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

found, that I was stable and unlikely to die, but regretfully, the other three team
members had died in action. I heard them confirm they had me safe but that we
were still in a potentially hostile Afghan village and that we were surrounded by
Taliban and al Qaeda troops. They were requesting evacuation as soon as night
fell.
The debriefing went on for a long time as I tried to explain details of my
actions on and off the battlefield. And all the time, the kids kept rushing in to see
me. They were all over the place, hanging on to my arm, their own arms around
my neck, talking, shouting, laughing. The adults from the village also came in,
and I had to insist they could stay, especially Sarawa, who had reappeared, and
Gulab, who had never left. I owed my life to each of them.
So far, no one had found the bodies of Mikey, Danny, and Axe. And we
spent a long time going over satellite photographs for me to pinpoint the precise
places they had died. The army guys had some data on the battle, but I was able
to fill in a lot of stuff for them. Especially to explain how we had fallen back
under Mikey’s command, and then kept falling back, how we never had any
option but to establish our defense farther down the mountain, always farther
down.
I recounted how Axe had held our left flank with such overwhelming
gallantry, and how Danny, shot so many times, kept firing, trying to hold our
right flank until his dying breath. And how, in the end, there were just too many
of them, with too much firepower, too many of those big Russian-made
grenades, the ones that finally blew Axe and me clean out of the battle.
Taliban casualties had been, of course, high. It seemed everyone knew that. I
think all of us in that little room, including Gulab, thought the Taliban would not
risk another frontal assault on the Americans. And so we waited until the sun
began to slip behind the mountains, and I said good-bye to all the kids, several of
whom were crying. Sarawa just slipped quietly away. I never saw him again.
Gulab led us down to the flat field at the base of the village, and with the
comms up and running, we waited it out. The Ranger security guard was in
formation around the perimeter, in case the Taliban decided to give it one last
shot. I knew they were out there, and I never took my eyes off that mountain
slope as we all sat there, around twenty army personnel and maybe ten villagers,
the guys who had stuck by me from the beginning.
We all sat in the dark, backs to the stone wall, looking at the field, just
waiting. Way over the high horizon, shortly before 2200, we could hear the
unmistakable distant beat of a big U.S. military helicopter, clattering in over the