Sunday Bonus Podcast - Archives-Marcus Luttrell Talks With Czar On The 20th Anniversary Of Operation Redwings

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Berry Show.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
We talked earlier this week to the Loan Survivor, our
dear friend Marcus Latrelle about his incredible forty day fast
this past summer. We had him on the show on
the twentieth anniversary of Operation Red Wings, and at that
time he took us back to how he made the
decision to join the Navy Seals, and he told us

(00:23):
in great detail the story that would eventually lead to
the Loan Survivor book and movie. If you missed our
interview with him on I think it was Monday Morning,
go back on the podcast to Monday Mornings podcast. He
did a forty day fast where he lost fifty two pounds.

(00:46):
A forty day fast of only water. He did two
cups of coffee every morning and only water thereafter. Now
he cheated a little bit because he would squeeze a
lemon's juice into his water in the afternoon. No food
forty days. He's a tough sum bitch, There's no doubt

(01:07):
about that. He loves a challenge. Fifty two pounds in
forty days. I get emails from people he can't that
don't kill you, what might kill you? It didn't kill
him you know what else will kill you? Getting shot
eleven times and falling down the side of a mountain
and crawling eleven miles and drinking filthy water and being

(01:30):
beat on and stabbed. Yeah, that'll kill you too. But
he's still here, isn't he. The Michael berry Is Show twenty
years ago, George W. Bush was the president. A lot
of folks you and I knew were serving in Iraq
and Afghanistan. The death toll was disturbing. Every community in

(01:54):
the country was affected. My how things have changed years.
I never forget the first reference I heard to Loan Survivor.
My brother Chris had read the book, and he said,
have you read this book Loan Survivor? You No, he said,

(02:14):
do you know who Marcus atrell Is said, I don't.
He's written this book called Loan Survivor. Okay, it's about
they went in Operation Red Wings, they went into Afghanistan,
and he's the only one who came out. It's it's
a story, man, Wow, it is Wow, it is It's incredible.

(02:39):
It's disturbing. Then they make the movie. Then we get
to meet Marcus. Then we develop a friendship, and a
lot has happened in those twenty years. It's time to
revisit that twenty years later, Marcus Atrell. Welcome back to
the program.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Thank you, good morning.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
What were you doing just before you came on the
show this morning?

Speaker 1 (03:04):
All right, with complete transparency. One of my labs got
hit by a skunk the other day yesterday, and I'm
out here and I don't know when the last time
you've had that happen, but brother, it it's something so
that that's kind of what I'm dealing with right now.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
I was thinking of a great headline for this discussion,
and I already have it. Uh lone survivor Navy seal
Marcus Latrelle admitted douching before interview.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Right, I don't know, because you know, the first thing
she did when she got hit would come in and
get on the couch. So when I walked in, I
don't know what smell it. I don't know. They just
do that, right, Yeah, what do you have a what
remedy do you use to get rid of that funk?

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Marcus? We had a place out in Carmen next to
Chapel Hill and we had two dogs get hit two
consecutive weekends and we went to I called my buddies
that were veterinarians, and they said, go get mass and
Gill Douche that is the best. I came back and
talked about it on the air. I heard, I heard

(04:12):
every solution known to mankind. I think it's a mess.
No matter what you do. Have you decided what you're doing.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
So I go with the hydrogen peroxide and the pall
mallis okay, Yeah, to an oil right oil.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Base yep, yep.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
And the thing about it when she goes it's good,
they need to bottle that up and use it and
give it to people for defense. Let's talk about how
you're getting attacked and you smack somebody with that, they're
not gonna stick around.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, even a porcupine. You know,
you could hide behind a shield with a porcupine, but
that's skunk. That's bad stuff. Let's tell the story you've
told before, but I think people should know how you
and and Morgan decided you wanted to be Navy seals
and began training at a very young age. And the
man who put you through that program it.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Was Morgan's idea. It came down I was feeding the
horses and he's like, hey, I know what we're gonna do.
We're gonna be Navy Field. It's gonna be great. We
get to jump out of airplanes, we get to shoot guns,
we get to blow things up, we get the scuba dive,
and there's a really good chance we're gonna die. And
I was like, okay, you sign me up. You know.
Being a younger brother, I kind of followed him around
everywhere he came up with the ideas, but I usually

