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

I didn’t know at the time that these people had formed the bedrock of the
five-day prayer vigil that had taken place on the property while I was missing. A
vigil to which no one had been invited, and no one knew if anyone else would be
there; a vigil born of pure friendship and concern, which started with such
melancholy prophesies of doom and tenuous hopes, but ended on the sunlit
uplands of answered prayers. I could scarcely believe it when I heard what had
happened.
And yet, standing right before me, was the cast-iron evidence of the love
those Texans must have had for me and for what I had tried to do on behalf of
my country. It came in the form of a brand-new stone house standing across a
new paved courtyard, maybe twenty feet from the main house. It was two floors
high, with a wide, timbered upper deck around the bedrooms, which abutted a
tall, stone-walled shower, custom-made for me. Inside, the house was perfectly
decorated, carpeted, and furnished, with a big plasma television.
“How the hell did that get here?” I asked Mom. And what she then told me
blew me away. It started with a visit, after the vigil had ended, from a marvelous
Texan landowner called Scott Whitehead. He was just one of so many who came
to see my parents and express his delight that I had been found. He’d never, by
the way, met any of the family before.
And before he went, he explained he had a close friend who owned a
construction company in Houston and wondered if there was anything Marcus
might like when he came home.
Mom explained how I had always wanted a little space of my own where I
could...well...chill, as the late Shane Patton would undoubtedly have expressed
it. And perhaps a small extension off my lower-floor bedroom might be really
nice. She was thinking rock-bottom price, and maybe she and Dad could manage
that.
Next thing that happened, she said, two of the biggest trucks she’d ever seen
came rolling into the drive, accompanied by a crane and a mechanical digger, a
couple of architects, site engineers, and God knows what else. Then, Mom says,
a team of around thirty guys, working twenty-four hours a day in shifts over
three days, built me a house!
Scott Whitehead just said he was proud to have done a small favor for a very
great Texan (Christ! He meant me, I think). And he still calls Mom every day,
just to check we’re all okay.
Anyway, Morgan and I moved in, freeing up space for the stream of SEALs
who still kept coming to see us. And I stayed home with the family, resting for