Surviving Shok Valley | No Man Left Behind

All right, going away. I got two in the L right now when battle's about to kick off, and it's imminent. Definitely get a major shot of adrenaline. Um, because you can't freeze at that point. We have trained for years to overcome that fight or flight sensation that everybody has.

You know, Green Berets fight in that situation. For fighting as a team, it is absolutely the most important thing that you can do on the battlefield. If you don't have that, you know, it doesn't matter what kind of situation you have. You're either not going to get out of it as successfully as you would have fighting as a team.

And we're not talking about, you know, going home at the end of the day and, and you know, feeling bad about how the day went. We're talking about some of your detachment members being killed or critically injured.

The consequence is death sometimes. Our training weeds out a lot of quitters. You're given every opportunity for basically three years during Special Forces training to quit. I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, the old adage, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Right? This was definitely a tough situation, and I could have quit at any time. I don't think anybody would have felt me for it either, but I just—I didn't have it in me to quit. It wasn't an option at this point, especially after everybody on the team had risked their lives to get to me, to keep me alive, to get me down that mountain. I couldn't give up now.