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

keep the faith.
“Marcus needs you!” Chaplain Trey Vaughn told this large and disparate
gathering. “And God is protecting him, and now repeat after me the words of the
Twenty-third Psalm. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they
comfort me.’ ”
Solemnly, some of the toughest men in the U.S. Armed Forces stood
shoulder to shoulder with the SEAL chaplain, each of them thinking of me as an
old and, I hope, trusted friend and teammate. Each of them, at those moments,
alone with his God. As I was with mine, half a world away.
At 0400 the call came through to the ranch from Coronado. Still no news.
And the SEALs started the process all over again, encouraging, sharing their
optimism, explaining that I had been especially trained to withstand such an
ordeal. “If anyone can get out of this, it’s Marcus,” Chaplain Vaughn said. “And
he’ll feel the energy in your prayers — and you will give him strength — and I
forbid you to give up on him — God will bring him home.”
Out there in the dry summer pastures, surrounded by thousands of head of
cattle, the words of the United States Navy Hymn echoed into the night. There
were no neighbors to wake. Everyone for miles around was in our front yard.
Mom says everyone was out there that night, again nearly three hundred. And
the policemen and the judges and the sheriffs and all the others joined Mom and
Dad and the iron men from SPECWARCOM, just standing there, singing at the
top of their lungs, “ ‘O hear us when we cry to Thee, for SEALs in air, on land
and sea . . .’ ”
Back in Sabray, Gulab and I were making a break for it. Clutching our rifles, we
left our little mud-and-rock redoubt in the lower street and headed farther down
the mountain. Painfully, I made the two hundred yards to a flat field which had
been cultivated and recently harvested. It was strictly dirt now, but raked dirt, as
if ready for a new crop.
I had seen this field before, from the window of house two, which I could
just see maybe 350 yards back up the mountain. I guess the field was about the
size of two American football fields; it had a dry rock border all around. It was
an ideal landing spot for a helicopter, I thought, certainly the only suitable area I
had ever seen up there. It was a place where a pilot could bring in an MH-47
without risking a collision with trees or rolling off a precipice or landing in the
middle of a Taliban trap.