The Sole Survivor

[Ken White]

ask for opinions?

We don't know. Luttrell says vote in the book; he apparently told the Murphys something else...

We'll never know. Nor, really, do we need to.

[Culpeper]

ask for opinions?

We don't know. Luttrell says vote in the book; he apparently told the Murphys something else...

We'll never know. Nor, really, do we need to.

You're right and I'll take it a step further and state we don't have a need to know. Actually, I think we know too much.

[negotiator6]

Having done some travel along the Paki-Afgh border in 2003, I offer the following reference the lost of 3 SEALS that terrible day.

First, the SEAL team was equipped with an Iridium SAT phone..a company that went bankrupt in 1999 (try Google search to validate). The billion dollar investment went for a paltry sum of less than $100,000 at the bankruptcy hearing.

DOD had invested (as alleged) $300-400 million because DOD was the primary user of the Iridium SAT system and had the phones fully integrated into the DOD system.

The Iridium phones were totally un-reliabe. LT Murphy had an Iridium SAT phone which required inserting nearly 20 digits into the handset before one might..I repeat..might hear a ring tone. Hardly the kind of communication system required for 4 SEALS on a TS covert behind enemy lines mission. The background and complaints about the Iridium were wide spread-DOD knew...or should of known these phones were not operational in the field most of the time.

I used a Thuraya SAT phone which worked every time..with speed dialing in the event one did not have the time to make a concerted relaxed call to "somewhere". The Thuraya also had a built in GPS..allowing step one to get a long/lat, then place the call to provide the position and SITREP if required. ( I used a Thuraya in both Sudan and Afghanistan and never had a problem..)

In short, the Department of Defense and the leadership at Bagram AB who planned the insertion using the Iridium SAT phone as the primary means of communication were grossly negligent in providing LT Murphy and his team the best communication available.

Being shot in the back while attempting to insert up to 20 digits into a phone during a firefight was perhaps the last option for the team. Written articles and the book define the last moments..

But, again, ask just about anyone about the Iridium SAT system and most will tell the same story. The problem is....these SAT systems are still being used today!

If the mission were so dangerous..why did not the AF have a drone overhead providing real time feed on the SEALS. And...lastly, some of you may recall Operation Anaconda which commenced on 3 March 2002 launching from Gardez (I was there in March of 2003). A SEAL team was sent to secure a mountain top; but bad guys had already secured the top of the mountain with 12.7 mm plus fortified bunker system. The SEAL team retrograded down the mountain...the team commander tried to use his Iridium to contact Bagram AB, but could not..He ended up calling his base back at Norfolk..the duty officer, if I recall correctly. Again, where was the base line logic and coordination with such important missions as LT Murphy's mission and the SEAL mountaintop mission just prior to launching Operation Anaconda? One has to really question the organizational leadership on both operations.

I have some AAR photos of the hilltop eventually taken by the Rangers; if anyone who was there wishes several, please email me. Out here!

[Distiller]

On killing those three civilians: Sheperds are usually alone for extended periods, but who knows? On that particular day they might have had their scheduled food supply, or one of them was just visiting and expected back soon. In any case disrupting their usual (unknown?) behavioral pattern might as well have alerted the villagers, so killing them wouldn't really have safed the situation any more.

The loss of the team is bad, but #### happens. I don't think that they could reasonably hope to remain undetected anyway. That a Chinook went down afterwards is a different story. Again shows not to pack too many people onto one vehicle!.

[trident86]

1. he continuously refers to his military training which he says clearly calls for killing the shepherds who have stumbled upon his team.


2. The fact that his lieutenant completely abdicates his leadership role and allows his subordinates to make such a momentous moral choice.

This is what happens when you let a civilian write your story. I can assure you neither SEALs nor any other US SOF are taught that deliberately killing unarmed civilians is an option. In fact, the contemplation of this in the training pipeline or on actual operations would ensure dismissal from the unit and the SOF community.

What IS emphasized is that SOF are held to a higher standard, and we are a much more surgical option because of our discretion and judgment on the battlefield.

Having served with Michael Murphy and personally watched his development as a junior SEAL officer, I can assure you that once again, something was lost in the translation between Marcus and the author. I cannot imagine Murph "abdicating his leadership" under ANY circumstances. More likely and in accordance with Marcus' debrief to our Team once he returned from his convalescent leave, Murph polled his guys when he ran out of easy answers in order to gather any information he might not have previously considered, and in turn make the best decision under the circumstances.

This is where we cross the line--where we judge the men on the ground based on the (now obvious) turn of events. The operation should no doubt be thoroughly analyzed with the intent of educating our younger troops and making better decisions (if that's even possible in this case) on the battlefield.

