01x01 - Red Wings Recovery

[bunniefuu]

Nick Moore: Nobody wants to have to deal with a mass casualty combat search and rescue, where there's potentially no survivors.

It's one of those sights that you don't ever want to see, and once you see it, you'll never forget it.

Mario Reyes: You know there's Taliban or someone around.

Your life is on the line, along with everyone else.

Brian Garganta: We're gonna do everything we can to save whoever's out there.

It was our job. It was our mission.

Rangers are probably one of the best-kept secrets in the Army.

They can do special missions in support of national directives that no other unit can do.

Mario Reyes: Rangers are one of the best, if not the best, and I'm gonna say they are the best cause I was a Ranger.

Brian Garganta: The Ranger Creed is what you live by in Ranger regiment. That's what you follow. You live that entire creed. Every word in there is important.

Mario Reyes: The Ranger creed basically sets the standards for Rangers.

And, you know, when you're told to do something, you do it right and do it to the best of your ability.

We're gonna push as much as we can, as far as we can. Even if it's hard, we never quit.

Brian Garganta: When you want something hard enough, you prepare yourself physically and mentally in order to meet that challenge and... and meet that goal in life.

I knew from an early age I was always gonna be in the Army. My great uncles, they were in the Army. My dad was a retired Marine. But I didn't know anything about Rangers.

I knew people jumped out of airplanes, you know, I knew of the infantry.

Once I found out about the Rangers, that was, that was everything to me, That was my ultimate goal.

Once I made, you know, Ranger Company First Sergeant, there was only 12 of those in the Army at the time, and, you know, I was one of 12.

That was one of the proudest moments of my life.

It still is.

Nick Moore: He is the epitome of what you expect a company First Sergeant to be.

There's a saying when it comes to leadership in the army, you can be as hard as you want, as long as it's fair.

And Brian's one of those guys, he could tear you up one side and down the other and, you know, it's like water off a duck's back.

Ten minutes later, he'll ask you if you want to go eat lunch or go to breakfast.

Mario Reyes: What makes him a great leader is his ability to uphold the Ranger standards, and to, to show young guys that, "Hey, you know, this is how you're supposed to lead, this is how you're supposed to act."

Brian Garganta: My Ranger company is Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment.

I was the senior noncommissioned officer for that entire element.

I was operating out of BAF, which his Bogham Airfield in Afghanistan.

Nick Moore: For us, you know, June 28 started like any other day.

We woke up, went out and did PT, and we got the call to turn around and come back as fast as we could.

We kind of knew that something bad had happened, but I don't think any of us knew exactly what because they didn't want to broadcast it across the radio.

Brian Garganta: SEAL team was on a reconnaissance mission in the mountains of Eastern Afghanistan. They were compromised by enemy personnel, probably was Taliban. They were being chased down and called for reinforcements.

Reporter: Okay, we start off with a U.S. m*llitary helicopter crash in Afghanistan.

m*llitary officials say about 16 of the U.S. troops were onboard.

There is no word on the fate of that crew.

Mario Reyes: The information that was given to me was, "Hey, there's a helicopter that was sh*t down, so y'all guys be ready."

And finally the word came down and said, "Hey, you guys are gonna go to the crash site and try to recover anything that's there."

Nick Moore: We were really concerned about pillaging and pilfering by the enemy, and the concern for us was, you know, we want everyone accounted for.

We were tasked to go in and recover bodies and recover any survivors and eliminate any thr*at scenario.

Because if they do get captured, that is one of our missions to go recover individuals who, you know, who have been captured.

So, we wanted to get there as quickly as possible.

Mario Reyes: We were hoping that there was, you know, some living there, but we didn't know at the time.

Brian Garganta: We started initial movement that day, within a few of hours of the bird being sh*t down.

Mario Reyes: We were told it shouldn't take much time to recover everything and to pack light because we were putting a lot of people on the helicopter.

