Men's Health
“I graduated from medical school on May 11, 2005,” he says. And that’s when things got hot. He was on a plane to Afghanistan two days later. “Then on June 28, we got the call that the Chinook [helicopter] had been shot down and a Navy SEAL team was missing.”
Operation Red Wings went as tragically as a mission can. Early on the morning of the 28th, the military dropped four SEALs—Lieutenant Michael Murphy and Petty Officers Danny Dietz, Matthew Axelson, and Marcus Luttrell—about 10,000 feet high in the Hindu Kush Mountains. The team was to provide reconnaissance for an impending action against guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah.