Service: A Navy SEAL at War

by Marcus Luttrell

  Cowboy went through six or seven magazines. Jerry thought he fired about five hundred rounds with his SAW. With the exception of the idiots in that Bimmer, not a single terrorist survived. A whole cadre of the insurgency’s best ringers lay dead in that field. And all the while, as they were dying, they thought it was the Iraqis who were killing them. They never saw what hit them. It was the perfect sniper op.

  Their work done, the crew packed up their gear and hit the stairs to the ground floor. From there, they exfilled from their position, running toward the northwest corner of the soccer field, where they had prearranged a rendezvous with Marine Corps armored vehicles from Combat Outpost Firecracker. Nearby, overjoyed Iraqi police whooped it up, hollering and firing into the air. It was a crushing double victory—a great overwatch op and a win for the counterinsurgency effort as well. We were happy to let the hometown boys take credit.

  The Marines who gave Cowboy, Jerry, and Lars the ride back to COP Firecracker were new to Ramadi. Some of them seemed shocked by the bloodshed they saw. Jerry said flatly that if they stuck around the city a little longer, maybe saw a few of their brothers get hit, they’d understand. Cowboy put an exclamation point on it when he spotted that shot-up blue BMW just as he was getting into an armored vehicle. He took a knee and it was over in a hurry.

  It was a productive day in the war to destroy Al Qaeda in Iraq. Those three guys effectively closed a whole neighborhood to the insurgency. Not a peep was heard out of the area for the rest of the year. And the surge in morale for the locals could be felt all the way back to Camp Corregidor.

  14

  Flight to Al Asad

  At the end of February, Master Chief directed me and some of my teammates to Camp Ramadi, where a helicopter was waiting. He saw to it that his platoon leadership in Ramadi visited other task units in the area from time to time. It was partly to keep us sharing intel and information on tactics, and, probably, partly to show us how miserable everybody else was so we wouldn’t start thinking our leadership was neglecting us. The grass isn’t always greener. In Habbaniyah, thirty-five klicks east of us down the highway to Fallujah, we were sent out to link up with some guys from another task unit. They were having a grand old time, getting into shootouts almost every time they hit the streets. In the town of Hit, out west, a good friend of mine from back home, Breg, was serving with a Bradley unit. One night I got to spend a few hours with him. It was really good to see someone from home. We had hung out a lot and trained together as kids to get ready for our military careers. When Morgan and I went off to the SEAL teams, Breg and his brother joined the Army. They’re now both Green Berets.

  Our destination this time was Al Asad air base. Master Chief wanted to connect me with an old teammate of his, a seasoned frogman who was serving as senior chief of a SEAL troop based there. This little surprise was something he had been working on for me ever since workup. My host was universally known by his nickname, Slab. It turned out to be a great learning experience for me, just as Master Chief knew it would be.

  If you’ve read much about our operations since 9/11, you may already know his name. He’s seen and done almost everything there is to see and do in the teams. Years before Operation Redwing happened, Slab had walked the path of tragedy and unwanted notoriety. He had survived disaster, redeemed himself through his courage and fortitude, and returned to work, ever the quiet professional. He and Master Chief had served together on a previous deployment. Master Chief realized during workup that we would be working just down the smuggler’s road from Slab. He thought it would be a good idea for our paths to cross. Now that I was doing op plans, after-action reports, and leaving the fun to my teammates, he thought a change of scenery would be good for me. He also thought that circulating someone from the platoon leadership to Slab’s operating area would bring valuable insights and lessons that would cross-pollinate with our units.

  Only an unlucky handful of us have been in a situation where life and death spun totally out of control, and a mission went “beyond all contingencies,” as we say. For Slab, it happened in Afghanistan in March of 2002, on a peak called Takur Ghar. Like Camp Marc Lee, that mountain ridge would later be named for the Navy frogman whose death there marked it in the hearts and minds of everyone whose boots ever touched that ground. Everyone in our community remembers the day that mountain became known as Roberts Ridge.