Nick Moore: You know, there's a lot that plays into how many people you can put on a helicopter. At certain times of the year and at certain altitudes the aircraft can only carry so much weight.

I was serving as a r*fle squad leader at the time, and we'd only take so many guys, so we... we had to pick the best guys that we had in every squad to get the aircraft to the elevation where we needed to get them.

Mario Reyes: We didn't pack for more than one day.

We brought, you know, our basic combat load, and that was pretty much it.

No food or any extra water or anything like that.

Nick Moore: We get everything set, we get everybody on the same page, and then we load the helicopters, and we take off, and we fly to Jalalabad.

When we got to Jalalabad, there's a mountain rainstorm that's pushing through the area where the crash was.

(radio chatter)

It's too foggy for a task force to fly in at night.

Honestly I, I have the feeling that they were a little nervous.

You know, they'd just lost one bird, and they were a little nervous about losing another one.

(rumbling)

We turned around and went back to Jalalabad, and waited 'til the next period of darkness.

We stayed the night there and, you know, they had some type of surveillance trying to figure out what was going on.

All I know is that, you know, at the time, that there was still fires on the crash site, and they can't tell if anyone's alive.

At that point, in time, you know, we have up to 20 Americans that are, that are missing, and we don't know where they are.

Brian Garganta: They were Americans, and they were a fighting force that were out there serving their country.

And, and we're gonna go get them.

America expects the Ranger Regiment to do that.

And it's instilled in you, it's driven into you, you know, fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission.

We're gonna do everything we can to recover the bodies or save whoever's out there.

We begin with a developing story out of Afghanistan.

A U.S. m*llitary helicopter carrying troops to the front lines has crashed in a rugged mountain area along the border with Pakistan.

Female Reporter: U .S. m*llitary search and rescue forces are making their way there, looking for any survivors from the crash.

We load up two potential Rangers, one Navy element, and I had some Air Force PJs with me.

That's a para-rescue unit in the, in the Air Force.

Nick Moore: Nobody wants to have to deal with a mass casualty combat search and rescue, where, you know, you're going into a situation where you know there's potentially no survivors.

But certain people are called to do certain things, and that's what we do.

Mario Reyes: Knowing the situation of what happened to the first helicopter, I was terrified. But as a Ranger, you can't be.

When you're in the helicopter, you shut that fear, and you put that fear away and be the Ranger that you're supposed to be and fight on to the objective, you know, no matter what. It goes back to, you know, the foundations that you're brought up on.

Growing up, I watched a movie and seen what a Ranger was and that kind of thing, and I was like, "Ooh, I want to be one of those guys.

Those guys are pretty cool."

The movie that I saw, and everybody's gonna laugh about this, was "Con Air." The one little scene where he's fighting those dudes and everything, I was like, "Oh, I want to, I want to try that out.

Maybe that's something, you know, I can do."

My mom was always firm on education, and my dad was all about working hard.

I was the first person in my family to graduate high school, so that was a big accomplishment.

And when I joined the m*llitary, they were, they were pretty excited about that.

Once I finished basic training, I went to airborne school and I... the first time I was ever in an airplane, I jumped out of it.

But airborne school was pretty easy for me.

RIP on the other hand, which is the Ranger Indoctrine Process, RIP was challenging.

RIP is what really got me to realize what Rangers were about.

I learned a lot about myself.

I learned how far I can actually push myself mentally and physically.

You don't quit.

Nick Moore: Mario is quite the epitome of what we think a Ranger should look like, you know. He's a big barrel-chested guy with a little skinny waist, and he could pack around a machine g*n and 80 pounds of gear.

Even to this day, if I had to be in a gunfight,

I'd want Mario to stand next to me on my left or on my right.

"Never shall I fail my comrades."

It's the Ranger creed.

(shouting)

Brian Garganta: Our mission was, we were gonna fast-rope in to the side of a mountain range and start walking the rest of the way in.

Nick Moore: The primary method that we always choose to use to get in somewhere is to land the helicopter and run off the back.

