Zack’s Comments (group member since Feb 11, 2014)

Zack’s comments from the Sumner E Period group.

“ He’s the head of the U.S. Navy. And that was the greatest honor I had ever received. It was a moment I will never forget, just standing there in the presence of Admiral Mullin. He told me he was very proud of me. And it doesn’t get a whole lot bigger than that. I nearly cracked up.”
After Marcus had survived and taken back and taken care of he was honored. Marcus was a man that risked everything to do what was right. The head of the U.S. Navy admired him and told him that he was very proud of him. If you are in the Navy SEALs you are high up and one of the best but are not very recognized because of how secret they need to be about their work o after this happened it was a new world for him. He became known everywhere and everyone wanted to thank him or looked up to him as a savior or a fighter and survivor. This just shows the amount that being a Navy SEAL really mean to them. They have chosen this for their life and they love it as much as anything.

“ Christ, those guys would have loved nothing more in all the world than to grab me and announce to the Arab television station they had defeated one of the top U.S. Navy SEAL teams. Not just defeated, wiped them out in battle, smashed the rescue squad, blown up the helicopter, executed all survivors, and here they had the last one.”
Marcus knew that if they capture him that they wont just kill him. They will torture him for days upon days, they will show him off to say they killed the SEAL team. They will basically use him as a trophy for their intire nation to shaw that they have came out victorious and they can defeat a SEAL tem. And he knew this so he knew that he had to do anything and everything to come out of this alive; he had to fight for his life and survive at all cost no matter what. That is what he was best at and that is what he was trained for his entire life in the Navy. He had a mindset of survive at all cost or be captured and tortured by them.

“ I drifted into a half sleep, my wounds still throbbing but thankfully not becoming infected. Hooyah, Sarawa! Right?”
This quote is not only displaying the toughness of this man but also showing the braveness of this man. When he says Hooyah it is a reference back to the Navy, which basically shows that they sign up knowing what could happen to them. He has so many negative things happening to him but purely off of the one positive thing that he can find he creates hope. This man is a hero he knew what he was getting into but yet he still felt the need to step up do the right thing and stay true to his country and their mottos. He was surrounded by dirt and there were not many clean tools to work with and no sterilized equipment for them too work on him with which could have easily led to infection but it did not by some miracle. He is a fighter and a survivor; he made it through more than almost anyone in the world could possibly make it through and he was still fighting to live.

These men literally had to go into the unknown and just hope that they have been trained right and that they are just strong enough to be able to fight through whatever there is ahead of them. Also they have to be able to be fearless, they will never be scared,
“No SEAL would ever admit to being scared of anything even if we were, we would never say it. We open the door and go outside to face the enemy, whomever the hell he might be. Whatever we felt that night, it was not fear of the enemy, although I recognize it might have been fear of the unknown, because we really were unsure about what we would encounter in the way of terrain.”
The fact that they can go in practically blind and be able to stand their own and fight through whatever stands in front of them is incredible. They have almost no fear and even when the are in time of great difficulty and disastrous situations they can still stay strong and hold in their fear so that they can do their best in the situation they are in.

Not only can these men with stand pain and being in terrible situations but they are also extremely smart, strong, and skilled at hand to hand combat. “ In a life or death situation, I’d grab that bar, carefully select the most violent of them, and smash it right through him. He’d never get up again. Then lay into the front two, taking them entirely by surprise. At the same time, using the bar, I’d ram the whole group into a corner…” not only can he fight a whole group of strong men but he can come up with a plan on the spot while he is being beaten that he might have to do to live. This man has already gone through hell but yet he can still have one more stand off against these men if it means his life because he will do anything to be able to live. “ Could I have done it? I think so. My buddies back in SEAL team 10 would have been mighty disappointed in me if I’d failed.” To be one of these rare men it can even be expected out of you to be able to fight off men like that.

These men that make it to the point of being Navy SEALs are unique individuals. These men should be admired and respected by everyone; they are able to fight through almost anything. At this point he has been shot jump off cliffs and even broken a leg but he is still fighting and pushing forward. When he hears water it is one of the best things he could have hoped for, “That’s how far I was in the prayer when I heard the water for the first time. I could not believe it. There it was unmistakable, way below me, a brook, maybe even a small waterfall… I had to find a way out.” When he hears the sound of the water he knows that he has a chance to find a way out and get to somewhere that is safe but right at this point he is just excited that he has found a source of water that can help him in the mean time. So when he reaches this water he just falls in and lays his entire body in it and takes it in while he can because it is a small piece of satisfaction for him.

“In the global war on terror, we have rules, and our opponents use them against us. We try to be reasonable; they will stop at nothing. They will stoop to any form of base warfare: torture, beheading, mutilation. Attacks on innocent civilians, women and children, car bombs, suicide bombers, anything the hell they can think of. They’re right up there with the monsters of history.”(122)
This is a crude statement from him explaining the terrible tactics their opponents could and would use against them. For them to be able to stand their ground and continually try to provide help for these same people is incredible. They strive to push themselves into situations in which they have to act at the best of their abilities because that is the way they were made. This is a group of people as close as brothers that depend on one another to have their back to help protect them from their opponents. The culture that they are trying to saver is a corrupt system in which there is no order and when all else fails this team of elite individuals are sent in on a mission to complete a goal but are constantly held back and under extreme danger.

Also in my book Lone Survivor, He talks about his experiences throughout the training for the SEALs.
“I was afraid of this, because I knew I was not a real fast runner, and I psyched myself up for a maximum effort. I seem to have spent my whole life doing that. And when we arrived at the beach, I knew I would need that effort. There could not have been a worse time to make the run. The time was almost full, still running in, so there was no appreciable width of drying hard sand. This meant running in either shallow water, or very soft sand, both of which were a complete nuisance to a runner.”(83)
During this point in his training he was just about to head into a running course across the coast of an ocean, which is difficult to run because of the water. This also shows that he has the unique ability of a Navy SEAL to be able to push himself so hard to the point of using his maximum potential to persevere through this extremely exhausting task. He was born a certain way which made it possible for him to become a Navy SEAL, because you must be special to have those abilities.

The book I am reading is Lone Survivor, Marcus Luttrell describes his experience in Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL. He also describes how he was raised which helped him realized that he was going to be a Navy SEAL.
“SEALs need to be at home in rough country, able to survive, live in the jungle if necessary. We were already good at that. By the age of twelve, Morgan and I were like a couple of wild animals, at home in the great outdoors, at home with a fishing pole and gun, easily able to live off the land.
But deep down I knew there was something more required to make it into the world’s top combat teams. And that was a level of fitness and strength that could only be attained by those who actively sought it. Nothing just happens. You always have to strive.”(39-40)
He is showing that even at that age he somewhat understood that it was going to take an excessive amount of time a preparation for him to be able to become a Navy SEAL. Just covering the basics were not going to be good enough for this type of accomplishment.