Carson Walker
Staff reporter
On June 28, 2005 four men Michael Murphy, Marksmen and medic Marcus Luttrell, Matthew Axelson and communications specialist Danny Dietz all left for Hindu Kush mountains. They where there for the purpose to either kill or capture Ahmad Shah the leader of a local militia group.
The men had to be dropped in by ropes because of the terrain as the helicopters were getting ready they almost crashed because of the 100 foot trees in the area. This made it extra hard for them to get on to the ground as more time spent in the air meant that the people in the town on the other side of the mountain would slowly get suspicious.
When the landed the first thing on there mind was trying to move into the mountains where they could overlook the village where they suspected Ahmad Shah to be.
As some of them were getting ready to go to sleep early in the morning a goat farmer and two younger members of the village were walking the goats when they came across the four men. As they found them two of the men jumped up grabbing each of the boys but letting the old man go.
They spent the coming minutes deciding what to do but, in the end, decided that letting them go would be best as they would not break the rules of war. As they let them go they knew they had to start moving as the boys would go back to base and tell someone.
They where not ready to fight upwards of 100 people but they started moving back and tried to get signal but could not and they kept moving more to the top of the mountain to see if they could get better signal.
As they got higher up, they looked up and saw on the mountain above them about 50-100 men with ak-47s and 7 rocket propelled guns. They also had a motor that they used, as they shot down on these four guys it pushed them back and made it hard for them to shoot back.
As they got pushed back Dietz found a cliff where he thought it might have signal. He knew he would die but it might get the other three out of there, so he ran and got the call off but was shot in the chest and then fell off the cliff witch in the end killed him.
Back at the base they got the call some people could not belive it but soon they had two-night hawks get ready they each held 16 men, but they had no protection.
Usually, a night hawk has an apache to have fire support so the night hawk can land but since the apache had no chance to get ready in time they had to leave with out them.
This in the end coasted them one night hawk as it got shot down by a rpg that was shot from the mountains. This meant that the other helicopter had to turn around and leave, leaving the three men down on the edge of the mountain fight by themselves.
As they tried moving back one more rpg was shot at them making them fall down a cliff after they stopped rolling it was just Luttrell as he tried calling out for his other team members but none of them responded.
As Luttrell had injuries to his left leg he had to crawl to a little cave in the mountain where he would spend the night. The next day he made the decision that he needed to get out of there or the Taliban forces would find him.
As he was crawling, he came across a river he filled his canteen there is where a local villager Mohamed Gulab found Luttrell who then took him back to his village.
There they gave him food and water and got the note Luttrell had written to the American forces. For four days the people in the village hid Luttrell in caves or other house to avoid him getting captured at one point being left in a cave for 26 hours.
Then four days after the fight he was found and brought back to the base.
One of the main changes that came from this was in the following operation where the U.S.A sent in a unit of solders to recover the bodies. As they did this Ahmad Shah, and his men left the region to go to Pakistan.
The other thing that came out of this was the talk on PTSD and how it would affect a solder after they leave the army. Luttrell, who is one who, has had his struggle with PTSD is now a public speaker who not only talks about PTSD but about his time in the seals.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Luttrell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Survivor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shah_(Taliban)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Dietz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_P._Murphy
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