With this situation, that wasn't an option, based on the tree heights, that we ended up doing a fast-rope.

It's about a four-inch diameter rope that's attached to the back of the helicopter.

You'll exit the aircraft, and then you'll do a spin-out to clear your equipment, your r*fle, from getting caught up on the ramp of the helicopter.

Anything under 40 feet you can easily do with a light-skinned glove, but then you start pushing past 40 feet, and it gets hot real quick.

If you have big machine g*ns, 27 pounds extra weight, plus the amm*nit*on that goes with that, it, it starts to add up quick, and the friction heats up quick, and you start carrying a lot of speed to the bottom.

Mario Reyes: They gave us like the full length of the rope, which was between 60 and 90 feet. I fast-roped in, I burnt, you know, I got blisters on my two fingers, on my sh**ting finger, and a lot of other people are just dropping off around 10 feet because the rope was so long, and they were starting to burn their hands.

Brian Garganta: Going in, someone falls off a rope and breaks his arm.

So immediately we get on the ground and already have casualties that need to get evac-ed.

You're not getting evac-ed. We're, you're just gonna have to suck it up.

Nick Moore: I want to say we got inserted somewhere between 7,000 and 8,000 feet, and the crash was just shy of 10,000.

Like, if you kind of looked up, you could see the crash was still hot under night vision, you could see it glowing.

Mario Reyes: I was the point man, so I'm the first guy leading to the crash site. I got us onto the trail that we were supposed to walk on.

And we followed that along the side of the mountain, and when I say on the side of the mountain, literally, you have a small, little trail and then it's just a drop-off.

Brian Garganta: Pretty steep terrain, you know, it's rugged terrain, you know, from 9,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level.

Nick Moore: It's not an easy walk, by any means.

It, it's a very cumbersome, laborious walk trying to find a trail and stay on the trail and move with a sense of purpose, the fastest that we can.

I'm on the alert for, for any type of Taliban or Al-Qaeda or whoever sh*t down the helicopter.

We're going into very hostile territory. Anything can happen out there.

Brian Garganta: We walked all night long, and the mountains were just kicking a lot of dude's butts.

I mean, we were doing fine, but some of the other guys that were with us, they were, they were not doing as good.

Nick Moore: As we kept walking, it just never seemed like it got closer. It's like a mirage. We were climbing and working as hard as we could and we were, you know, we're getting tired.

But we're, we're trying to go as fast as we can to get where we want to go.

Growing up as a kid in Kansas, you know, you run around with your friends playing army in the woods, and I just kind of never grew out of it. To me it was just a typical childhood.

I, you know, went camping and hunting and fishing with my, my brother and my sister and my dad, and, so joining the Army was not a big thing for me.

Just always was kind of one of the things that I felt that I needed to do.

Both my grandparents served in WWII.

My grandfather, he always said I should have joined the Navy and get three hot meals a day and a hot bed to sleep in, and well, I kind of went the opposite for that.

My brother decided he was gonna sign papers, and I just went with it.

Just a... a twin thing, I guess.

I have an identical twin brother. We did basic training, airborne school and Ranger Indoctrination Program together.

The day we donned black berets at the Ranger Memorial at Fort Benning, that's always the standout moment because it's the day you get to be part of something more than just being in the Army.

And then once I got there, it was the challenge to continue to meet the standards and stay there and excel at, at what I do, because every day is a new day, and every day there's something else to, to prove to yourself.

That night, walking up the mountain, we were all tired, we were worn out. But it's like anything else in life.

If it's just a horrible experience, it's gonna end sometime, it's... Can you make it to when it ends?

Mario Reyes: We finally get to the crash site. The sun was just about coming up.

I can see fire still going on, and the crash site is literally on the side of a steep ledge.

We secure the area, and we start pulling a perimeter.

We hope that we, when we came in, we would find live crew members, you know, but we didn't.

