are CaCO officers, the officers that are actually in charge
of go around and tell the families that his son's
been injured or dead. I mean, I don't That's gotta
be probably the hardest job in the military. So I
(26:11):
really wasn't trained for that. And I, you know, I
love those guys. So when their family I understand. Look
if I if I could, if I had to lose
everything I had right now, just to bring all of
them back to their family members that have them, I would.
That may sound mean or crazy, but I because they're
great people and their sons are great men, and I
(26:35):
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've never, you know, never
try to tear me down. So that was a blessing
to me.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
You know, the book and then the movie and your
story and you as as the frontman for all of
this has to have been the greatest boon to recruiting.
Before Donald Trump was president in Cinvil War two, I
would imagine there were a lot of young Marcus Ortrell
(27:12):
wannabes who said, I want to do what that guy
has done. Has the Navy ever told you that, Yes, sir,
all the time.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
That's why I carried myself the way I do. I
realized the opportunity and the position that I was put in. God.
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 the minute I wake up, the minute I go down,
I'm constantly trying to better myself, collect wisdom, sharping my discipline,
(27:42):
sharp with my manners, and everything that I do. I
am an example. And once they put that cross on me,
that changed my life forever. Seals are usually kind of
in the shadows, but I was brought up, you know,
kind of into the light in front of everybody, and
I had extensive training from the military. I'm still with them.
I mean, they've been watching out for me forever and
(28:04):
they still do. And I, you know, thank you doesn't
really do it. It works on almost everything else in
the there. I don't have any words to describe how
how much it means to me and how thankful I am.
Not only put a military bit for our people, like
the American people and especially Texas. I mean, you've been
around me for a long time. You see it. One
(28:25):
of the reasons I'm going to public. Man, it's so
overwhelming how nice people are to me and what they
do for me, and and it only it keeps getting stronger.
It hasn't faded away. So and I'm trying to be
a good father and raise my kids. But then and
turn that around. The one thing I've preached them is
how great our people are. Hey, look, that's why I'm
(28:47):
so hard on them. 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 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. And man, I'm so thankful
(29:08):
for it. I don't even know what to say most
of the time.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Marcus Otrell 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 (29:23):
Okay, So anybody who still runs around me and knows anything,
that 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 of it. And then
I have three kids. My oldest son, Hunter, he's twenty seven,
he's out of college and got a great job with
the World Traveler was it was a blessing day to
(29:46):
get him. And then I have Acts and then Adelaide.
So most of my day is spend 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.
I actually study it so right. When I got back,
I was on the road so much. I lived out
of a suitcase city wrote three hundred days out of
(30:08):
the year. And then when you bring a wife and
a family into the picture, it kind of changes everything.
So she 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. There definitely phases in a man's
life when he's growing up. The life that I had
before being a teen guy running and gun and is
(30:29):
not conducive to being a family man out in civilian world.
Those two things kind of butt heads. So the hardest
thing I 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 into that package. I mean, I don't
(30:50):
wear the same watches anymore, the same sunglasses. I don't.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
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, it's 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.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
It was my heart and my soul. When I got
done 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,
(31:27):
I mean your boys, look at them, and then Rick
Perry 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 transferred to the next one.
And it's it's been great. I truly love it you.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
I've been at your father in law's home when you
host a lot of Navy seals, and I've described you
as the mayor of Silville. H 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 Navy
(32:15):
Seal training and are brought back to life the difficulty
of this training.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
You know.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
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 life.
(32:43):
And and I guess there's not a question there, but
I would ask for your reaction to that.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Sure before we let y'all see it's one thing and
the behind the scenes, just like watching the regular movie,
I mean you see the overall finished product that you
want to know 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 I that I was
(33:09):
able to be a part of being in the field too. Heyman,
Els has fortunity.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Thank you, and good night.