  Neil Roberts was a twelve-year veteran of the teams, a husband, and the father to a young son. He was part of a small team of operators that was dropped onto Takur Ghar to do reconnaissance for a big U.S. push against Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in the Shah-e-Kot Valley, southeast of the city of Gardez. Known as Operation Anaconda, the operation put a large element of a Taliban and Al Qaeda army squarely in the crosshairs. The job given to Slab, Roberts, and their teammates was to locate the enemy in their mountaintop hiding places and direct air strikes against them. Little did they know that their landing zone was one of the best natural fortresses in the whole Middle East. The Afghans had defeated Alexander the Great there, and, more recently, the Soviet Red Army. History had spoken. What would it say to us?

  As their MH-47 Chinook flared down and maneuvered to insert the fire team, it came under heavy fire. It was riddled by machine-gun bullets and took hits from several RPGs. Flames and smoke engulfed the crew compartment. Hydraulic fluid and oil sprayed wildly out of the shattered transmission. As the pilot threw on the power, looking to escape, the helo lurched upward and then back down. Neil Roberts, hunched near the open rear ramp, saw a crewman slip on the fluid-soaked deck. As the man slid down the ramp, Roberts went to assist him—only to slip himself. He fell out of the helo and hit the snow about ten feet below. It all happened fast. As Roberts tumbled into the waist-deep drifts, the pilot struggled to save his wounded bird. Electrical power failed, but the engines didn’t. The Chinook lifted away, hydraulics leaking, then dove down a steep slope. Only then did the pilot realize that one of his passengers was no longer on board.

  Surviving the fall, Roberts appears to have turned on his infrared beacon, marking his position so that airborne rescuers could find him. The pilot of the Chinook wanted to circle back and return for him, but without hydraulics, he had no control of his aircraft. The crew chief opened a quart can of hydraulic fluid and poured it into an emergency scuttle, giving the pilot precious additional seconds of flight control. Spiraling down the mountain slope at nearly a hundred miles an hour, trading altitude for distance toward home, the pilot managed a controlled crash. The helicopter made it about five miles before hitting the ground near the base of the mountain. The pilot ditched hard, breaking his back in the process but saving the lives of everyone on board.

  Slab, his teammates, and the helicopter crew regrouped around their crash site and called for assistance. An AC-130 relayed their request to Gardez, where another Chinook was spun up and sent to retrieve them. When the other helo arrived, Slab piled in with the survivors of the first bird and expected to be taken back into the fight. When he asked the pilot whether AC-130 gunships were available to provide preassault fires ahead of their insertion, he was told the commanding general had refused to authorize it. Their bird was directed back to Gardez to offload their gear. Slab made it clear to the pilot that one way or another, despite the wishes of his command, he was going to fly straight back to the mountain and try to save Petty Officer First Class Roberts.

  Alone on that mountain, Roberts was in serious trouble. What happened next isn’t totally clear. As he scrambled up the mountain slope toward cover, he was soon found and surrounded by enemy fighters. He went down like a warrior, firing his light machine gun till the end. An AC-130 sent back infrared imagery of his last moments. It showed the heat signature of a man holding a weapon. There was a bright flash as he fired toward a figure seated by a tree. Those who saw it in real time would not know what had happened until later. At 4:27 a.m. local time on March 3, 2002, Neil Roberts became the first SEAL to die in the War on Terror.

  By the time he f
ound a helicopter to take him back to the mountain, Slab tried to arrange for that preassault bombardment from the aircraft stacked overhead. A minute out, he and his team were told again that the AC-130s would not fire into an area with friendly forces present. Two days earlier, a friendly-fire incident had killed two men and wounded fourteen others. Commanders’ nerves were still tight.

  With no time to search for an alternate landing zone, the pilot decided to land in the same place where the other helo had gotten hit the first time around. Slab told his five teammates that they had to assume Roberts was still alive. Their professional creed was to leave no man behind. He told them an IR strobe light had been activated and that they were going into a heavily defended, enemy-controlled area. They assumed Roberts was in evasion mode, descending the mountain away from the enemy. Slab also knew there was a good chance this was not a rescue but a recovery mission. Either way, Slab told his teammates, “We’re going back up there and killing every last one of those mothers.”

