Why Marcus Luttrell Went Back Into Combat After Nearly Dying

When we were in Umati, it was the worst place I'd ever been. After Afghanistan, went to Iraq. Excuse me, Anbar Province. Chris Kyle was there, that's when he got to the... Well, let's explain to people that people... Many people don't even know this. After that movie, the events that happened in the movie, Lone Survivor, you went back. Yeah, I was still in. Yeah, you went back. You did more tours. Right. And the last one we went on was in Anbar Province in Ramadi, Iraq. I was there, 06, 07. I relieved or ripped out, is what we say, Jaco Splatoon, which is Jaco, Chris Kyle, those guys. And it was hell. I mean, it was the last stand for all. It was like, when we... It was like, hey, let's fight. Sleeping in our body armor. I mean, I went out there, we took 18 men, and 14 of them got wounded. I didn't lose one guy. The day before we redeployed, I had two point men. They run the platoon out and we're doing operations. I remember, I mean, Schellenberger. I miss you, bro. And then another firefighter. That's named Stodden, man. Bro, I miss you. He was walking outside the tent and a round came over from outside and hit him in the ribs. And he was sitting next to one of the walls, or next to a dumpster, and one of our buddies comes walking. I was like, what's wrong with you? He's like, man, I think somebody hit me with a rock. And he had given shot. The X-ray is awesome. It's literally his spine, and then you see the 7.62 round right in front of it. They can't pull it out. It's been encapsulated. It just has to sit there. He's fine now, but there was a gun fight going outside the wall and it'd come over and hit him. So the day before we were coming back, he got hit. And then the other one, Schellenberger, I remember we got back and they had separated us, and he went to a different team. It was SDVs. I know you're familiar with our submersible system. Yeah. And two months or so later, maybe it might have been a little bit more. He died underneath an aircraft carrier doing a dive. So the darkest place on the planet is underneath an aircraft carrier at night. It's a modern marvel. 6,000 people in an air wing. It's a floating city. It's unbelievable how it even holds in water. Yeah. And a lot of the training, all of our training is twice as dangerous as real life. We make it that way on purpose. That's why more seals die in combat, or in training than they do in combat. Usually when you see seals dying in combat, there's a bunch of us. I mean, we get hit. With us, it was 19, extortion was 31. And it's just the way we are. But coming out of Afghanistan and then rolling into Iraq, I remember seeing Jocko. And he had his war face on. So he didn't talk to me. Jocko wakes up with his war face on. No, but I mean, imagine like when he's got permission to jack you up. Yes. You know what I mean? Jocko, he's going to jack you up. Right. Like he'd go out and raise an American flag out in the middle of the day just to get it going. He's the real deal. So when we found out we were going out there, I was like, yeah. But then in my head, I was apprehensive. Because I just had my ass kicked real bad. And going back, I mean, I had to go back. Out here in Texas, man, if you get your butt whipped, you go back in for more when you get healed up. Did you feel that way? Yeah, I had to. Immediately? Immediately. I mean, look at the fraternity I'm in. And they never looked down on me. Because we went through BUDS together. BUDS stands for Basic Underwater Dimless and SEAL Training. But it also means if you take everything away from us, we're still BUDS. Because we survived in hell. And when we went back out there, as a matter of fact, the first gunfight ever got in. I remember taking a knee and kind of sitting there going, what in the hell am I doing here? I mean, it hadn't even been a year. I couldn't even, I could barely walk, really. That's a whole different story altogether. But anyways, we got out of there. And I remember we got back to the bait. I'll tell you the story. We got back to the bait. Some of my new guys walked up to me. It was our first gunfight. And they were like, hey, I was checking. I was like, hey, how you guys doing? You good? I know you got into it. You didn't, what you were supposed to do, well done. And they were like, well, you know, I was freaking out when the gunfire started. But then I looked up and you were calm and cool. And you look back at us and you look forward. You look back and kind of made a call when we got out of there. It was smooth. I was like, keep thinking that, brother. Because when that gunfire started, I took that knee. I was like, what the hell? I mean, I was, it was just like that first fight. Like when you start getting beaten up again. And