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. So
Michael Very Show is on the air. Marcus Petrel is
(00:36):
our last twenty years after Operation Redwings. So 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 guys from
(00:56):
that time that I grew to have such incredible, respectful
or were Marcus Aetrel 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 happens from there.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
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 we had to keep moving the entire time. The
hardest thing to hit of the moving target, but because
(01:44):
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 of
the day, I was I had slipped into this ravine
and kind of was laid in between these rocks, and
(02:06):
I just laid there. 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
(02:27):
day before the villagers found me. It was right next
to a waterfall in the river.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
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 (02:49):
So we know now they've gone to map study, and
I've gotten debriefed by everyone who had anything to do
with the mission. And I crawled about seven.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Miles and you started how much after after sundown or
after it got dark.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Probably about it almost a couple hours afterwards. I just
started making a movement when I couldn't hear anything, and
when I thought that day and Mata had returned to base,
I just started moving.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And there was zero chance you would have survived. If
you'd stayed there, they would have found you.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Right absolutely, because the helicopter had gotten shot down, which
brought more reinforcements from them, and so the mountain was
saturated with the Taliban and the al Qaeda. They kind
of worked together in that area. So 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
(03:39):
was saturated.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
When you saw the I'm assuming you saw the Chinook
shot down.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
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 hole
to me. They told me one of the guys was
(04:08):
wearing one of my 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 the seals 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
I when I got the news that was solid.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
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 (04:42):
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 it's the same premise of why your cell
phone while you lose signal in certain areas, we're like,
we don't. Why can I stand right here and then
go two feet to the right and not have or
(05:03):
I can make communications. It's the same principle, but go
way back. When you're get in the 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 the calm window,
then there's another checkpoints when we get to that we
can radio back in before everyone starts losing their mind
(05:25):
and trying to come get us.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Do you remember the first hit you took?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, I go, oh yeah. You don't forget it absolutely,
what's happened to get.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Well?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
You 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 flowed through me. It was my job when
we went out was to hunt things down. And then
it's a complete any different feeling when someone's hunting you
(06:02):
and there and and they got you in their site
to a lot of times you couldn't see where it
was so loud and at dice you couldn't You didn't
have any idea where the bullets were coming from. So
I remember thinking, 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,
(06:25):
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
then it just changed the dynamic the way you the
way you move.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
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 (06:55):
Bringing me out of there. If I if I could,
if there, if there'd be no 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 pull me out.
That that in itself is a story because it happened
at night. In the in the movie they made La Survivor,
(07:16):
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,
you think I'm getting rescued, but then there's a chance.
There's always a chance you can die. And when they
(07:39):
finally got me onto the helicopter we left out of there,
it was it was a roller coaster of emotions for sure.
But the one thing that we didn't capture in the film,
and like I said, it didn't have enough time, was
it 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 the follow on to get
(08:01):
all the guys off the mountain, and my remember our
team makes was still laying out there. We had a
helicopter go down and had fifteen guys on it. They
had to recover all those guys. They were taking fire.
It was it was a crazy scenario.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
And these chairs can roll them around. Damn it all right,
This is Mark Chestnut and jar Bizaar of Talk Radio.
Marcus till Treil 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
(08:38):
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
incredible life. Marcus till Trail is our guest. Marcus, you
mentioned that the extrication of you, the rescue of you,
(09:00):
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 (09:08):
Okay? So I was the green. There's a Hodge posit
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. It
was an event just just to find me. And then
once they found me, they had the they surrounded the village,
(09:31):
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 and it was dark, so by
now the sun had gone down, and the helicopter had
to come in from the base of the mountain, and
(09:51):
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 the guys who found me were out
of water. And then a firefight ensuited, and then above
the mountain where a bunch of fixed wing aircraft were
dropping the ordnance down on the bad guys. And then
(10:11):
in the distance at the base of the mountain, so
down the mountain was a river, and the helicopter was
kind of coming up the river, and the call found
a guy who was flying the bird's name of spanking
Jeff Peers, some great, great fricking 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 feeling any
(10:31):
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
(10:52):
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 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.
(11:13):
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. 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,
(11:34):
and I was dressed up in man Jamie, so I
looked like an app game 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. They told me that later. I was like,
I'm glad you didn't shoot me. And then they threw
(11:57):
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 annount 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 I
(12:17):
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 fire fight. 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 flew me from there to to boggerm
(12:39):
Air Force Base where the rest of my platoon and
all the seals are waiting on me to get back.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
But yeah, then how does that look when they bring
you in? What tell me about that?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
So the ramp dropped off the helicopter or shooting on
the back of the plane, and they had to take me.
I couldn't really walk, so they picked me up and
we're carrying me down. I had ivy 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. I guess
I looked worse than I thought. And then they trained
(13:12):
forered me to the van. There was 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
(13:32):
for a minute.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Go ahead, are you able to talk at that point?
And what does that look like?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I was 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, banaged
my wounds, made sure my pain tarrant and my pain
was down. So I was really I had a doctor
in the village and they just they saved my life
for sure. And then when I got back the all
(14:02):
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 (14:15):
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 just like that.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
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 Gulah. 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 villageho were trying to sell me, because the Taliban
(14:54):
would show up every day negotiating for my head. And
they would tell me about it sitting down in my
room and have these little pow wows 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 saying,
but I could get the concept of what was going down.
And then eventually when the when the Green Berets and
rangers found me, I was cucked in underneath this rock
(15:16):
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 (15:35):
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's just
just just insane. So the moment they came to get you,
do you remember the first thing they said to.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
You, Sook you call my name out. I'll never forget it.
I heard it in English for the first time, and
I was great. There were 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 can seems very vividly, and I grabbed that guy.
I mean, I never heard a man like that. I'm
gonna get in here, but I was want to make
(16:12):
sure he was real, because I was real sick by then.
And uh, and they called me by my name, and uh,
they picked me up 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 there and
started a bandaging me up. And then that's when that
(16:35):
beats me for the first time. And uh they got
me out of there. Yeah, that happened, but it was
it was, it was crazy.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Michael Arry Show. Our conversation continues about the rescue. If
you 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, Mart
because I'd like to rewind and and let's talk about
how Gulab discovers you at the water. You know, there's
(17:04):
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 (17:21):
So the sun had come up the following day and
I somehow had crawled and 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
I'm surd but when you thirst will do something completely
different to a man than pained than hunger. I mean,
(17:44):
I'd never been at thirsty. And when I tried to
reach into the waterfall, I started sliding down the side
of the mountain, took off and I flipped into the
river and I actually knocked myself out again. But when
I came to, I got crawled into. I crawled back
up a little ways because I had seen a place
that looked pretty pretty inviting to drink some water. And
(18:06):
I got there and I probably had two stiffs 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, and then above that
there was a couple of guys with eight k's whenevern't
around that. I could hear him screaming and like they
were trying to track him down, so they started hunting me.
So I made a move and started crawling down into
(18:27):
the lake into the river and threw over these rocks
and stuff, and I managed to get into this crevice
into this ravine. Hard to explain, and I couldn't go anywhere.
They bottled at me, and I turned around to shoot,
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
(18:47):
right over the ravine I was sitting under is when
Gulag came over the rock. He was kind of just
sitting there and he was screaming at me, and he
was screaming American. He's like American, an American, And I
thought about this cement, so I thought I was the Taliban.
They were trying to hunt me down and came because
they thought it was the enemy. But in reality, when
they found out and they got 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
(19:08):
wasn't putting that together. I turned around to engage to
shoot him, and he put his hands up and he
was saying, okay, okay, okay, And I don't know why
I didn't kill him. I don't know why I didn't
kill this guy. My got. I mean, I had my bathy.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
What weapon did you have left at that point?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I had a rifle.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
That's you still had your rifle?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Okay, I still have 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.
It was like, you know you need that. So when
I mean I turned around, go.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Ahead, go ahead, I'm sorry, no, no, you go ahead.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
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 hydrates. He was saying to me,
shampoo hydrate. I'll never forget that. I was like, I
mean that sounds really good, but I was like, I
need some water.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
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 (20:06):
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, you 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 thinking just about to
look on his face and within his eyes, his eyes
and kill a lot. And then these kids started coming
(20:30):
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
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
(20:52):
then they picked me up, carried me into this room
and they stripped me naked, and there wasn't luck left
in my uniform anyways. Well, and they docked me up,
cleaned on my wounds, and then dressed me up instead
of a man Jamie's. That was almost the first day.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
And what was hurting the worst at.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
That point, Well, I had a lot of facial damage
and then I 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.
I couldn't really feel that because I think I was
(21:25):
kind of paralyzed. Was it was a blessing and a.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Curse at that or 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 of hope?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
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 were going to lay
down and die. I was just going to like the
way our training goes and everything that kicks in a
lot of people they can't anticipate that, like what do
you do when this happened? And what do you think
(21:58):
when this happen? Does a trust me? It kicks in
and I just kept that. Ultimately, I did change the diplomacy.
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 you know,
I was on my manners and then I was real polite.
I did everything I could. I started throughout the week
I started doctor and their kids, they would bring their
kids to me. I never told him I was a
(22:19):
steel I told him I was a doctor, but day
I'm not a seal on the 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 in the beginning,
I didn't know if it was working or out, but
they kept bringing me people, so it worked in my advantage.
And then they were calling me, doctor Marcus, that weren't
(22:41):
doctors universal talk to me about.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
The original the core for guys, Danny, Axe, Murph and you.
Why was each one of you chosen? What was your
role within the group, What were your skill sets?
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Danny's 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 threw us together, we worked well together. I've
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
us in and out of the target, and then he
(23:14):
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 in
and then that was our team. That's how we were
set up. Recon teams are really small, usually four to
six minutes.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
And are there 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.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah, absolutely, it was the qualifications 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 JA tech,
which means I could talk to the planes and drop bombs.