(05:28):
had to go first, so that that's when that happened.
We were new teenagers, fourteen fifteen years old, and there
was a gentleman who lived in town. We actually grew
up with his daughter. We were in the same grade,
and he would come into the high school and work
the kids out in the gym, and then he had
a reputation for training young men to go into the military,

(05:53):
into the special forces. They was Billy. So we got
the the curve to go ask him to train us.
I mean I walked up on him, I'll never get it,
and caught him during dinner time, got peace fried chicken
in his hand and he's like, what do you knock
over the door? He's like, what do you want? And
I was like, well, sir, we want to be navy seals.
We heard you train people to do that, and I

(06:14):
was wondering if you would train us. And he kind
of looked at me for a little bit, and I
had some buddies with me, looked over my shoulder, and
he told us four to thirty tomorrow and he slammed
the door in our face. So we left, and then
the next day we showed up at four thirty. Matter
of fact, this is my first life lesson that I
ever got taught with him. Kind of stands true to
this very day. You know, someone tells you to be

(06:35):
somewhere at a certain time, you're always fifteen minutes early.
But we were. We showed up at four thirty, which
is not on time, and he man, he was out
there waiting on us. I remember running up to the yard.
He was pointing at us and at the ground. He's
pointing at us, watching at us and at the ground,
And then when we got within the yard that he
was cussing us up one time and down the other.

(06:56):
I mean good. You know, some people just have a
gift for profanity. He does. He has that, and they
can apply it in certain ways to when it and
then it's really really impactful. I still remember it. I mean, bro,
this is over twenty years ago. And uh. He stopped
us in the street and he drew a line in
the dirt with the head with his bootheel, and he said,

(07:18):
every day you come here, I'm gonna I'm gonna ask
you to cross this line. He goes, what you're wanting
to do and where you're going is a voluntary program.
He's putting time on. He goes, you should probably quit
right now, because if you cross this line, I'm gonna
I'm gonna beat you. I'm gonna do everything I can
to break you. He's like, I'm not your mother. I
don't care whether you live or die. And he said,
when a man goes to war, his brain turns the

(07:39):
water and runs out of his ears, and all he
has to go on is instinct. In the guy to
the right and the left of him. He's like, if
you want a little bit of that across the line.
And at that age, you know you're invincible still, I
mean you you walk around with immortality. You can feel it.
When you're that age, everything heals up the way it's
supposed to. So we did we cross the line? And
I remember he dropped us down to do some push

(08:00):
He's like, everybody on your face, even three hundred push
us for being late. And that's not a lot of
push ups. But if you got some guys who aren't
in shape, you're gonna be paying the man. So that's
kind of what happened to us. He started mashing the deck,
going down, up and down, and we got out of sink.
He started a teeter totter a little bit and he
stopped us, and I'll never forget. He goes, you know,
as a team, you're gonna go down together, and you're

(08:20):
gonna come up together, you're gonna live together, and you're
gonna die together. He goes, you're not a team. Start over,
And that's how it started for us. And he just
from that moment on he waged into us pretty hard.
I remember we we probably got an hour into it.
A couple of hours into it. We couldn't get those
push ups down, and he got so sick and tired
of us that he kicked us off his property. He's like,
go home. He goes, you're you're you know, you're you're

(08:43):
a disgrace to your family. He goes, when you get home,
walk right up to your dad and punch him in
the face and tell him to start over, because he
fed up on you. And he said, if you want
to do this again tomorrow, show up on time. Don't
ever be late. My time is the one thing I
can't control. I don't have any bearing over it, so
I'm not gonna waste it on you. You if you're
not gonna you're not gonna show up on time. And
that was the first lesson he taught me, and all

(09:05):
of us actually kind of grew much there.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
How much older than you is, Morgan.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Seven minutes.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Oh, that makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
It would have been back in the day, it'd have
been the King.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
Marcus Latrell is our guests. We're going to Afghanistan and
Operation Red Wings and Loan Survivor and all of that
coming up.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
Well, well, well, lucky you. The Michael Ferry Show continues.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Our guest is Loan Survivor, Marcus Latrell. Twenty years after
Operation Red Wings, Marcus, lets rocket forward to you getting
orders to go to Afghanistan. How did that come down?

