Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

charge on the door.
BOOM!
It’s on, I thought to myself.
With an Iraqi hostage to rescue, we had planned to let the Iraqi
soldiers lead the way. But typical for our partner force, they choked with
fear and balked at stepping over the shattered and twisted metal of the
door and into the smoke-filled room beyond. From here, every
nanosecond counted. Our SEAL combat advisors, ready for this
contingency, grabbed the Iraqi soldiers and unceremoniously flung them
through the door and into the house. This was no time to delay.
Our SEAL assault force followed right on the Iraqi soldiers’ heels,
and when the Iraqis again failed to enter the next room, our SEALs
quickly took the lead and rapidly cleared the house. Within a minute,
every room had been cleared and all prisoners were under our control.
“Target secure,” I called. No shots had been fired. Now we had to
figure out who we had captured.
A bewildered young Iraqi teen was among those we had detained. We
pulled him aside and, after some questioning through the interpreter,
confirmed he was indeed the hostage who had been kidnapped. Marc
Lee, part of the SEAL assault force, was never one to miss an
opportunity to insert humor into any situation. Marc boldly strolled up to
the Iraqi kid and, in his best impersonation of Lieutenant James Curran
played by the actor Michael Biehn in the 1990 movie Navy SEALs, said:
“We’re a SEAL Team, we’re here to get you out. There’s no reason to
thank us because we don’t exist. You never saw us. This never
happened.” We got a good laugh at that as the Iraqi kid, who didn’t speak
a word of English, was nonetheless thankful and clearly relieved to have
been rescued from his captors.