then you realize like, wait a minute, I'm a fighter. And then I was like, okay, well, let's go. And then I stood up and made the call. But there are, in any situation you go into, there's going to be that kind of hesitation. I hear people all the time like, man, I've been training so long for this, but I still have the fear. And I was like, well, that's different. That's anxiousness. It runs off the same gland. Fear and anxiousness off of your adrenals. So in the beginning, you have fear because you're not trained. But then as you train, then it becomes anxious. So when that first punch is thrown, that first bullet flies, it's like, oh, let's go. It's a switch. It has to be that way. You don't want to walk around and gauge the whole time. There has to be a trigger. Also, you can't be calm. You can't just be calm about it. That uncomfortable feeling, right? Whether it's a fight or what you've gone through. You can be comfortable. So the difference in the ring and in a gun fight is that you have to talk. Like you're not talking to the dude you're beating up. Hey, dude, watch this punch. So with us, when it goes down, you're in a fight. You're like, okay, we need to move this way. And that's why we train like that. In that fight, you got to learn how to communicate. And that's what kind of slows you down. And we do it so much. So here's the difference between the seals and everybody else. In our training, kind of one of the things is, in the beginning, they wear us out all day for weeks on end. And they tire us out, keep us up, and then they start training us. Then you get your pistol. So you're completely exhausted. And when you learn like that, it's muscle memory. So when we get engaged, our enemy will start attacking us. And then they'll be like, oh, I'm wearing them down. And then they think that's a good thing. It's not. It's actually a bad thing. Because that's when we start to come up. And that's the separation in our training as they've switched it. Don't you think that that's a lesson that people can... If you can apply that to your life, that anything good that you're going to do is going to make you uncomfortable. Anything difficult. All of it. Whether even like when you have a child, like the birth of a child, it's uncomfortable. It's a weird moment. Whether you try a new thing in life, where you move to a new place, where any new business venture you enter into, everything you do that's difficult is going to make you uncomfortable. And that's the only way to get ahead. It's it. But the most extreme version of it that we can all learn from is war. The most extreme version of is when the consequences are your existence. You don't exist anymore if you fail. It's only uncomfortable because you haven't been in it. Everything's like that. Getting dressed in the morning, doing everything. I mean, it's just the same thing. Imagine you have the capability of being trained in any scenario. It's whether or not you want to get in. All of it. All of it. Everything makes you uncomfortable. That's new. Yeah. So don't look at it as uncomfortable. Right. That's a word somebody... Yeah. Exciting. The fear and everything like... All right. Somebody told you that you were supposed to... My mother had breast cancer here recently. Bad. And she had to go get the surgery. And I made sure I go family. So when mom's sick, I have... Melanie has to take care of all that. I'm kind of a... When it comes to her, whatever. I'm just a... I'm weak. But she recovered with me. So when I got her home, I was like, Ma, check it out. Pain is pain. When we go down in the gym and I'll work out chest as hard as I can, that night and the next day, I'm a two-day guy. So the pain feels like my chest is being ripped out. I feel like sometimes I work out so hard and I bleed and I puke that... I'm being torn apart. I love it. Because I know right after I get done with that, I'm going to be stronger. Because I don't get battle weakened. I get battle hardened. Period. I've had the bones knocked out of me. On the ground just crying. But I knew that that was just sharpening me. I was like, here's what's going to happen. We're going to go... I'm going to put you under the knife. You're going to wake up the next morning, you're going to be sore and you're going to lay up for a week. It's just like we were in the gym and your chest is sore. One week later, she whipped it like the flu. She was ready to leave. She's like, I'm tired of being around you, boy. I'll be like, my mom is something. She's something. That's awesome. But pain is a matter of perspective of the person going through it. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. On Spotify, you can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. 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