As pointed out by several others, this single decision was only one of many made by the team on the ground and the leadership in the forward headquarters at several levels that ultimately led to the failure of the mission.

Regarding the Iridium Sat phone--it was a back up means of communication, rather than the primary means as implied in the previous post. In my experience, cell phones are normally an administrative vice tactical form of communication.

[VMI_Marine]

I understand that this book is written for a specific audience, but I'm having a tough time coming to grips with the fact that one of our supposedly best-trained special ops warriors would write such ignorant babble about our ROE, where it originates, and the purported "fear" it creates in every young servicemember. Give me a break...

This pisses me off to no end - I have discussed this with Herschel Smith of the Captain's Journal on a couple of occasions before giving up on ever convincing him that the Theater ROE allows plenty of latitude for engaging enemy combatants; whether they are holding a weapon, a cell phone, or a shovel. Part of this stems from the problem of having JAG officers give ROE classes. The last ROE class I sat on was given by a JAG type, and the vignettes at the end were colossally bad, and in no way related to ANGLICO's mission of employing supporting arms. I gave my team another ROE class, using my own vignettes to illustrate the concepts. The rest I think stems from the exact sort of cultural influences that Abu Buckwheat and others have mentioned. The Haditha Marines are a great example - while I don't think their actions constitute war crimes, and I agree with the dismissal of charges, their method of clearing the houses was inappropriate to the situation, and caused unnecessary civilian casualties. We absolutely need to stress the idea of protecting civilians.

[VMI_Marine]

I had missed this before, but another book is coming out on the subject, and this one looks quite promising.

This may help clear up something else that I have noticed a lot - there are a lot of references to Operation Red Wings comprising only the SDV team's recce of the village. Luttrell says it in the book, IIRC. This is false. The team's mission was merely a part of Operation Red Wings, which was planned and conducted by 2d Battalion 3d Marines. There is an excellent Gazette article which gives more detail on the operation, and especially the enormous headaches created for 2/3's staff by NavSOF and the JSOTF. We still have not cracked the nut of integrating SOF and conventional operations.

[jcustis]

The hilarious thing about the consumptionability () of the book is that out of 733 Amazon reviews, 546 gave it 5 stars.

[sapperfitz82]

I was around for Red Wings 2, not that that qualifies me at all to speak for Red Wings 1 (and not that that has ever kept my mouth shut either), but the book either leaves out a couple very key things or points out some flaws in this unit's SOPs.

Soft comp plans have been rehased in detail here (not a mention of them in the book), hard comp plans are completely missing. The authors make a big point of all this behind the lines stuff; no PDM's, no Claymores? Did they even have a plan for these contengincies?

Basic patrolling, never reoccupy. They went right back to a previous recce point. That's a pretty rookie mistake, or it speaks volumes to overconfidence.

On the locals. The immature nature of dealing with the locals is evident in most units. We have a real problem with this and the cultural sensitivity training is not helping. We need to develop our own character a great deal, as a profession.

Someone mentioned firebombing Dresden. The Army Air Corps and their Brit equivlent did an exhaustive study on the effects of strategic bombing during WWII. No positive correlation was found. In fact, war material production increased during that time. Pysche studies showed that there is not a corresponding factor of fear instilled in civilian population either. Pretty sure this translates to "killing civilians who support a war effort is an ineffective policy."

Oh, and as my guys were out there looking for him and his team and doing body recovery on the rest that tried to help them, I feel no remorse in saying that the piss poor planning and overconfidence of these guys led directly to their deaths. They did make a helluva a good fight, and I hope when its my time to go, I can be worthy of such a story.

RIP

[oblong]

Former SEAL says he misspoke on details of Afghan battle

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?s...8&archive=true

And this:

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2008/0...-luttrell.html

[Tipy]

The civilian who assisted Marcus is a fiction writer. I would take nothing away from Marcus, but I wonder how much of this book was written by the civilian "fiction writer" and how much was written by Marcus.
Victory Point by Ed Darak gives a much more "non fiction" sounding explanation of what happeded. I highly recommend that anyone taking part in this website read "Victory Point" by Darak.
Possibly anyone retreating downhill in a very steep rock ravine with no cover dominated by a minimum number of taliban/gangsters would have the crap shot out from under themselves, as much by twenty gangsters as by 200 gangsters.
I have much doubt about this civilian fiction writer and just how much he sat down with a Lone Survivor "after" the book was written by the civilian. Possibly no chance to edit "Lone Survivor" on Marcus part?
I have no doubts about a Navy SEAL's honesty, but I have many doubts about the "fiction writer".
Besides I tried reading his fiction and could not force myself to finish any of his books. He (the civilian) is a very crappy writer, to put it mildly
Semper Fidelis,
Tipy.