  As the helo held a low hover, Slab jumped into the snow with his Stoner SR-25 sniper rifle slung around his shoulder, eight fragmentation grenades, and a SIG Sauer 9mm automatic pistol strapped to his leg. His teammates followed, hitting the deep drifts. When that elite team, code-named Mako 30, put its boots on the mountain, it was the beginning of a seventeen-hour ordeal in which they repeatedly assaulted a well-dug-in enemy position in an effort to save or recover their teammate.

  Slab is very quiet about his career. Like so many of our best guys, he doesn’t stand out in a crowd. Before I met him, I envisioned him as a giant—that’s how big his reputation is. On first glance, however, few would suspect the lean, unassuming man of being one of the most effective guys in the spec ops world. But dynamite comes in small packages, and trains run on rails. Thirty-seven years old when I was with him in Anbar Province, Slab was at the peak of his career, a thoroughly tested and seasoned senior frogman, confident and unflappable in the worst of situations. The untold and untellable stories of the many missions he had participated in were written into the wrinkles around his eyes. It was a privilege to hear him talk about it firsthand.

  Slab and his teammates were immediately set upon by the enemy. They were Chechens, experienced in mountain fighting. They began surrounding Mako 30, firing at them from three directions. The SEALs were exposed, stuck in the middle of what we call a horseshoe ambush. About seventy-five yards downhill from them, the enemy had two bunkers to use for cover and support. Faced with torrential gunfire, Slab and his radioman, Air Force sergeant John Chapman, laid down covering fire for two teammates, Randy and Turbo, who were moving toward one of the bunkers. Mako 30’s other two SEALs, Kyle and Brett, were trying to flank the enemy position, too.

  The pilot of the AC-130 saw the action as a light show of infrared lasers poking back and forth on the mountainside. He was surprised by how close the opposing forces were. It was “a firefight in a phone booth,” he would say. It must have been like a scene out of Star Wars, that big battle scene on the ice planet, with tracer rounds zipping back and forth brightly over the snow. Fighting near the top of a mountain ensures you’ll be surrounded. At lower elevations, at least you have somewhere you can go. I don’t know what I would have done in Slab’s shoes—maybe play dead while holding an unpinned grenade under me. When they neared, I’d release the lever and take them with me.

  Slab used his M203 launcher to fire a grenade at the bunker, but its impact was muffled by the deep snow. An enemy round hit Chapman, wounding him badly. Brett was shot through both legs. Then Turbo took a hit that nearly severed his foot above the ankle; he was kept from bleeding out only by the compressive force of his snow-packed boot.

  Slab threw a smoke grenade and tried to break contact. The pilot of the AC-130 stayed on station well beyond the safety envelope for his fuel supply. Slab directed him to fire on a cluster of trees just fifty meters from the SEALs’ location; he worried about hitting the Americans. Slab told him, “I don’t care how close. It’s the only chance we got.” Circling slowly counterclockwise overhead, with his 105mm howitzer unholstered on its left side, the aircraft began firing. The pucker factor was high, because neither the pilot nor his crew would ever sleep again if they killed the outgunned SEAL operator they had been talking to. With his fuel running critically low and in danger of being exposed to fire by the brightening dawn, the AC-130 rained down about seventy-five heavy rounds on the mountaintop, then the pilot reluctantly decided he had to return to base. His heart was in his throat as he turned toward Bagram, exposing Slab and his boys to renewed ground attack until another aircraft could take station. A pair of F-15E Strike Eagles based in Kuwait were inbound fast. Slab hid out during the interval, praying for their arrival. Additionally, some Army Rangers were on call as a QRF.

  When the F-15s arrived, Slab got on the radio and tried to guide them into the right groove to launch their weapons against the enemy, near the top of the mountain. From the pilot’s perspective, the SEAL was calling for bombs to be dropped right on top of his own position. The fast-moving plane never put its ordnance on target. After two passes, dropping bombs that fell wide of the mark, the pilot announced, “Bingo”—indicating that he was almost out of fuel—and left to find a tanker aircraft. Slab and his teammates were on their own once again.