There was nothing left of the helicopter. And this is a Chinook. It's, it's a big helicopter, and the only thing that resembled a helicopter was some rotor blades. You know, there, there was nothing left.

Nick Moore: It's, it's one of those sights that you don't ever want to see, and once you see it, if you ever have to see it, you'll, you'll never forget it.

Mario Reyes: A lot of the bodies were really m*nled.

There was bodies that weren't even bodies, you know, they were just ashes.

As a young guy, I was like, "Holy smokes." I, I, I didn't think that that was possible.

You know, how, how does a body just get burnt up like that.

I did meet the gunner of that flight, uh, a couple of days before, and the reason why I remember this guy is because he had "FU" written on his gloves.

And his w*apon on that Chinook was a mini g*n, and I do remember flying several times on that helicopter because he was one of the guys that would let us sh**t the mini g*n while they were, you know, test f*ring it when we'd take off and stuff.

Brian Garganta: The flight medic on that bird was a former Ranger medic from 3rd Ranger battalion when I was there. His name was Marcus Muralles. I just talked to him a few days prior.

He was gonna go home within, within a few days and see his, his brand new baby girl.

He never made it home.

We're professionals. I mean, we, we all joined the m*llitary, knowing that this can happen to us. It can happen to any of us. You might die or, you know, your friends might die. We know it's gonna happen. Do you ever get used to it? No. You know, I've, I've lost kids that were 19 years old.

It hurts right there when it's happened, and then it turns into anger.

And that's, that's why you gotta do it. You gotta, you know.

It bothers you for a little while and then you want to get the guys who did it.

A grim drama has been unfolding at 10,000 feet in the mountains of Afghanistan.

We can't report all the facts yet because American lives are still at stake. This is shaping up as the worst loss suffered by Special Operations forces since the w*r on terror began.

At the crash site, we're starting to look at this whole entire picture of the landscape of what's going on.

You could just see that this whole ridge was, was made for fighting on.

There was little fighting positions made out of rocks, little observation posts. They were ready for us.

It's no wonder that something happened like that, but you can't see it from the sky.

You're not gonna be able to see it with drones or anything like that.

This is something you're gonna have to see on the ground.

Nick Moore: Our platoon pulled security and covered the high ground, and we got tasked with kind of a little roving patrol in... in our general vicinity.

(radio chatter)

Brian Garganta: We set up, vantaged our area of operation right there, our patrol base, if you will, of where we're gonna operate out of in order to recover the bodies and send out teams to find the personnel who were responsible for sh**ting down the helicopter.

Any time a team is released from our perimeter, I control who goes in and out and, and where they're going and coordinate and all that. So I had to maintain track of... of all personnel.

Mario Reyes: So, my platoon was on security.

The second platoon was on body recovery.

Throughout the day, we had body recoveries, and they couldn't find a couple of them.

Nick Moore: It's hot. There's no shade. It's, you know, pushing into the hundred degrees, and the... the hardest part was just bringing them from the crash site back to the top. Guys would carry them for as far as they could, and then a next set would take over and... and carry them the rest of the way.

Mario Reyes: I think it was late in the day when they finally recovered all 16.

And we built a helicopter landing zone for the helicopter to come in to get the bodies.

We started blowing trees and tree stumps out of the way and, you know, a few hours after blowing stuff up, you know, we had enough room to... to put a helicopter in and, and load the remains.

The whole time intel's being gathered about one person possibly being captured.

Mario Reyes: My blocking position was right next to the command center, and I could overhear everything going on. They're hearing radio chatter about a live American.

Brian Garganta: One of the radios that initial SEAL team had had with them should've been kept on an individual.

So once it started moving, we thought that that was a survivor.

Nick Moore: At that point, we got tasked with going down the mountain, kind of figuring out what that was. I was relieved. I didn't want to sit there on that crash site. It's hallowed ground, if you will.

It's just kind of one of those things where, if I'm not there, I don't have to think about what just happened there.

I have a new tasking, and I have a new purpose for what I'm doing and why I'm out here.

I know for me, I said a silent prayer for, you know, everybody that was recovered and for those that were still missing. You keep reminding yourself that there's still a job to be done.

We'll pay our respects to them when this is over and everybody's back, everyone's accounted for, and everyone is safe.

Mario Reyes: We had to hurry up and go.

Needed to be a quick, small team.

Nick Moore: As we're walking downhill, another mountain storm had pushed in. It's dumping on us all night, it's just raining, so it's cold, it's wet, it's muddy. We're walking down like a 60-degree incline.

Mario Reyes: The rain was so bad, that you really couldn't see anything that was going on.

Brian Garganta: It really was walking and falling. You fell a lot, and you got up. You were muddy, and you're wet.

Nick Moore: The rain just didn't seem to let up. Everybody's starting to slip and slide down the mountain, and so it was like, "Hey, we need to stop."

So we just kind of hunkered down underneath the... the pine trees that were up there.

We're sitting there, trying to stay warm and trying to stay quiet, too, because all around us we started seeing a bunch of fires.

The only thing we know that's up there is the Taliban. And you know, we have two or three guys pull security while the rest, you know, try to take a nap. You don't get much sleep, but the body will keep going and going and going. It's the mind that breaks it down.

A lot of it is mental.

How can you handle what you're going through, and are you gonna be able to push yourself through?

Brian Garganta: We started receiving intel of locations of, you know, that equipment that was, that was being moved.

We started tracking the radio, you know.

We, we knew where it was going.

We push out one platoon, going down to the village where the equipment had sent off a signal.

Mario Reyes: Climbing down the mountain, we just walked forever, and we were out of supplies, in a way. We have no water.

We have no food. Nobody brought any food.

We only were... had the ability to carry, you know, like a day's ration, so we, we called for a resupply drop on our location.

Mario Reyes: When we got a resupply, you see these big huge pallets flying in, you know, and they're in a big, huge green parachute, and they dropped that in the only tree in this clear area.

Nick starts climbing up the tree to cut all our pallet, you know, our stuff out, and I climb up the tree to, to get more stuff out.

Everybody was kind of making fun of me because I looked like somebody from an old '20s pirate movie with my Kn*fe in my mouth climbing this tree about eight, nine feet up. And, you know, I've got probably an 800 or 900 pound pallet over my head in this tree, and I'm up there hacking it apart with a Kn*fe, pulling stuff out and throwing it down.

Both me and Nick get up there, and we're like, "Hey, man, if there's a sn*per here, we're done."

Now looking back, it's funny, but at the time, it just made me so mad.

Nick Moore: We get a resupply, we just continue to walk for the rest of the morning down towards the village where we're getting this radio signal from.

Mario Reyes: The information that was being passed down was that there's an American being hidden, so we start searching the buildings.

Get back! Get back! Get down!

Nick Moore: We assumed that the village was like any other village, and we just started clearing it as... as an unknown thr*at so, you know, we start kicking in doors.

Stop, stop. Stay there, all right?

Stay there.

Get down, get down!

We're asking people where the Americans are, and of course, they're speaking Pashto, and we're speaking English, and it doesn't translate. So it's, you know, pointing to an American flag patch on your shoulder and, you know, "Where are the Americans?"

Mario Reyes: We start hearing commotion going on down the mountain, and at this point is when we start seeing a bunch of men pushing another guy, and he's tall, taller than everybody else.

(shouting)

Back off!

Get down, get down!

Give me the g*n! Give me the g*n!

When I get down there I see that it's an American that's dressed up with the Afghan hat and Afghan dress on and everything.

And they do the ordinary, "Hey, what's your name?" and the security questions, and they find out that it's one of the SEALs that was missing.

Nick Moore: There's a radio transmission saying,

"Hey, we've got control of, you know, Marcus Luttrell."

My name is Marcus Luttrell.

I'm 39 years old, and I'm from Texas.

I didn't kid myself. I didn't tell myself that I was gonna make it outta there. But I did tell myself that my boys were gonna get me. If I could hold out, it would be okay.

That's what I did, just waited, no matter how long it took.

And I also put it in the back of my head that I was an expendable asset. I'm a Navy SEAL. I get paid to take risks and die if necessary.

That's one of the reasons you join up for the job, because of that line right there.

That's how sexy and cool it is.

But then when it's really happening, you're like, wait a minute.

(laughing)

But make no mistake, if... if we're ever in trouble, then you call the Rangers, and they'll come get our asses out. Because they'll bring everything.

And, I mean, sure, there's, I'm sure there's a lot to it. They love the satisfaction of saying they gotta come rescue our asses all the time.

That's gotta be part of it. Why wouldn't it be?

I do recall Marcus saying that he would never live down being rescued by Army Rangers.

At least he could make light of the situation that he was in.

Marcus Luttrell: I just remember sitting against that wall, And I was b*at up too, but I just remember looking at them, and just gotta think, like, this guy doesn't know me. He doesn't know anything about me, but he just went through hell to come get me.

Man there's probably a chance he, he wouldn't like me if he knew me.

It doesn't matter.

Just sitting back and looking, and go, man, these guys got a phone call saying I was jammed up, and there's a pretty good chance they weren't gonna make it outta there if they came to get me. And they're like, all right, let's go get him.

Nick Moore: I didn't know his name, you know.

I just knew he was a SEAL, and, you know, that's part of the reason why we were out there.

I didn't know who it was, and it didn't really matter at that point. There's an American survivor.

Marcus Luttrell: And that lasted for about a minute, that whole, "Hey," because we're still in the... in the crap.

And they picked me up and carried me into, into this barn, and they started doctoring me up. I'd been sh*t, broke my back, could tell it was just kind of, it was fractured. My shoulder has been busted up. My face was busted real bad. I had bit my tongue in half, and I'd broke my nose, and then I had head injuries. I'd knocked myself out multiple times.

Mario Reyes: We asked Marcus, "Where are the bad guys?" And he says, "They're all around us. They're everywhere around us."

Marcus Luttrell: I go, "How many guys you got?"

And he kinda chuckled at me a little bit. And I was like, "How many, how many you got? You got a lot?

He goes, "Up in the top of this mountain is where we got engaged. There's this clear site."

And that's where we were sleeping the night before with all the fires around, where the resupply landed in the, the one tree.

So me and Nick look at each other and, and we're like, That could have been a very crazy morning, in a way, if they really wanted to come out and play.

And then about an hour, later it was game on.

Just started laying lead.

Mario Reyes: Air support came in and destroyed the entire mountaintop with all kinds of a*tillery.

It's one of those times I was like, this is gonna be the best, you know, 4th of July ever, because it was pretty close.

The Taliban were running down, and they just lit them up.

And they were running down with lights, and then no more lights after that.

Brian Garganta: Rangers and the Air Force coordinated it, and the enemy was destroyed.

In Afghanistan there are new developments in the search for the four U.S. Navy SEALs missing in the rugged mountains near Pakistan since early last week.

Female Reporter: When one of the SEALs was rescued on Saturday, he told rescuers things did not look good for other team members.

Nick Moore: There's a total of four on the team, and so, you know, the next question is, hey, where is everybody else?

And they were, like, where's your, uh, where's the rest of your team? I was like, they're dead, man, and then we started passing intel.

We started talking about the engagement, and then I asked them their route of insertion.

And they're like, we came in this way.

We didn't see anything. I was like, that's the way we came in.

We didn't see anything either, until they were on top of us.

But the Taliban kinda had us surrounded in the beginning. Once we got channelized into that draw, you know, they were all over us and could see us.

We're really good at our skill set and disappearing and moving throughout the terrain, and, and kinda losing the trail of whoever was following us.

But once they get you in an opened area, and they have you surrounded on multiple sides, it's difficult to to apply that skill set.

