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

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

Excellent narration. Inspiring, patriotic, and courageous. Also, one lucky SEAL. As an American, I am honored, and humbled by his 'call to service".
Bravo.

I came away from reading this book totally impressed with the toughness and commitment of the SEALs, including the author, who kept going when the vast majority of us would have rolled over and died.

That said, I was extremely disappointed that the narrative revealed a lack of capacity for higher order thinking that I had always believed was one of the things that distinguished operators from other members of the armed forces. These guys didn't speak the language, didn't know the local culture, and didn't know when to pull the plug on an operation that had very likely been blown. The author fails to acknowledge that after being discovered by three goat herders - who seemed likely to give their position away to the large Taliban force in the area - and finding their radio did not work, it was a huge mistake to resume the mission and not even try to use the cell phone or distress beacon that they had. Didn't they have an emergency rendezvous point? Perhaps this is why the team leader, unlike everyone else in the team, was not awarded the Navy Cross?

Perhaps more troubling than the author's unwillingness to acknowledge tactical failures is his complete lack of a moral compass. His idea of acknowledging a mistake is to argue that they should have killed the three unarmed goat herders - one of whom was a child - and thrown their bodies off a cliff. Soliciting the opinion of one of his teammates on the question, the guy responds to the effect I don't care, I'll kill them if you want, just tell me what to do. On the one hand, the author doesn't see any problem with this, and rails against restrictions on his activities imposed by the Geneva Convention and rules of engagement (which are promulgated by the DOD, not the Congress, as the author would have us believe), and on the other he demonizes the Taliban, who twice after the firefight could have killed him and didn't based on ancient principles of their culture. It all makes the operators seem like mindless (albeit highly trained) tools, although I remain hopeful that the author is not representative.

Finally, the book is permeated through and through with a simplistic FOX news political philosophy. The author wraps himself in the flag and the pages of the Bible. Apparently, God wanted him to live, as he claims, but He wanted to kill his teammates?

I can only hope that the ghost writer is primarily responsible for all the nonsense we have to wade through to get to the essential story, which is totally gripping.

This is a non-fiction first person narrative of a US military operation in Afghanistan which was one of the most serious failed operations of Special Forces. Think Black Hawk Down meets Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. This is sort of a Black Hawk Down scenario of superior trained and equipped US military personnel being introduced into a hostile area where particular situational variables stack up to put huge weight on a couple of decisions/events that turn the whole operation into implausibility. Set in a remote mountain area of the Hindu Kush, one can easily imagine this Navy SEAL team stumbling upon Osama Bin Laden in a cave protected by some goatherds. The setting, the challenge, the unique skills of teamwork, linguistics, tactics, spliced with vital hatred of Americans of foes and the danger all mix to give a high energy to the book just to start with.

The book does meander back into the author's training to qualify and graduate as a Navy SEAL, as well as his time as a youth doing a sort of premature SEAL training. As such it is as much a memoir of being a SEAL, and these excursions may annoy some readers looking for an in-depth look at the specific Operation Redwing. On the positive side, the book has pictures of participants and a map, which help give a 360-degree view in imagining more of the context. Further, the author is truly not an annoying, over-confident, Texas-loving cowboy with too much testosterone, but clearly a reasoned, committed soldier with a real suite of amazing physical and mental attributes that should make any reader understand why they are probably, even at their best, not likely to ever become a Navy SEAL. Unlike Into Thin Air, the author kept his personal emotional grieving process around his decisions (and the concomitant feelings about the likely fatal role of media and Congress-driven rules of engagement) to a reasonable minimum so it did not overwhelm the story. Truly a tragic tale that should make the reader appreciate how sophisticated and valuable our SEALs are and how they can be hamstrung by political factors at home during a deadly struggle.

I am one of many who think this story is an amazing story and worth reading. All these men are heroes and I think anyone will find this story truly inspiring.

The only thing I didn't like about the book was the excessive cussing and political statements. However it is Marcus' story and he can tell it however he wants. God bless him, I'm glad I got to read it.

I have read many (as many as I can get my hands on) survival books (Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure by Frank Arthur Worsley is still the best.) This book, unlike my other survival stories pits our Hero against an Enemy of the human kind as opposed to the Elements of nature. It is well written and provides a point of view that is unique and needs to be heard. I wish the other Heroes of this book could write one too.