Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 »

Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell joined the United States Navy in March 1999, became a combat-trained Navy SEAL in January 2002, and has served in Afghanistan and Iraq. He lives in Texas. Patrick Robinson is known for his best-selling US Navy-based novels and his autobiography of Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward, One Hundred Days, was an international bestseller. He lives in England and spends his summers in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where he and Luttrell wrote Lone Survivor.

Four US Navy SEALS departed one clear night in early July, 2005 for the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border for a reconnaissance mission. Their task was to document the activity of an al Qaeda leader rumored to have a small army in a Taliban stronghold. Five days later, only one of those Navy SEALS made it out alive.

This is the story of the only survivor of Operation Redwing, fire team leader Marcus Luttrell, and the extraordinary firefight that led to the largest loss of life in American Navy SEAL history. His teammates fought valiantly beside him until he was the only one left alive, blasted by an RPG into a place where his pursuers could not find him. Over the next four days, terribly injured and presumed dead, Luttrell crawled for miles through the mountains and was taken in by sympathetic villagers who risked their lives to keep him safe from surrounding Taliban warriors.

A born and raised Texan, Marcus Luttrell takes us from the rigors of SEAL training, where he and his fellow SEALs discovered what it took to join the most elite of the American special forces, to a fight in the desolate hills of Afghanistan for which they never could have been prepared. His account of his squadmates' heroism and mutual support renders an experience for which two of his squadmates were posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for combat heroism that is both heartrending and life-affirming. In this rich chronicle of courage and sacrifice, honor and patriotism, Marcus Luttrell delivers a powerful narrative of modern war.

Prologue     3
To Afghanistan...in a Flying Warehouse     9
Baby Seals...and Big Ole Gators     41
A School for Warriors     75
Welcome to Hell, Gentlemen     108
Like the Remnants of a Ravaged Army     139
'Bye, Dudes, Give 'Em Hell     160
An Avalanche of Gunfire     195
The Final Battle for Murphy's Ridge     227
Blown-up, Shot, and Presumed Dead     257
An American Fugitive Cornered by the Taliban     288
Reports of My Death Greatly Exaggerated     318
"Two-two-eight! It's Two-two-eight!"     347
Epilogue: Lone Star     381
Afterword   Patrick Robinson     385
Never Forget     387
Acknowledgments     391