Operation Red Wings: The Untold Story Behind Lone Survivor (Kindle Single) (SOFREP) Read Online Free PDF Page B

certain, that one of his brothers was home safe. Then he went back to work to retrieve the rest.
    Later, Spanky would recall his crew celebrating as they got back. He said he didn’t think any of them quite understood just how close they had come to crashing and dying on the mountainside that night.
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    The 3rd Battalion Rangers had set out at sunup to begin their part of the search. While relatively lightly loaded, with Rhodesian vests and no body armor, they had gone from only a few hundred feet above sea level in Georgia to over 8,000 feet above sea level in Kunar. One Ranger who was there mentioned that it took only about an hour to realize just how difficult the mission was going to be. The team leaders were issued extra IV bags in case their men suffered heat injuries in the summer heat, struggling over the rough terrain.
    The Rangers patrolled the mountains in the heat for the entire day, finding nothing, though at least one incident of a Ranger firing at what he thought was an enemy in the trees was reported. When they set in a new patrol base as darkness descended, two Rangers were almost hit by a descending resupply bundle, dropped by the aircraft overhead for the missing SEALs.
    *   *   *
    Earlier in the day, a team of 2nd Battalion Rangers had discovered remains of what they first reported as another SEAL. The Rangers had been patrolling the area of Sawtalo Sar for days, looking for any sign of the missing team. The terrain was brutal, and the heat (it was the middle of summer in Afghanistan, after all) was oppressive. The nearby Shuryek Valley was at 5,500 feet above sea level, and the summit of Sawtalo Sar stood at 9,230 feet. The Rangers were patrolling the fingers coming off Sawtalo Sar’s main ridge, which Marcus had begun calling “Murphy’s Ridge.” A great deal of the movement was up and down steep, rocky inclines covered in scrub and tall trees.
    One of the Ranger patrols had been working their way along one of the fingers when, looking down into the ravine below, they spotted what looked like a body. Leaving part of the patrol on the high ground to hold security, several of the Rangers descended into the ravine to investigate.
    After clambering down into the ravine, the Rangers found the bodies of both Michael Murphy and Danny Dietz. The Taliban had found them first and stripped them of their weapons and most of their equipment. Shah’s men had made a video that had gone up on the Internet and Al Arabiya TV earlier, showing off the weapons they had taken from the bodies of the dead SEALs, including camouflage-painted M-4s with ACOG scopes, suppressors, and M-203 grenade launchers. They had even displayed a shaky image of what they claimed was one of the SEALs’ ID cards. That appeared to be accurate.
    As soon as they determined that they had found two of the missing SEALs, the Rangers called back to Bagram to inform the JOC. Given the altitude and the difficulty of the terrain, the JOC started putting together a High Angle Combat Search and Rescue Team, consisting of five PJs and one Combat Controller, to go in and retrieve the bodies.
    At 1822Z, the team boarded an MH-47 helicopter and took off from Bagram, heading toward Kunar in the wake of the two Black Hawks that had left less than an hour earlier. Their objective, code-named Objective Thresher, was an LZ from which they would move on foot to link up with the Rangers. They landed at 2113Z and began the 1.5-kilometer trek to the Rangers’ position.

Day 6: July 3
    It wasn’t an easy movement. Not only were they in hostile territory (though the Shuryek Valley was considerably more friendly toward U.S. forces than the Korengal Valley and the village of Chichal, on the other side of the ridge), but they were facing the same brutally steep, rocky terrain that the Rangers had been moving over in the dark. Under those circumstances, and with the loads involved, including radios, batteries, water, ammunition, and the specialized