My Brother, My Hero

And Marcus Luttrells also. Marcus Luttrell is the Navy Seal that was with his group of 4 men and were ambushed by the Taliban in Afghanistan in June of 2005. He was the only survivor. (He has since written a book titled: “The Sole Survivor”). A helicopter was dispatched to rescue the survivors when they radioed for help. The Chinook helicopter was hit by a RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade), crashing and killing everyone on board. It was the worst loss in Afghanistan since the invasion in 2001.

Luttrell was found, injured by an elderly man who, with two friends carried him back to their small village deep in the mountains. There he stayed with the Taliban surrounding the village. He wondered how much he would eventually ‘go for’ assuming that he would be handed over to the Taliban when the price was right.

During this time, my brother and others were flying over the area wishing for Luttrell to show himself. They did not find him and my brother headed back thinking “We failed”.

On July 1st, the man who first found him had his father walk down the mountain to a Marine outpost with a note from Luttrell saying: “This man gave me shelter and food, and must be helped.”

Thus began the largest combat search and rescue mission since Vietnam. The US commanders planning the rescue initially planned on sending in a Chinook helicopter to get Luttrell, while Jeff in his HH-60 would wait five miles away to evacuate casualties. But then it was decided that the smaller HH-60 could navigate the turns approaching the small village more easily than the lumbering Chinook.

“Sixties, you got the pickup” the mission commander said. “I was like, holy cow, dude, how am I not going to screw this up?” Jeff says he thought (all quotes taken from a newspaper article in the Washington Post all recollections are from Jeff telling me the story personally).

At 10:15pm, five nights after Luttrell’s four man team had set out – Jeff (the pilot) climbed aboard with his crew. They all knew it was a dangerous mission – the mountains were treacherous and the village was surrounded by Taliban – armed Taliban. They were all praying. One crew member said that he had never asked for God’s help before – his father was Jewish and his mother Christian. But he prayed then saying “He didn’t even know what God he was praying to”.

They flew through the inky black mountains, and as they increased in altitude, my brother realized that he was not going to make it with all the fuel he was carrying, they were too heavy, they were going to crash. He made the tough decision to dump fuel on a town below saying “Sorry guys (referring to the town below), that is for Penny and the boys” referring to his wife and his four sons waiting for him at home – not knowing what he was doing since starting his mission – communications were cut off.

Five minutes before the helicopter reached the small village, US Warplanes – guided by a ground team that had hiked in – attacked the Taliban fighters. As my brother puts it “They started shwacking the bad guys”. The clouds lit up with explosions all around.

They descended to the landing zone, a ledge on a terraced cliff. The rotors spun up a blinding funnel of dirt. The aircraft wobbled, drifting left toward a wall and then right toward a cliff. Some crew members lay down bracing for impact. His flight engineer screamed “Stop left!”, “Stop right!”. “I’m going to screw up” Jeff recalled. Then remembered his best friend’s wife howling in pain when he told her that her husband had been killed on a training run a few years before. “Don’t let that happen to Penny” Jeff prayed. Then, suddenly, through the brown cloud of dirt, a bush appeared. An orientation point! And Jeff set down on the cliff with only inches to spare on either side – his blades just missing the cliff and the skids just inches from the cliff edge.

They got Luttrell on and headed back the way they came. What the Washington Post story does not say is that Jeffs’ navigation system went out and he was flying blind, and praying like mad. All he had was that bush to land his chopper.

Two years later, when the Washington Post article was written (in conjunction with the book “The Lone Survivor” coming out), Marcus Luttrell who lives in the Woodlands, a suburb of Houston called him and said: “Hey buddy, this is Marcus Luttrell. Thank you for pulling me off that mountain”. Jeff whooped – having not been able to talk to him during the rescue.

So that’s my brother. He is crazy, hyper, and my hero. He survived growing up with five sisters and came out just a little crazy! I love him to pieces. He will be here Saturday night – come on over and bother him!

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See – all calm now. No more panic. Weird, huh?