Reading up on the heroism of LT Michael Murphy brought me across this photo, taken of his team members. Before.

From left to right, we have STG2 Matthew Axelson, ITCS Daniel Healy, QM2 James Suh, HM2 Marcus Luttrell, MM2 Eric Patton and LT Murphy.

A sonar technician. An information systems technician senior chief. A quartermaster’s mate. A hospital corpsman. A machinist’s mate. Their lieutenant. SEALs, all, and Sailors. Hard men, exquisitely trained warriors, superb physical specimens, members of a team. Members of a brotherhood. Men who traded body armor for ammo, support for mobility, firepower for stealth. Men who fought for us in a far place. Who, having passed through a crucible in training agreed, explicitly or implicitly – does it really matter which? – that they would any of them lay down their lives for the other. And that if it came down to it, that they would all of them lie down together.

Someone hauled them out of where they had been, or stopped them en route to where they were going. The mid-day sun beat down. The air clear and sharp. Their flag fluttered in the background. They shuffled into place, the shutter snapped, the moment ended. It wasn’t a particularly artistic shot – the sun angle was wrong, the men unsmiling. There was nothing in it portentous.

The men walked on. In time, each of them probably thought that he’d look back on that photograph as a greatly older man with fondness and regret. A captured instant, an image of lost youth, the time when they were part of something important. Something bigger than themselves.

None of them went there thinking that they would die. All of them went there knowing that they might.

I don’t know what day it was when that picture was taken, that moment frozen in time, the instant before they trudged away, hard work to be done in a hard place. What I do know is that by the time the sun went down on the 28th of June, 2005, only one of these six would still be alive – Marcus Luttrell, blasted over a ridge by a rocket propelled grenade. Wounded, knocked unconscious, bypassed, left for dead, forgotten. Saved by a Pashtun tribesman, who – obedient to his own ancient customs – refused to deliver him up to the Taliban.

Eight additional SEALS and eight Army Night Stalkers died attempting a quick reaction force rescue. About thirty-five Taliban died assaulting LT Murphy’s four-man team. It was to be the largest single-day loss of US forces since Operation Enduring Freedom began, and the largest loss of Navy special warfare personnel since World War II.

They were brothers who fought hard, and died hard together. Some things don’t change.

Go tell the Spartans,
Passerby,
That here, obedient to their laws,
We lie.

Simonides (556 BC – 468 BC), Epitaph at Thermopylae