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

What I did not know at the time but learned later was that everyone thought I
was dead. Back home it was now some time in the small hours of Wednesday
morning, June 29, and several hours previously a television station had
announced that a four-man SEAL reconnaissance team that was on a mission in
the northeast mountains of Afghanistan had all been killed in action. My name
was among the four.
The station, like the rest of the world’s media, had also announced the loss of
the MH-47 helicopter with everyone on board, eight SEALs and eight members
of the 160th SOAR Night Stalkers. Which made twenty special forces dead, the
worst special ops catastrophe ever. My mom collapsed.
By the middle part of that Tuesday evening, people had begun to arrive at the
ranch, local people, our friends, people who wanted to be with my mom and dad,
just in case there was anything they could do to help. They arrived in trucks,
cars, SUVs, and on motorbikes, a steady stream of families who all said damn
near the same thing: We just want to be with you.
Outside the door of the main house, the front yard was like a parking lot. By
midnight there were seventy-five people in attendance, including Eric and Aaron
Rooney, from the family that owns one of the big East Texas construction
corporations; David and Michael Thornberry, local land, cattle, and oil people,
with their father, Jonathon; Slim, Kevin, Kyle, and Wade Albright, my boyhood
friends, a lot of them Aggies.
There was Joe Lord; Andy Magee; Cheeser; Big Roon; my brother Opie and
our buddy Sean; Tray Baker; Larry Firmin; Richard Tanner; Benny Wiley; the
strength coach at Texas Tech in Lubbock. Those big tough guys were all in grade
school with me.
Another of our local construction moguls, Scott Whitehead, showed up. He
never even knew us, but he wanted to be there. He turned out to be a tower of
strength for my mom, still calls her every day. Master Sergeant Daniel, highly
decorated U.S. Army, showed up in full uniform, knocked on the front door, and
told my dad he wanted to help in any way he could. He still shows up nearly
every day, just to make sure Mom’s okay.
And of course there was my twin brother, Morgan, making all speed to the
ranch, refusing point-blank to accept the broadcaster’s “fact” that I was dead.
My other brother Scottie got there first, but not being an identical twin brother to
me, he could only know what he was told, not what the telepathic wavelengths
told him. He was almost as devastated as Mom.
My dad hit the Internet to check if there was further news or any official