Marcus Luttrell

"It's funny how serving your nation makes you part of something larger than yourself but also sets you apart. You realize this when you come home and find so many people who know what you've done but can't personally relate to any of it. The military now stands apart from average Americans' lives as it never has before. About 1.4 million people are on active duty in our armed forces today- about half the number that were on active duty fifty years ago. About 2.4 million have served in the Global War on Terror, as it's known. That last number sounds pretty big but it's just 0.77 percent of America's population of 313 million- a truly shocking instance of the "1 percent versus 99 percent" problem. In Congress, where our political decisions are made (or not), only 21.8 percent of our representatives have served in the military. That's down from 74 percent in 1971, when the numbers were pushed up by the draft. That was also a time when you didn't need to be wealthy to run for elected office and most congressmen understood that the term "enemy" referred to someone with a gun on the other side of a demilitarized zone, not someone in the opposing political party."

"Military life and culture seem to be foreign territory for many of the people who write for national magazines and newspapers today. Every time they refer to Navy SEALs and other SOF as "Special Forces," they reveal themselves to be as ignorant as someone who doesn't know, say, a Shia Muslim from a Sunni. Recently, in a well-attended forum at a public university, a prominent journalist referred to the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite command that carried out the bin Laden operation, as "an executive assassination ring, essentially," for Vice President Dick Cheney. The fact that the guy who said this has a Pulitzer Prize might confirm your worst fears about those who write "news" for a living. (Naturally, in the same presentation, he also referred to special operations units as "Special Forces.")"

"Those who serve in the military are the best of us. They're capable, honorable, and less likely to be hung up on material belongings or themselves. An Iraqi military officer doing training at a U.S. base was asked by a journalist recently what he thought about Americans nine years after Saddam was taken down. "You are a better people than your movies say," he said. Yet for all the interest in the stories of our heroes at war, as reflected in Hollywood grosses and the bestseller lists, the military still seems to be more isolated from most Americans than ever before. The Army was basically a citizens' militia when our nation broke free of England's tyranny. Today we have a thoroughly professional volunteer force. It's also a caste that stands mostly apart from civilian life. I've heard it said that the members of our military are like sheepdogs in a world full of wolves. If that's the case, not enough people have direct experience in the pasture. Most people don't pay much attention to the sheepdogs until the wolves come calling."

"At West Point, the Army is doing it right."

"No matter how good a SEAL might become, there's always someone with more seniority, experience, or skill nearby to bring him back to earth. At the SEAL reunions I go to, the World War II UDT swimmers will tell the Korean War veterans, "Hey, new guy, go get me a beer." The Korean War guys say the same to the Vietnam guys, all the way down the line. Once I was pushing through a crowded hospitality room when I bumped into a frog who was a lot shorter than me- because he was seated in a wheelchair. The first two syllables of an apology weren't out of my mouth before he was laying into me with You mother this and I'll whip your sorry that. I noticed he was wearing a T-shirt printed with the words BUD/S CLASS 1. This man was nobody's pushover. He was having a load of fun with me. Everyone around him was howling with appreciation. In the teams, you're always a new guy to somebody. That's how we keep each other honest. And if you stick around the teams long enough, well, you're asking for a lesson in humility, because at some point, in some school, or a new command you're going to be a nobody all over again."

"The urge to serve something larger than myself drew me into the military, and serving for nine years has taught me a few things. But service in the military isn't the only way to go. Now that I'm out of uniform, I see that my deployments were only the beginning, a workup for whatever the rest of my years call me to do. You can serve your family, and put their needs in front of yours. You can do the same thing in your community, your town, and your city. I think all of us who serve- in any type of uniform- can arrive at this broader view of service faster than most other people, because of what we go through. Service is selflessness- the opposite of the lifestyle that we see so much of in America today. The things that entertain us don't often lift us up, or show us as the people we can rise up to become. The people who appear in this book- and others who did things I can't talk about- are my role models. They quietly live out the idea expressed in the Bible (John 15:13): "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.""

"But you don't have to be a Christian, or even particularly religious, to serve. You just have to be willing to understand your place and put yourself at the end of the line. Still, my faith has helped me toward a deeper understanding of what service really means. You do what's expected of you, and more. You look after others, and put their welfare ahead of your own. You don't worry about the big purpose of it all- it's beyond your pay grade. But if you do the small things right long enough, you might find yourself coming out the other side having done something important. It's an evolution you follow, a tour on the great Ferris wheel, which doesn't have to burn. It never stops turning until the day you take your last breath. And you hope that by the time you leave this earth it will be a better place than it was when you got here. The causes you've served in your life will have meant something. Someone will have picked up your work, run with a legacy you left behind, and used it to put his or her own stamp on the world."

"All I can really tell you after walking this particular path is that I'm proud to have served my country. I know that part of me will always bleed with the teams, and that my time in uniform, which at the moment seems so long, has been just a short chapter in a far longer book, and brief preparation for what the future holds. Thank you, God, for all these days."