‘Lone Survivor’ Author Describes Harrowing Mission 

He came at the request of the VMI Corps of Cadets, and the Corps – along with residents and students in the nearby community – turned out in large numbers March 5 to hear his story.

Moving back and forth across the stage of Gillis Theatre in VMI’s Marshall Hall, his service dog listening quietly, Marcus Luttrell spoke of training as a Navy SEAL and action in Afghanistan to an audience of 500 cadets, more than 100 perspective cadets on Post for an admissions open house event, and about 500 others.

“You guys are going to be leaders,” Luttrell said.  “You’ve got to look inside yourself.  You’ve got to trust yourself, and your men will trust you.”

Luttrell’s talk opened with the rigors of Navy SEAL training.  His detailed accounts of what he endured were punctuated by comments from the inside.

“When a man goes to war,” concluded Luttrell about SEAL training, “all he has is his instinct and the man on his right and the man on his left.”  The intense training makes sure those men are up to the job.  Of the 164 in Luttrell’s class, only 10 completed the training, he said.

His comments were often tough assessments of the realities of training and war, and they often elicited laughter.  “Contrary to popular belief,” he said, “not everyone’s special on this planet.”

The humor darkened as Luttrell narrated the loss of his team members and his own eventual rescue during Operation Redwing on a mountainside in Afghanistan, which described in his book, Lone Survivor.

“Afghanistan,” he said, “was pretty bad.”

The team was dropped for a three to six-day “op” in a “gnarly place” near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.  The men were to find a particular individual, watch him, and then follow orders either to kill or to “snatch” him.

The operation turned deadly for the team, he said, when 75 to 100 goats came “bebopping” up their hill.

Forced to change their location, the four men soon found themselves surrounded by Taliban fighters armed with “A-Ks” and rocket-propelled grenades.

“The world just started blowing up around us, catching on fire,” Luttrell said, noting that the team could maneuver only in the dust clouds.  Luttrell described – with the visual detail only a man who’d been there could offer – the repeated wounding of himself and his teammates, their efforts to keep on the move and to fight back, and the eventual death of each of his teammates.

“I made my peace with God a long time ago,” he said, “but it’s a weird feeling when you know it’s coming.”

After a final RPG explosion that knocked him out, Luttrell’s own injuries included a broken back and pelvis and a dislocated shoulder.  In that state, he made his way to shelter in a village.

“That was the longest night of my life – crawl and fall. … I was a medic.  I knew what was going on with my body.  I was dying.  … It was a pretty rough day.”

Luttrell was eventually taken in by villagers, found and held by the Taliban, and then protected by villagers till he was rescued by helicopters.

 VMI Cadet Josh Dixon, Company F commander, whose family is from Texas, remarked afterward that Luttrell had been a “very engaging” speaker.

“I expected his laidback, humorous personality. … He was real genuine.  He was just a guy from Texas who wanted to do what he did since he was 14 and went out and did it.”

Noting that some of his roommates plan to go into Special Forces, Dixon said, “They can take a lot more damage to their body than they think.  A lot of it is internal fortitude.  You’re tougher than you think you are.”

The talk was sponsored by VMI’s Center for Leadership and Ethics, superintendent and dean’s office.