Lone Survivor_ The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 ( PDFDrive )

leg.
The Taliban army was still following me. I heard them, louder as I climbed
higher, as if they’d been waiting for me. They were certainly a bigger force now
than they had been two hours ago. I could hear them all around, more and more
people searching for me, dogs barking, maybe a half mile back.
By now I could hear the river, which I knew was the same one I’d fallen in
the previous afternoon. The same river on whose banks my three buddies lay
dead. Thirsty as I was, I could not bring myself to go in search of its ice-cold
flowing waters gushing down the mountainside. That was the only water on this
earth I could not drink, water from the river which flowed right by the bodies of
Mikey, Danny, and Axe. I had to find a different one.
With no compass, only my watch, I had to revert to navigation by the stars,
which mercifully were now out, the thick high banks of clouds having passed
over. I found the Big Dipper and followed the long curve of its stars all the way
to the right angle at the end, where the shape angles upward, pointing directly at
the polestar. That’s the North Star. We learned it in BUD/S.
If I turned directly toward it and held out my left arm at a right angle, that
way was west, the way I was headed. I think at this point I may have been
suffering from hallucinations, that very odd sensation when you cannot really
tell reality from a dream.
Like most SEALs, I’d experienced it before, at the back end of Hell Week.
But right now I was becoming very light-headed. I was a hunted animal all alone
in wild country, and I tried to pretend my buddies were still alive. I invented
some kind of a formation with Danny climbing out on my right flank, Axe up to
the left, and Mikey calling the shots in the rear.
I pretended they were there, I just couldn’t see them. I think I was reaching
the end of my tether. But I kept reminding myself of Hell Week. I kept telling
myself this was just Hell Week all over again; I’d sucked it up then, and I could
suck it up now. Whatever these bastards threw at me, I could take it. I’d come
through. I might have been losing my marbles, but I was still a SEAL.
I could not, however, deny the fact I was also becoming disheartened. For the
moment my pursuers were quiet, and I suddenly came upon a huge tree with a
couple of big logs resting directly underneath it. I crawled under one of them and
rested for a while, just lying there, feeling damned sorry for myself.
In my head I played over and over again one of the verses of Toby Keith’s
country and western classic “American Soldier.” I remember lying there quietly
singing the words to myself, the part that said I might have to die...“I’ll bear that