  The Ranger platoon that was on call as a quick reaction force consisted of twenty men in two Chinooks. Summoned to assist Slab and his team, they planned to fly from Bagram to Gardez, where they would stage for the rescue mission. Only one of the helos got airborne, however. And since they quickly realized time was running out, that bird flew straight into the fight.

  As it made its approach just before dawn, the Chinook carrying the Rangers was riddled with gunfire. Somehow, though, the pilot managed to crash-land without killing anybody. Landing in a bowl of snow surrounded by enemy shooters, the Rangers were caught up in a firefight every bit as intense as the one that greeted Mako 30. Under the command of an Army captain from Waco, Texas, Nate Self, the Rangers soon found they needed to be rescued as well.

  This is where Slab’s story took a personal turn for me. One of the Air Force pararescuemen (or PJs, as the elite combat medics are known) on that bird, Jason Cunningham, had gone to the Army’s “18 Delta” medic school with me. He served with the PJ community’s elite Twenty-Fourth Special Tactics Squadron. While the Rangers assaulted up the face of the hill, Cunningham turned the crashed helicopter into a casualty collection point, treating several badly wounded men while under heavy fire from an enemy bunker just a hundred yards away. Mortars were landing all around the helo when, at 12:30 p.m., an enemy bullet struck Jason, tearing across his pelvis and inflicting serious internal wounds. He used the last of his energy to tend to wounded soldiers before he bled to death in the snow. Around 8:00 p.m. on the night of March 4, Jason Cunningham became the first Air Force PJ to die in action since Vietnam.

  The QRF suffered four killed in action and nine badly wounded before their determined assault, along with heavy support from coalition aircraft, finished off the enemy in the area. Finally a pair of Chinooks came to pick up the battered Ranger unit. The first bird took the living, the second loaded up the dead, and they returned to Bagram.

  Slab and his team waited six more hours in the cold. Triangulated by mortars, pinned down and bleeding in the snow, they were saved only by the shelter of the ice-walled ravine in which they hid. Somehow a pilot named Tom Friel, a member of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, returned well after dark and flew a Chinook toward Slab’s position. One of the SEALs flashed the laser designator from his weapon straight up out of the ravine toward the sky, drawing Friel to him. Hovering above the narrow gash in the rocks, the pilot lowered his big tour bus of a helicopter down into the ravine. With his rotors whipping the air just a few feet from the rock, he steadied up well enough, maintaining a hover with an expert hand and enabling the crew chief to drop the ramp. The helo was just low enough to the ground that the three wounded SEALs
could be heaved on board. When the aircraft charged up into the sky, the mission was over, leaving Slab and the other survivors to live with its echoes.

  I listened to Slab the way a junior frog should: with my mouth shut and my ears open. I’d read the statements and the after-action reports, but hearing the story from him personally made me realize there was no way to come out of a situation like that without having a cross to bear. One thing Slab taught me: it’s easy after a disaster to dwell on the experience, to spend too much time with your mind stuck on it, and to let it define you. Slab showed me how to put something like that in a box, and to control how you think about it, and to turn a negative into a positive. It’s the people who focus on the positive that will come out on top. Afterward, your dominant thought about a bad experience shouldn’t be I can’t get over this; it should be, I’m going to better myself because of it.

  I was stunned to learn later that Master Chief could easily have been on that op, too. At the time, he was serving in Slab’s squadron, but he was stateside, tasked to a training and support role for his command shortly before 9/11. It simply wasn’t his fate to be on that flight line that day. I suppose when your unit gets overrun, it’s not much worse to be the lone survivor on the ground than a survivor who had to sit it out far away. Either way, you live the rest of your life knowing you should have been out there in the mix with your men, and having no good answer to the question, What if? Master Chief told me it was some consolation that he was on hand to help handle his fallen teammate’s homecoming and burial. He said he knew he was where he needed to be, he accepted the importance of his role back home, comforting the family after his teammate’s body was flown home. Sometimes the hardest part of being a SEAL is not being part of the fight.