Lone survivor: the eyewitness account of Operation Redwing and the lost heroes of SEAL team 10 by Patrick Robinson, Marcus Luttrell Read Free Book Online Page A

the late Pope John Paul was the holiest man in the world, an uncompromising Vicar of Christ, a man whose guidelines were unshakable. Tough old guy, John Paul. A lot too tough for the Russians. I’ve always thought if he hadn’t been a vicar, he’d have made a good Navy SEAL.
    Down home, in our quiet backwoods area, it looks like an untroubled life. There are a few minor irritants, most of those being snakes. However, Dad taught us how to deal with them long ago, especially the coral snakes and those copperhead vipers. There’s also rattlesnakes, eastern diamondbacks, and king snakes, which eat the others. In the local lake you can find the occasional water moccasin, and he is one mean little sonofabitch. He’ll chase you, and while I don’t much like ’em, I’m not scared of them. Morgan goes after them as a sport, likes to hustle ’em up, keep ’em alert.
    A mile or so up the road from us, there’s a mighty herd of Texas longhorns. Beyond the house there’s a half dozen paddocks for my mom’s horses, some of them belonging to her, others boarders from other people.
    People send horses to her for her near-mystical power to bring sick or weak animals back to full fighting form. No one knows how she does it. She’s plainly a horse whisperer. But she has some special ways of feeding them, including, for a certain type of ailing racehorse, some kind of a seaweed concoction she swears to God can turn a cow pony into Secretariat. Sorry, Mom. Didn’t mean that. Just joking.
    Seriously, Holly Luttrell is a brilliant horsewoman. And she does turn horses that seem very poorly into gleaming, healthy runners again. I guess that’s why those horses keep on coming. She can only cope with about ten at a time, and she’s out there in the barn at five every morning looking after them. If you take the time, you can see the effect she has on them, the very obvious results of her very obvious skills.
    My mom’s a seventh-generation Texan, although she did once immigrate to New York City. Around here, that’s like moving to Shanghai, but Mom has always been a rather glamorous blonde and she wanted to make a career as an air stewardess. Didn’t last long, though. She was back in the big country of East Texas real quick, raising horses. Like all of us, she feels Texas is a part of her spirit. It’s in mine, in Dad’s, and it sure as hell is the very essence of Morgan.
    None of us would live anywhere else. We’re right at home down here, with people we have known and trusted for many years. There’s no one like Texans for a spirit of expansiveness, optimism, friendship, and decency. I realize that might not be acceptable to everyone, but that’s how it seems to us. We’re out of place anywhere else. It’s no good pretending otherwise.
    That might mean we just get real homesick quicker than other people. But I will come back to live here when I’m finished in the military. And I intend, sometime, to die here. Hardly a day goes by, wherever I am in the world, when I don’t think of our little ranch and my huge circle of family and friends, of having a beer on the front porch and telling tall stories full of facts, some of ’em true, all of ’em funny.
    So while I’m on the subject I’ll explain how a farm boy from the backwoods of East Texas came to be made a petty officer first class and a team leader in the U.S. Navy SEALs.
    The short explanation is probably talent, but I don’t have any more of that than the next guy. In fact, my natural-born assets are very average. I’m pretty big, which was an accident of birth. I’m pretty strong, because a lot of other people took a lot of trouble training me, and I’m unbelievably determined, because when you’re as naturally ungifted as I am, you have to keep driving forward, right?
    I’ll outwork anyone. I’ll just go on and on until the dust clears. Then I’m usually the only one left standing. As an athlete, I’m not very fast, but I’m kind of sharp. I know where