What is the lone survivor? Most of us know it know it as a movie that is based on a true story and that’s it. But the Lone Survivor tells the incredible tale of four Navy Seal members tasked on a covert mission to neutralize a high-level al-Qaeda. The mission is operation Red Wings, tasked with overlooking a village and try and capture or kill a highly dangerous Taliban member that was in links with another dangerous Taliban member Osama bin laden.
Faced with an impossible moral decision, the small band is isolated from help and surrounded by a much larger force of Taliban ready for war. As they confront unthinkable odds together, the four men find reserves of strength and resilience as they stay in the fight to the finish. The four seals that are tasked with this mission are as followed Marcus Luttrell, Lt. Michael Murphy, Sonar Tech Matthew Axelson, and Danny Dietz.The night of June 2005 the groups of them were camping out overlooking the village when they came across 3 shepherds and a boy. Fearing that they would be spotted and ratted out by the shepherds the group captured them.
After debating for a long time whether or not to kill them or let them go the team decided that they would let the shepherds go and move on to another part to continue on the mission. And hour later the seals were surrounded by hundreds of members of the Taliban warriors up on a mountain.There surrounded in a heated gun battle with the Taliban warriors with nowhere to go atop the mountain top with their backs against the wall and running out of space to operate, Marcus yelled out to the group to fall back, meaning telling them to jump off the cliff of the mountain so that they could at least get away from the Taliban’s to regroup and call for back up and get a better chance at fighting them.Already down to just three of them and badly wounded Marcus and Matthew being shot in the head but still out there in the fight, while Lt.
Murphy was out trying to find a way to get in contact with members back on base to come and help out with the mission was shot 3 times before he could give off the coordinates of where he was down to just two and half Marcus and Matthew moved while still fighting back and getting shot at with RPG’s.After looking around Marcus is the only one left to battle with the Taliban members he fights off 6 Al Qaeda members that were sent to finish him off. Marcus crawled for about 7 miles through the mountains before coming upon a stream of water and diving in to take a drink of water before being approached by a Pashtun tribe. Marcus fearing for his life and not knowing who these gentlemen was he quickly pulled out a grenade and holds in in his hands. He’s taken in by the tribe and sheltered and feed and helped him to safety.What I took from reading this book was that no matter how much your body wants to quit and give up if you dig deep enough you can accomplish a lot of things, because being faced with such a bad situation and being able to still fight your way thru it and overcome a lot after all the wounds and all shows that you can do a lot of things you thing you cant.
It’s a really great book because it shows that you don’t have to be grunt or the best it’s all will and power from within. Seeing his partners die and having the strength to fight on in my eyes that’s all of guts and pride to overcome the unexpected.After reading this book it influences me a lot not just to be a bad ass or anything of that nature but mostly to step up and become that leader that I need to be when things are up against the wall or even If it’s not so bad but showing that person to the left and right of me that no matter what the situation is. I can use some of the traits that Marcus showed it just makes you want to be the reason that marine or NCO can count on you when the mission needs to be accomplish.
To summarize this I took a lot from it cause it just goes to show you that when your name is called upon and you have to rely on that person to the left and right to see if you will live to see another day it opens your eyes to see that its bigger than you. It forces you to make decisions on that run when it breaks down on the run just like a small unit leader job is to protect ,teach and lead his or her marines it’s the same way if you’re sitting behind a desk or if your own on the battlefield.