But I don't, I'm not sad at, at the fact of how they d*ed.

They d*ed in combat next to their brothers, all the brass. That's how we die.

Nick Moore: Now we have a solid answer of, okay, there's only one survivor, so we're looking for three more, you know, KIAs. At least we had an answer to the fate of that reconnaissance team.

Mario Reyes: At this point, Brian starts assigning the, the rest of the guys that were back at the crash site to start doing body recovery, because we know they're dead, but we don't know where they're at, and we never leave a fallen comrade behind. And we're going, like, halfway up the mountain, and the other squads are coming halfway down the mountain, and we're kind of meeting in the middle, searching for bodies.

Nick Moore: One of our guys slipped into a little wash and had actually stumbled on, on the first two remains that we found.

Brian Garganta: It was a bad way the bodies were, were positioned, and, and were sh*t up.

I mean, they weren't, they weren't abused or anything like that.

They were fully clothed. Their equipment was gone, and that's one big difference between Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda would have mutilated the bodies.

So, we, we knew it was, probably was Taliban.

Nick Moore: We had Marcus in, and we have two. Now we're looking for the needle in the haystack as to, you know, where's the... the fourth and final member of this team?

And for the next ten days we continued to search.

At this point, you know, elements of the Marines have started to make their way up to assist and to kind of enlarge the American presence up there.

Mario Reyes: We're filthy, dirty, pants are completely torn open from falling, and nobody was shaven or anything, and we stunk so bad. (laughing)

The prickly heat kicked in.

The Marines start walking by, and they're like, who are these, you know, guys?

We were all tired. We were worn out.

We were, you know, b*at up.

We weren't leaving there until we found the third body, but a higher power said, hey, you gotta go.

Nick Moore: If they had kept telling us to stay, we would have stayed.

I want to say within eight hours of us getting relieved, they had found the, the final missing American.

Brian Garganta: Rangers did what they were asked to do. They completed the mission. We thought we were going in for eight hours, and we stayed there for, you know, 12 days. It, it was our job, it was our mission.

The bodies were recovered, equipment was destroyed, and a captured U.S. service member was rescued.

The hard walks in the rain, no food and stuff, it was worth it.

We saved a life.

You know, there's one American that can say that, "Hey, I was rescued by a great group of guys, and I can thank every day that I live because of them."

Brian Garganta: We saved someone.

That is an accomplishment, and it wasn't me.

It was the men of Charlie Company, 2nd Ranger Battalion.

Nick Moore: It was probably one of THE most difficult, mentally and physically challenging missions that I had to deal with.

The physical part is one of those things, were twisted ankles and scrapes and bruises.

They heal and they go away, but, you know, things in your memory are always there.

It's kind of the... the unseen scars that, you know, everybody carries that, that was there, and you know, I know Marcus carries his own set of scars, and we all carry our set of scars from that.

When you have to see things like that, it changes a person.

Marcus Luttrell: One of the unique things about this particular operation is it showed the ability of our m*llitary to come together as one fighting unit... and, and get something done.

When all them guys d*ed, it was, hey, let's go. And it worked like a surgeon's scalpel, man, just to get me outta there and get the boys back home.

I probably couldn't walk outside right now, and somebody wouldn't help me change my tire.

These guys are in the middle of Afghanistan and they're just, don't know me from Adam, and they walked through the, straight through the gates of hell, shake hands with the devil to come get me, because that's where I was at.

I was in hell. So, they did it.

Nick Moore: Our creed ends with, you know, "readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor."

The Ranger regiment makes you a better man, and it makes you the best warrior there is, flat out, and, and I'll go to my grave believing that.

You can sleep safely, knowing that there's people like that that are gonna defend your country. I'm proud of everything my Rangers did.

Marcus Luttrell: I mean, the way we honor their memory is keep getting back at it, every day. And the guys that come after me, the same thing. That's how they respect my generation. I'll never stop.