[IntelTrooper]

Someone in the next DoD needs to be tasked to bring the nation's Honor and adhering to laws and humanity back as a core value (AGAIN) at the troop level. God bless all of those team guys. They are asked to do hard things, but the issue is not about the ROE, its about the ROL, Rule of Law.

We have some major league recalibration to do after this war.

Uh, what?

Edited to Add: Nevermind, that was an extremely old post.

[goesh]

This is a hell of a thing to have to think about. The senior man should have made the decision. The last thing to go before the collapse of an entrprise be it a combat patrol or a hot dog stand is discipline. Adrenaline, instincts and psychological stress makes a bad admixture that even good discipline can hold together for only so long. We all chose this path and we are haunted at times by making the right decisions and the wrong decisions and IMO only discipline keeps the score even. These men did no right or wrong, they died and 1 walked away from it. Let it be knowing we could have done no better or worse had we been there ourselves.

[Ken White]

In most any SOF or SF units, if things get rough, leaders tend to ask what others think and to discuss the possibilities. Generally, no one has any problems saying exactly what they think -- and no one has any problems with what the boss decides after asking. That's what everyone then does, even if they had a different idea. Like any generalization, I'm sure there are exceptions but I've never seen one and I've seen a few confabs, even held a couple. It's not a breakdown in discipline. The contrary, in fact.

What happened out there we'll never know. We know what one guy might have said. Editors want to sell books, sometimes thing in books get modified to do that...

In the end, what really matters is that you're right:

These men did no right or wrong, they died and 1 walked away from it. Let it be knowing we could have done no better or worse had we been there ourselves.

[carl]

There is an article in the current issue of Marine Corps Gazette by Ed Darack.
In it he states that Mr. Luttrell's book has a number of "inaccuracies" and some "misinformation.

http://www.marinecorpsgazette-digita...u1=friend#pg65

I saw this first at Tom Ricks' blog and the link is there too along with comments.

[jcustis]

Shocking...

I haven't seen it yet, but I've been waiting to hear the uproar about disparaging the memory of the dead.

[davidbfpo]

From FP Situation Report:

The movie "Lone Survivor," about SEALS in Afghanistan, screened last night as the culmination of yesterday's "Hero Summit." It was dramatic, graphic and ultimately moving. It's the story of the four Navy SEALs from SEAL Team 10 in Afghanistan in 2005. The team went on a reconnaissance mission in July of that year in the mountains of Afghanistan near the Pakistan border to monitor al-Qaeda leader. Only one, Marcus Luttrell, returned alive after a brutal ordeal that is hard to comprehend but whose live was ultimately saved by an Afghan man with whom he remains in close touch. Luttrell wrote "Lone Survivor" with ghostwriter Patrick Robinson. Now it's a big movie, starring Mark Wahlberg.

[carl]

Oh great. I hope I will be disappointed but I predict little contact with the unpleasant truth and an strong suggestion that murder is justified.

[ganulv]

From FP Situation Report:

The movie "Lone Survivor," about SEALS in Afghanistan, screened last night as the culmination of yesterday's "Hero Summit." It was dramatic, graphic and ultimately moving. It's the story of the four Navy SEALs from SEAL Team 10 in Afghanistan in 2005. The team went on a reconnaissance mission in July of that year in the mountains of Afghanistan near the Pakistan border to monitor al-Qaeda leader. Only one, Marcus Luttrell, returned alive after a brutal ordeal that is hard to comprehend but whose live was ultimately saved by an Afghan man with whom he remains in close touch. Luttrell wrote "Lone Survivor" with ghostwriter Patrick Robinson. Now it's a big movie, starring Mark Wahlberg.

The trailer has been out for a couple of months.

The director is responsible for The Kingdom, which I think is a tremendous film. He is also responsible for Battleship, which is considered one of the more laughable films in recent memory.

[davidbfpo]

In an extended BBC News magazine article the film Last Survivor features alongside many others and is a good discussion:

Two new movies - The Patrol and Lone Survivor - are set against the backdrop of the Afghanistan War, but is it too soon for drama to reflect the realities of the conflict.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26030435

An apology, if you are looking for a review of the film the BBC article does not offer that; it is a far wider discussion on film and after scanning SWC this is a good home for it.

SWJ has a film review at:http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...-lone-survivor