This is Jockel Podcast number one 38 with echo Charles and me,

Jockel Willink. Good evening, echo. Good evening.

Sir, the young seal whispered in a faint voice. Come here.

Our hands were clasped in a handshake, not a formal handshake like two

businessmen, but palm to palm with thumbs wrapped around the back of the hand like an arm-wrestling contest,

a handshake of brotherhood.

The young seal was feeling the morphine. I saw it as eyes, but he was still there, still conscious and aware.

He was everything a young man should be, smart, brave, athletic, funny, loyal, and tough.

He had been shot in the leg about a half an hour before.

I found out later that Mikey Montsor, a young seal machine gunner, had run out into heavy enemy gunfire

and dragged this seal out of a war-torn street in the Malab district in the city of Ramadi,

the violent heart of the insurgency in Iraq.

The wounded seal now lay on a gurney and Charlie Med, the Camp Ramadi Field Hospital,

where US military surgical teams worked furiously to save the lives of gravely wounded troops almost every day.

The bullet, a mammoth armor piercing 7.62 by 54 millimeter round with a steel core, had entered his leg at the lower thigh,

ripped the part flesh and bone inside his leg, and exited in his upper thigh close to the groin.

It was hard to say if he would keep his leg from the looks of the wound.

My guess was no. He would lose it.

The wounded seals grip on my hand tightened, and he pulled me in, drawing me just inches from his face.

I could tell he wanted to say something to me so I turned and put my ear to his mouth.

I wasn't sure what to expect. Was he scared or angry or depressed that he might lose his leg?

Was he nervous about what might happen next? Was he confused?

...