Lone Survivor Speaks Out
Does anyone know a man who once spent 10 hours under water (and twice fell asleep there), and in the heat of battle broke his back in a 40-foot dead drop, bit off half his tongue, and continued to put up a fight and climb higher and higher into the mountains for cover, even after his body was literally shredded in a gunfight and everyone in his unit was killed? I do now.
Last week I was in the presence of a hero. My client, AmeriQuest, hosted a Symposium in Florida for their customers and partners and invited a former U.S. Navy SEAL to tell his improbable story.
His name is Marcus Luttrell, and if he sounds familiar to you it's because actor Mark Wahlberg is currently portraying him in the movie, "Lone Survivor."
It is a grisly, heart-stopping film about a 2005 military surveillance and reconnaissance operation in Afghanistan that went terribly wrong. Everyone involved in Operation Red Wings was killed except for Marcus Luttrell, "the biggest, heaviest, and slowest of them all."
Hospital Corpsman First Class Marcus Luttrell claims he was "born to be a gunfighter." It's an admission that literally takes your breath away but then so does his story of survival and redemption.
An identical twin raised in Texas, he and his brother began training to be Navy SEALs at the tender age of 14. That's when they "crossed the line" and endured grueling training that would eventually earn them a coveted spot on a SEALs team, and for Marcus, set in motion his incredible life story.
If you don't believe war is hell, think again.
During his service in Afghanistan, Luttrell encountered unspeakable evil, unexplainable kindness, and unbearable loss.
After his four-man Navy SEAL team was discovered by local goatherds on the slopes of a mountain, they were forced to move to a less desirable observation location. Two hours later they were ambushed by Ahmad Shah's men, the terrorist leader they were ordered to dispatch and interrogate.
I can't really do justice to the story Luttrell told or the way he described having "death all around you, comrades destroyed in front of your eyes."
Nor can I deliver it in the same rapid fire cadence that pushed his story forward until he stopped suddenly as if he could see before him what he was describing.
But at his hour of certain death, alone, surrounded by the enemy, he found himself eyeball-to-eyeball with a man holding a rifle who he was sure was Taliban. But then he heard these words:
"OK, OK."
"American."
"Shampoo."
"Hydrate."
In that split second he made the choice to stand down and that was the instinctive emotional intelligence that saved two people's lives on a day when many lives were lost.
His Angel of Deliverance was a local villager who took his battered body down the mountain and with the help of his neighbors, "doctored" and cared for him. (The two men would meet up again years later and neither could explain why they didn't kill or abandon the other).
The villagers called him Dr. Marcus, a courtesy he didn't discourage (he didn't have the heart to tell them he was a sniper).
The Taliban eventually managed to find him, tortured him, and left him for dead when the villagers rescued him from their mutual enemy, moving him from cave-to-cave until he could be pulled to safety by a U.S. helicopter unit. He recalls with amazement that they were willing to sacrifice their entire village to keep him alive.
Here’s what Marcus Luttrell learned from his near-death experience that he wants us all to know:
Life is short; it can be snatched away quickly.
Keep getting back up, even if it's only one small step at a time.
When you accept that you are going to die, you'll be surprised how much you want to do in the time you have here.
Time is the most valuable thing you have; don't waste a minute doing anything you don't enjoy.
People can surprise you with their inherent goodness.
Faith, family and stubbornness can literally keep you alive.
Don't be late for anything, unless you're dead.
