Rick Reed

You can measure the greatness of an American officer by the last two words he ever spoke into a telephone. On June 28, 2005, four U.S. Navy SEALs were trapped on a jagged mountain cliff in the Hindu Kush of Afghanistan, surrounded on three sides by dozens of enemy fighters firing rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. All four Americans were bleeding. Their radio was blocked by the towering granite walls of the canyon. The only way to get a satellite phone signal to call a rescue helicopter for his three wounded brothers was for twenty-nine-year-old Lieutenant Michael Murphy to leave the cover of the rocks and walk out into the open. Walking into that clearing meant walking directly in front of fifty rifles. Murphy did not order his radioman to go. He had already been shot in the stomach. He pulled the satellite phone from his vest, stepped out from behind the boulder, and stood tall on the exposed rocky ridge where the sky was clear. Bullets kicked up stone dust all around his boots. He dialed the number for headquarters at Bagram Air Base and calmly gave the exact location and number of his men. Halfway through the call, a bullet slammed straight through his back. Murphy dropped the phone into the dirt. Under fire that would make any mortal man crawl away, that twenty-nine-year-old from New York reached down into the blood and dust, picked the satellite phone back up, put it to his ear, and finished giving the coordinates for his team. Then, with his lungs filling with blood and his life ending on a mountain seven thousand miles from home, Lieutenant Michael Murphy spoke his final words on earth to the operator on the line: "Roger that, sir. Thank you." He hung up, walked back to the rocks, and picked up his rifle to fight beside his brothers until the end. In the code of the samurai, grace under the blade of death is the highest mark of a noble soul. Even while dying to save his men, an American gentleman remembered to say thank you.