Speaker 1 (09:51):
So they split the platoon in half and the steal
teams there's there's troops, and there's platoons, and since there
was two wars going down the same time, there was
more than enough work to go around. And our particular
platoon was specialized in reconnaissance. I was of special deliveries,
so we were a smaller unit. But what would happen

(10:11):
is they would split us down the middle and kind
of pimp us out to the other seal teams because
of our specialty. So when it came time to see
who was going where put my half of the platoon
was tasked to go to Afghanistan and the rest of
our guys went to Iraq. And that's how that worked out.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Was there were you and Morgan intentionally split?

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Absolutely? Oh? Yeah, absolutely we Especially in the beginning, I
went through seal training before him, so I was ahead
of him a little bit. But eventually we wound up
back together. And the only stipulation on that was especially
in the beginning, as we weren't allowed to ride in
the same helicopters or the same hume. And when I

(11:01):
got when I got initially into the teams, I got
sent to Iraq first and he got sent to Afghanistan.
And then when I got back from Iraq, I got
sent to Afghanistan, so it was it was one of
those deals. We were kind of missing each other back
and forth. Eventually wound up together in Iraq, but in
the beginning we were separated by awards.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
So tell me about the training for Red Wings.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
We started. The thing about Navy Seals is we're constantly training.
If we're not sleeping or eating or working out, then
it's always training, work up for training. And then, like
I said, our job was special to conaistance. We were
doing a lot of direct action missions, village takedowns, snatching grabs,
sniper overwatches, meaning it was desolate country out there. It's

(11:51):
completely different fighting than we're talking about in Iraq and
the city. So we were doing a lot of helicopter
reconnaissance and then then we would fast rope in and
they would drop us off in the mountains and leave
us anywhere from five to ten days, maybe two weeks,
and then they would reach supplies by air drop. So
we were kind of the eyes on if any unit

(12:11):
does a hit or they go in, they're always going
to have eyes on the target first to kind of
get an idea of what was going on. And that
was our job, so it was constantly working with the
helicopter units getting that online. The satellite imagery was getting
pretty good back in two thousand and five. It's not
like it is now where you could see everything and

(12:31):
through walls, but back then the imagery was getting pretty good.
So we were doing a lot of map studies, switching
up our gear, making sure everything was good enough and
we were well prepared for whatever environment we we got
in because the terrain would change with the miles, so
it was constant preparation and training.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
So take me through the moment. You're on the side
of the mountain and you're there to get the bad guy,
and these goat herders come upon you.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
So we were separated, probably about enough to where we
could barely see each other, so not enough to where
we were sitting right beside each other to make a
big signature, but far enough to away from each other
that if we needed to get to each other, we could,
And the terrain really wasn't conducive for a perfect setup,

(13:26):
so we had perched up. We were well over ten
thousand feet on the side of this mountain, So imagine
a volcano with a village stuck down in the bottom
of it, and we came in over the top of it.
So what we did was we kind of rope down
and climbed down inside of the volcano itself so we
could get a better vantage point on what was going
on in the village. We set up in a triangle formation.

(13:49):
I was at the top of it. The top of
the mountain was probably fifteen to twenty meters above my head,
and then Danny and Mikey was right under actually right
underneath me, and then on my right left flank was
Danny and Axe. I maybe saying that wrong. I think
Mikey might have been underneath me. It's been a minute now,

(14:11):
but anyways, we set up, started watching the target and
the sun had come up. We'd been there overnight and
we were just monitoring all the activity when we had
to move, so we relocated onto a finger that was

(14:32):
sitting off the side of the mountain so we could
get a better dvantage on some of the houses. And
when we did that, about an hour after set up,
a shepherd walked up on us, and I mean he
walked right up on it. And now I'll never forget
to look on this zoo's face because he didn't he
had no idea we were there at all, and we

