Victory Point - Ed Darack [83]
Marcus Luttrell—dehydrated, bleeding, and literally shot full of holes—made the grueling descent down the northeast gulch of Sawtalo Sar in a superhuman push. With each step, more of the village of Salar Ban, three miles “up-valley” from Matin, emerged into view. Struggling to maintain consciousness, Luttrell sought shelter from the enervating sun under a shade tree just outside a cluster of mud-and-rock homes on the morning of the twenty-ninth. Then, rounding a bend in a nearby trail, a local emerged—of all people, it was “Commander Matt’s” new friend Gulab, who immediately recognized Luttrell as an American. The Navy SEAL brandished his weapon and a hand grenade; Gulab, seeing that the American was in dire need of aid, raised his hands and gestured to Luttrell that he wanted to help, then led the SEAL to his home in Salar Ban, where he fed and rehydrated him. Surmising that the lone American was being pursued by men Gulab knew to be linked to the outside forces of the Taliban or al-Qaeda, he brought Luttrell into his home and pledged to treat and protect him just as he would close family in the tradition of Pashtunwalli, a “blood code” passed down through generations of Pashtuns.
Luttrell had used his corpsman training and first-aid kit to treat his own wounds, but still required extensive medical attention; with deep-tissue injury and unknown amounts of shrapnel lodged in his body, every minute counted—most people would have been long dead by this point. Gulab, who made his living primarily as a goat herder, but was also a farmer and woodcutter, knew that whoever had assailed the American would very likely continue to hunt for him in Salar Ban, and pledged to stick by Luttrell’s side until rescuers arrived, providing anything within his means to help him survive.
Luttrell pulled out a three-by-five inch all-weather “Rite in the Rain” notepad and scratched a quick message, then tore off the green page and handed it to Gulab, asking him to take it to the Americans at Asadabad, an easy (for a local) jaunt down the Pech Road. But Gulab refused to leave Luttrell’s side; instead he called on the service of a distant relative, an older man named Shina, who dwelled in another part of Salar Ban. Gulab instructed Shina to go not to Asadabad, but directly to Commander Matt at the American base at Nangalam, a longer, more grueling journey to the opposite end of the Pech Valley from Asadabad. Gulab and others from the Shuryek, having endured decades of brutality at the hands of outside forces, viewed the American military at Asadabad with suspicion, having had just a few experiences with them. Shina, hesitant even to leave the Shuryek, much less make the arduous trek to the Marine base at Nangalam, finally acquiesced to the pleas of Gulab, who even paid his elder relative a thousand afghanis (about twenty U.S. dollars) to make the trip to see Bartels. And so on the night of the twenty-ninth, the lone Afghan, carrying the small piece of green paper in one of his pockets, journeyed down the meandering trails of the Shuryek Valley into Matin, where he hired a cab to drive him along the Pech Road to Nangalam.
“Commander Matt! Commander Matt!” Sultan ran into the COC at Blessing around midnight. “There is a man at the gate saying that there is a dying American! In Salar Ban! He wants to talk with you! He is very scared of the Americans, but he wants to see just you, and not anyone from Asadabad. For him to come in the middle of the night is pretty crazy around here.”
Matt, unaware of the SOF tragedy that had unfolded just a few miles from Blessing, sprinted to the camp’s entrance, where he met the gray-bearded Shina. “Sultan, make some tea, and get this guy a blueberry muffin or something. He looks tired.”
“Yessir,” Sultan gruffed. Matt led Shina into what Bartels knew of as the “tearoom,” where he took all camp guests to converse about