That was really beautiful in that environment. And then acts
being a sniper and a point man nanny with the
(24:09):
commn and the communication. So we have kind of like redundancy,
so if one of us get or goes down, the
other guy can step up and do his job.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
And we had just trained up together.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
It was our primary mission set. So they utilize us
and that could happen.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
You got the Michael Berry's show. Marcus Latrell is our guest.
Twenty years after operation on Red Wings, 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,
(24:44):
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? How did that go down?
Speaker 2 (25:03):
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 a little 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 how we were going to get there. So they
(25:25):
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 family 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. There's about what had happened, how it
went down. I mean still to this day, but they
know the real story.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
How hard was that to do?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
That was rough? That was rough. Just yeah, it's just tough.
Are CaCO officers, the officers that are actually in charge
of go around and tell the families that his son's
been injured or dead. I mean, I don't That's gotta
be probably the hardest job in the military. So I
(26:11):
really wasn't trained for that. And I, you know, I
love those guys. So when their family I understand. Look
if I if I could, if I had to lose
everything I had right now, just to bring all of
them back to their family members that have them, I would.
That may sound mean or crazy, but I because they're
great people and their sons are great men, and I
(26:35):
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've never, you know, never
try to tear me down. So that was a blessing
to me.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
You know, the book and then the movie and your
story and you as as the frontman for all of
this has to have been the greatest boon to recruiting.
Before Donald Trump was president in Cinvil War two, I
would imagine there were a lot of young Marcus Ortrell
(27:12):
wannabes who said, I want to do what that guy
has done. Has the Navy ever told you that, Yes, sir,
all the time.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
That's why I carried myself the way I do. I
realized the opportunity and the position that I was put in. God.
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 the minute I wake up, the minute I go down,
I'm constantly trying to better myself, collect wisdom, sharping my discipline,
(27:42):
sharp with my manners, and everything that I do. I
am an example. And once they put that cross on me,
that changed my life forever. Seals are usually kind of
in the shadows, but I was brought up, you know,
kind of into the light in front of everybody, and
I had extensive training from the military. I'm still with them.
I mean, they've been watching out for me forever and
(28:04):
they still do. And I, you know, thank you doesn't
really do it. It works on almost everything else in
the there. I don't have any words to describe how
how much it means to me and how thankful I am.
Not only put a military bit for our people, like
the American people and especially Texas. I mean, you've been
around me for a long time. You see it. One
(28:25):
of the reasons I'm going to public. Man, it's so
overwhelming how nice people are to me and what they
do for me, and and it only it keeps getting stronger.
It hasn't faded away. So and I'm trying to be
a good father and raise my kids. But then and
turn that around. The one thing I've preached them is
how great our people are. Hey, look, that's why I'm
(28:47):
so hard on them. 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 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. And man, I'm so thankful
(29:08):
for it. I don't even know what to say most
of the time.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Marcus Otrell 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 (29:23):
Okay, So anybody who still runs around me and knows anything,
that 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 of it. And then
I have three kids. My oldest son, Hunter, he's twenty seven,
he's out of college and got a great job with
the World Traveler was it was a blessing day to
(29:46):
get him. And then I have Acts and then Adelaide.
So most of my day is spend 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.
I actually study it so right. When I got back,
I was on the road so much. I lived out
of a suitcase city wrote three hundred days out of
(30:08):
the year. And then when you bring a wife and
a family into the picture, it kind of changes everything.
So she 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. There definitely phases in a man's
life when he's growing up. The life that I had
before being a teen guy running and gun and is
(30:29):
not conducive to being a family man out in civilian world.
Those two things kind of butt heads. So the hardest
thing I 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 into that package. I mean, I don't
(30:50):
wear the same watches anymore, the same sunglasses. I don't.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
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, it's 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.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
It was my heart and my soul. When I got
done 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,
(31:27):
I mean your boys, look at them, and then Rick
Perry 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 transferred to the next one.
And it's it's been great. I truly love it you.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
I've been at your father in law's home when you
host a lot of Navy seals, and I've described you
as the mayor of Silville. H 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 Navy
(32:15):
Seal training and are brought back to life the difficulty
of this training.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
You know.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
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 life.
(32:43):
And and I guess there's not a question there, but
I would ask for your reaction to that.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Sure before we let y'all see it's one thing and
the behind the scenes, just like watching the regular movie,
I mean you see the overall finished product that you
want to know 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 I that I was
(33:09):
able to be a part of being in the field too. Heyman,
Els has fortunity.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Thank you, and good night.
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