(14:52):
grabbed him and pulled him off to the side and
started to interrogate him. And then about that time two
more came up the mountain and we snatched them up
and sat them down, and then the herd of goats
came walking up. I remember there was a dog there,
which was kind of odd because these are don't keep dogs.
But I remember there's a big, old, freaking mangy dog

(15:13):
that was barking. And so we started going through the
numbers of what to do, and eventually what happened was
we turned them loose and then they left. We watched
them leave, and then we relocated back into a different
position back on the side of the mountain. Right after that,
about an hour or so is when the main body

(15:36):
came up on top of us.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
And there was yeah, and they came up on top
of you. You know they've come up on top of you.
You didn't see them or hear them. You just bullets
start whizzing, right.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
So they're extremely quiet, and you can't take anything away
from from from them as an enemy because they are
great at what they do. They know that terrain. They
were a formidable force and I'll always pay him respect
like that. I mean, they can fight. So at first,
I kind of looked down and it was accident was

(16:09):
below me, and I remember him looking past me. He
was cut down behind this rock and he had his
rifle up. So I kind of looked around and looked
back up above me and there was a huge tree
and this guy. I saw an AK muzzle come around it.
And then the guy was he was hooded up, turned
around and looked at looked down into us. So I
rolled my rifle up and when I went to take

(16:30):
a shot, he pulled his head back around the tree.
And after when I came off my scope, I could
look right above me, to my left and right, and
there was guy setting up over the top of us
and down on the side of it. And then I
remember looking over at Mikey. I said, get back on
the clock or fixed and get it on. And then
I turned back around and waited, and eventually what happened

(16:52):
was that guy pulled his head around that tree to
take a shot, and when he did, I dumped him.
And when I dumped him, it just it was game on.
They kind of unleashed and the fight commenced and Eventually
what happened was is we got pushed out of that position,
and the terrain was so violent that it just we

(17:13):
kind of started tumbling down the mountain.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
How long was it until one of you had been hit?

Speaker 1 (17:21):
That was probably only initial while we were still in there,
so pretty quick. And then systematically each guy started getting goods.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Down the mountain right hold on just a moment Marcus
Otrell's I guess, of course his diary would be published
and Loane Survivor would be a best seller, 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 that time that I

(17:51):
grew to have such incredible respect for were Marcus Attrell
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 1 (18:16):
Once that thing started, it was kind of a free
for all because they had us covered on three sides,
so the only way we could go was down the mountain.
And then a couple hours into that they had come
up from the base of the mountain from the village,
so they had us in a three hundred and sixty
degree loop. It wasn't really anywhere we could go, which
means you had to keep moving the entire time. The

(18:36):
hardest thing to hit as the moving target, but because
of the terrain and the altitude, just making the movement
was tough enough. By a couple hours into it, everyone
was so exhausted that and shot up that they just
systematically picked us apart one by one as we were
going down the mountain. And then at the end of
the day I was I had slipped into this ravine

(19:00):
kind of was laid in between these rocks, and 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

(19:23):
night into the next morning and halfway through the next
day before the villagers found me. It was right next
to a waterfall in a river.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
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 1 (19:48):
Oh, 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 miles.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
And you started how much after sundown or after it
got dark.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
Probably about almost a couple hours afterwards. I just started
making a movement when I couldn't hear anything, and when
I thought that they and Matta had returned to base,
I just started moving.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
And there was zero chance you would have survived. If
you'd stayed there, they would have found you right.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
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 of 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 was saturated.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
When you saw the I'm assuming you saw the Chinook
shot down.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
I didn't. That's how loud it was that I couldn't
hear it or see it get shot down and rolled
down the mountain. I had my ear drums 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.

(21:10):
They told me one of the guys was 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 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 when
I when I got the news that that was solid.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
I'm gonna ask a stupid question, why couldn't they get
the colms 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 coms back to the base?
I mean, was the equipment not good enough or what
was the issue?

Speaker 1 (21:47):
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 of
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 or I can make communications. It's the same principle.

