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

I sent them right out there again, trying to make it clear that I needed the
mountainside searched for anything like this, anything that might have come in
on the parachutes.
My guys don’t drop cell phone pamphlets, but they might have been trying to
drop me a cell phone and the pamphlet just came with it. Either way, I could not
find out for myself, so I had to get the guys to do it for me. Gulab stayed, but the
others went with the kids, like a golf crowd fanned out to look for Tiger’s ball in
deep rough.
Gulab and I settled down. We had a cup of tea and some of those delicious
little candies, then lounged back on our big cushions. Suddenly, bang! The door
nearly cannoned off its hinges. I shot tea all over the rug, and in came everyone
again.
This time they had found a 55-90 radio battery and an MRE (meal ready to
eat). The guys must have thought I was starving. Correct. But the battery did not
fit my PRC-148 radio, which sucked, because if it had, I could have fired up a
permanent distress signal straight into the sky above the village. As things were,
I had no idea if my present weak radio beacon would reach much higher than the
rooftops.
I had no need to interrogate the kids further. If there had been anything else
out there on the mountain, they’d have found it. There obviously wasn’t.
Whatever the drop had contained, the Taliban had beaten the kids to it. The one
bit of reverse good news was they clearly had the cell phone or phones, and they
would probably try to use them. And the entire U.S. electronic surveillance
system in the province of Kunar would be listening, ready to locate the caller.
But then I noticed something which made my blood boil. Almost every one
of the kids had been battered. They had bruises on their faces, cut lips, and
bloody noses. Those little pricks out there had beaten up my kids, punched them
in their faces, to stop them getting the stuff from the drop. There is no end to the
lengths these people will go to to win this war.
And I’ll never forget what they did to the kids of Sabray. I spent the rest of
the day patching them up, all those brave little guys trying not to cry. I nearly
wiped out the entire contents of Sarawa’s medical bag. Whenever I hear the
word Taliban, I think of that day first.
More strategically, it did seem the American military believed there was at
least one SEAL still alive down here. The question was, What now? No one
wanted to risk sending in another MH-47 helicopter, since the Taliban seemed to
have become very adroit at knocking them down. Mind you, they have had a lot