A review of the book 'Lone Survivor' written by Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson.
In June 2005 four US Navy SEALs left their base in Afghanistan for the Pakistani border. Their mission was to capture or kill a notorious al-Qaeda leader known to be ensconced in a Taliban stronghold surrounded by a small but heavily armed force. Less than twenty-four hours later, only one of those Navy SEALs was alive.
This is the story of team leader Marcus Luttrell and the four desperate days he spent fighting the al-Qaeda assassins sent to finish him off. It is also the story of the men who ferociously beside him until he was the last one left.
It is one of the most powerful narratives ever written about modern warfare.
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Coming up: A review of the book 'Lone Survivor' written by Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson.
Namaste Friends. My name is 'Shinil Subramanian Payamal' and you are listening to the Historylogy podcast.
Before I proceed, a full disclosure: This book was bought with my own money and not been provided to me by the authors or publisher.
Little bit about the authors:
Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell was raised on his parent’s horse ranch in Texas. He joined the United States Navy in March, 1999, was awarded his Trident as a combat-trained Navy SEAL in January, 2002, and joined SEAL Team 5 in Baghdad in April, 2003. In the spring of 2005 he was deployed to Afghanistan. He was awarded the Navy Cross for combat heroism in 2003 by President Bush.
Patrick Robinson is known for his bestselling U.S. Navy-based novels, most notably, Nimitz Class, Kilo-Class, and Seawolf. His autobiography of Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward, One Hundred Days, was an international bestseller. He lives in England but spends his summers on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where he and Marcus Luttrell wrote Lone Survivor.
Let me read what is written on the back cover.
In June 2005 four US Navy SEALs left their base in Afghanistan for the Pakistani border. Their mission was to capture or kill a notorious al-Qaeda leader known to be ensconced in a Taliban stronghold surrounded by a small but heavily armed force. Less than twenty-four hours later, only one of those Navy SEALs was alive.
This is the story of team leader Marcus Luttrell and the four desperate days he spent fighting the al-Qaeda assassins sent to finish him off. It is also the story of the men who ferociously beside him until he was the last one left.
It is one of the most powerful narratives ever written about modern warfare.
Starting with the book review, the first thing one learns while reading this book was that SEALs stands for ‘SEa, Air, Land’.
One thing that seems to be common among war books is that, when one of the survivors visits the families of his co-fighters, they want to know whether the death was instant and that there wasn’t a lot of suffering.
The author writes about the philosophy of the U.S. Navy SEALs and how he has tried to base his life on it.
He talks about his time fighting the (so-called) “the proud freedom fighters of Iraq” and they would be willing to do anything for 50 bucks. And this is what led to the elimination of Saddam’s sons and the capture of Saddam himself. Also talking about the encounters with half-trained terrorists all over the world who mostly use Russian made Kalashnikovs.
When talking about the undiscovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Marcus quotes former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld who once remarked, “What do you want to do? Leave him there till he does?”
Like any soldier from an army in the civilised world, Marcus talks about the frustration of fighting in war zones where they have to follow ‘Rules of Engagement (RoE)’ which clearly are not to be followed by terrorists but only by soldiers. He clearly finds them ever-intrusive which was constantly at the back of their minds when being in that aircraft en route to Afghanistan. And how if he ever came face to face with Osama bin Laden, he would shoot him dead, in cold blood and not bother about outrage in the American media and getting put in jail and be charged with murder.
He describes the Taliban in the following manner:
Those guys are evil, murderous religious fanatics, each one of them with an AK-47 and a blood-lust.
He mentions the Pashtun proverb: I against my brothers; my brothers and I against my cousins; my brothers, my cousins, and I against the world.
This is what has allowed them to knock out sophisticated invaders.
About 85 pages of the book are devoted for showing how tough the training is to become a Navy SEAL which talks in detail about the state of mind of the people who quit midway officially known as dropped on request (DOR), the SEAL swim method, 5-point screening test, BUD/S, 4 critical rules of safety and last but not the least Hell Week.
Then comes the part where they are on ‘Operation Redwing’ and the confrontation with the Afghan goatherds and the dilemma of whether to shoot them or spare them while the constant fear of the liberal media back in the U.S. playing in their minds. And how they suddenly realise the BIG mistake of sparing the goatherds and things going horribly wrong from then onwards when the intimated Taliban warriors show up to finish off the team of Navy SEALs using weapons stolen from the Russians and Americans.
What followed was the worst special ops catastrophe ever with almost 20 special forces dead.
The author talks about ‘lokhay warkawal’─an unending section of historic Pashtunwalai tribal law. The literal translation of ‘lokhay warkawal’ is “giving of a pot.”
Blasted unconscious by a rocket grenade, blown over a cliff, but still armed and still breathing, Luttrell endured four desperate days fighting the al-Qaeda assassins sent to kill him, before finding unlikely sanctuary with a Pashtun tribe who risked everything to protect him from the circling Taliban killers which was due to the two thousand years of Pashtunwalai tradition: You will defend your guest to the death.
Conclusion: There is no denying that had the Pashtun tribe given Marcus to the Taliban, we would have probably never known about this disastrous mission. No matter how well trained a modern army is, if it goes to a place it isn’t familiar with, it is always going to find things tough. This mission was raised to the power of 10 compared to what the SEALs went through Hell Week. The American army has learnt this the hard way in Vietnam and now in Afghanistan. The Afghans have defeated the British, the Russians and now the Americans who had to make a shameful retreat from Afghanistan in 2021. Hope lessons will be learnt from this.
I give this book 4.75/5. The printed price of this book is around Rs. 550/- on Amazon India at the time of recording this podcast. I will provide the respective buy links and other related stuff in the show notes.
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