(22:11):
But go way back and when you get into two
thousand and five and you're dealing with the Statcom radio
and then the planes moving overhead and the relays that
we had back and forth, it was just intermittent. That's
just the way it works. That's why we have checkpoints
and waypoints as we're going along. So if we do
miss the calm window, then there's another checkpoints when we
get to that we can radio back in before everyone
starts losing their mind and trying to come get us.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Do you remember the first hit you took?

Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah, I go, oh yeah, you don't forget it? Absolutely,
what's going to get me over a lot? Well, 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

(23:02):
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 their sight because a
lot of times you couldn't see where it was so loud,
and at this 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

(23:24):
and knocked me out, and when I came to the smell,
that's the one thing that you couldn't you can't duplicate
as the smell of death when that's around, and how
the ground was on fire too, and I remember the
smoke and all that stuff like that. It just kind
of hit me, hit me pretty hard, and and then
it just changed the dynamic, the way you the way

(23:46):
you move there.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
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 of.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Bringing me out of there. If I if I could,
or if there'd be another movie made, it would be
about the ending, the way that what it took to
get me out of there, and and pay respects and
give acknowledgment to everything that went to pulling me out,
that that in't itself was is a story because it
happened at night. In the in the movie they made

(24:27):
Low Survivor it was a daytime rescue, and in reality
it was at night, and I mean it was a
free for all, crazy scenario storms and everyone was out there.
It was probably the most intimidated, intimidating time because I
didn't you know, you think I'm getting rescued, but then

(24:49):
there's a chance. There's always a chance you can die.
And when they 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,
just didn't have enough time, was the ending, how they
actually had and what they had to go through to

(25:09):
rescue me, because everyone who was in theater was involved
in getting me out of there, for sure, and then
to follow on to get all the guys off the mountain.
I remember our teammates were still laying out there. We
had a helicopter go down and had sixteen guys on it.
They had to recover all those guys they were taking fire.
It was. It was a crazy scenario for sure.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
The letter that you wrote that was carried to the
American military, what was on there?

Speaker 1 (25:41):
It had my name, what operation I was with, and
what condition I was in. And then it also told
them that the guy who delivered the message the message
was one of the guys that rescued me and was
kind of saved my life.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
And you wrote all that out wounded as you were.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
I did. I had a little help. Yeah, they brought
me some a pencil and a pizza. I had a
paper already, and then yeah, I got that done.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Hold on, Marcus Troll's our guess.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
What's the name to say?

Speaker 2 (26:15):
Marcus Treill 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

(26:35):
that are fascinating about all of this and his incredible life.
Marcus all Treill is our guest. Marcus, you mentioned that
the extrication of you, the rescue of you, didn't get
covered properly in the movie because you couldn't give everything justice.
What are some things we didn't see?

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Okay? So I was the great a Hodge. The guys
who finally found me, and if you if you could
have seen them, I mean it looked 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

(27:17):
they found me, they had to they surrounded 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 and it was dark, so by
now the sun had gone down, and the helicopter had

(27:38):
to come in from the base of the mountain, 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 the guys who found me were out
of water. And then a firefight ensued, and then above
the mountain where a bunch of fixed wing aircraft were

(27:59):
drop up an ordinance down on the bad guys. And
then in the distance at the base of the mountain,
so down the mountain there was a river and the
helicopter was coming up the river and the callsign of
the guy who was flying the birds name of Spanking
and Jeff Pearson, great, great fricking guy. And and here
you'll tell you. It was so dark, and by this

(28:20):
time they had juiced me up, so I was kind
of having a good time, Like I wasn't feeling any
pain anymore, and I was just kind of sitting there
watching all of our guys do their thing, and it
was it was the most amazing thing to watch them work. Normally,
when you're in something you don't you can't anticipate with that.
But when I had a chance to step back and
actually watch our guys go to war and it was awesome.

(28:42):
And then that helicopter bo it came up over the
side of that cliff and the dust kicked up, and
so it's called a brown eye. We couldn't see anything well.
When he came to land, the ravine we were on
was about as wide as the helicopter itself. Eric and
he goes, from that us came up. I couldn't see nothing,
and then there was Pj's in the back of the

(29:03):
bird trying to land it, trying to tell them how
far from the ground they were, and nobody could see
anyk 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,

(29:24):
and he did he stuck it. Well. The green Berets
they picked me up and were carrying me towards the Hilo,
and I was dressed up in man Jamie, so I
looked like an Afghani and they pulled me up at
the tail. So you don't come up on the tail rotor,
so the PGS 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

(29:46):
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 me on
the helicopter and we sat there for a while because
they had to unload the water for all the guys
who were still on the mountain, so they had to
go on a follow on mission. They didn't even come
home with me, and then we sat there and then

(30:06):
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 asked him my dog's name. I told him that
it's kind of verification code. And we went back and
we landed and they're still in a firefight. We landed
on a base and then they transferred me from a

(30:29):
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 Toboggram Air
Force Base where the rest of my platoon and all
the seals are waiting on me to get back.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
But then how does that look when they bring you in?
What tell me about that?

Speaker 1 (30:51):
So the ramp dropped off the helicopter or shooting on
the back of the plane, and they had to pick me.
I couldn't really walk, so they picked me up and
we're tearing me down at ivy stuck out of me
and they they said they abandoned me up and uh,
I remember there was a lady standing by the ramp
and she covered her face and started crying. I guess
I looked worse than I thought. And then they strengthened

(31:13):
me to these vans. 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 relations to
where they thought we were, and it just it all
started from there. And then I was in the hospital

(31:34):
for a minute.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
Go ahead are you able to talk at that point?
And what does that look like?

Speaker 1 (31:42):
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, bandaged
my wounds, made sure my pain, telling my pain was down.
So I was really I had a doctor in the
village and they just they made my life for sure.
And then when I got back the all the army

(32:05):
guys started working on me, and then we started doing
the debrief 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 2 (32:19):
In the movie, there is a conflict within the village
that 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.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
It just like that, Well, there was there was something
in there that didn't want me in there, and I
could tell immediately who they were. They 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,

(32:56):
and then there was some people in the village who
were trying to sell me. The Taliban would show up
every day negotiating for my head, and they would tell
me about it, sit 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 that well.
I didn't understand what they were saying, but I could
get the concept of what was going down. And then

(33:17):
eventually when the when the Green Berets and the 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 start shooting
in there or firing RPG at the wall, and then
the villagers would move me somewhere else. So it was

(33:39):
it was kind of chaotic and stressful, for sure.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
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 say to you,
Sook you.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
Call my name out. I'll never forget it. I heard
it in English for the first time. And Uh. I
was draped over these two guys and my head was down,
so 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 could
see very vividly, and I grabbed that guy. I mean
I never hugg a man like that. I was like,
get in here, but I was going to make sure

(34:22):
he was real because I was real sick by then.
And uh, hey, he called me by my name, and
uh they picked me up and and took me into
this this stable. Uh right underneath on the side of
the mountain there was this stable down there they were
keeping mules in. And they laid me down in there

(34:43):
and started abandoning me up and then that's when that
jeeps 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 2 (34:54):
Michael Berry Showing Podcast. Please tell one friend and if
you're so incline write a nice review of our podcast. Comments, suggestions, questions,
and interest in being a corporate sponsor and partner can
be communicated directly to the show at our email address,
Michael at Michael Berryshow dot com, or simply by clicking

(35:18):
on our website Michael Berryshow dot com. The Michael Berry
Show and Podcast is produced by Ramon Roebliss, The King
of Ding. Executive producer is Chad Nakanishi. Jim Mudd is
the creative director. Voices Jingles, Tomfoolery and Shenanigans are provided

(35:43):
by Chance McLain. Director of Research is Sandy Peterson. Emily
Bull is our assistant listener and superfan. Contributions are appreciated
and often incorporated into our production. Where possible, we give credit,
where not, we take all the credit for ourselves. God

(36:04):
bless the memory of Rush Limbaugh. Long live Elvis, be
a simple man like Leonard Skinnard told you, and God
bless America. Finally, if you know a veteran suffering from PTSD.
Call Camp Hope at eight seven seven seven one seven

(36:25):
PTSD and a combat veteran will answer the phone to
provide free counseling