No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden

saw him. Every word out of his mouth came in a scream.
    We watched from the ridgeline as the AC-130’s 20mm cannon pounded the fighters. Sending the combat assault dog, which Phil had nicknamed the “hair missile,” ahead, we spent the rest of the night chasing down the remaining fighters. All of them were either mortally wounded or dead.
    Phil and another assaulter chased a fighter into one of the compounds, while the rest of us started to clear a field of waist-deep grass. The AC-130 was reporting more hotspots. We launched the hair missile and he locked on to the scent of a fighter about fifty feet to my right. I could hear the fighter start screaming as the dog attacked.
    Calling the dog off, the assaulters threw hand grenades into the ditch where the fighter waited to ambush us. As they moved up to clear the ditch, I started to move forward.
    Even under my night vision goggles, it was difficult to see. The grass was thick and hard to walk through. Behind me, I could hear intermittent gunfire as Phil and another assaulter were in a firefight with a barricaded shooter in one of the compounds. My gun was up and I tried to use my laser to illuminate a path through the grass. I could see burnt patches ahead of me where 20mm shells had hit.
    Every step was measured.
    I saw a dark shadow at my feet, underneath my night vision goggles. I lifted my foot to step on it, assuming it was a log or a branch, when I heard a man gasp. I jumped back and opened fire. It scared the shit out of me.
    Taking a second to confirm I didn’t actually shit myself, I got my nerves under control. I moved up to search the body. He must have been dead before I got there. The weight of my foot on his chest forced the air out of his lungs. The body was singed from the 20mm rounds. After a quick search, I found an AK-47 and a chest rack.

    Back in Jalalabad, we posed for some pictures after the mission. Phil, wearing a black Under Armour skullcap, had the RPG draped over his shoulder. The picture would be a reminder of the time he cut down the enemy with their own RPG and blew out his hearing.
    It was a good night’s work and a great start to a lively deployment. That night, we killed more than ten fighters and suffered no casualties. As usual, it was a combination of skill and luck. Without a doubt, the shooter in the ditch would have ambushed us, which proved the value of the combat assault dog.
    Since arriving at the unit, my life had been a series of highs from great operations and then days of lows waiting for the next mission. If we weren’t deployed, we were training to deploy. We’d alternate deployments between Iraq and Afghanistan. The pace was nonstop. It didn’t matter if you were single or married with kids. Our whole world was focused on our work. It was our number one priority.
    It isn’t smart for me to get too much into families for security reasons, but it is also dishonest to make you think we didn’t have them. We had wives, kids, girlfriends, ex-wives, and parents and siblings all vying for our time. We tried to be good fathers and spouses, but after years of fighting the war it was hard to be present even when we were at home.
    We lived with one eye on the news, waiting for the next Captain Phillips story. When we trained, we did it in a way that was as accurate as possible. We were too busy doing our normal deployment, training, and keeping the wheels on the bus at home to think of much else.
    For the most part, our families understood the lifestyle. When we’re gone eight to ten months out of the year on training or deployment, they always ended up being the last priority.
    They wanted us home.
    They wanted us safe.
    They knew very little of what was really going on in our lives. They never experienced the satisfaction of knowing that every IED maker or al Qaeda fighter we killed made the world a little safer, or at least made life easier for the soldiers patrolling along the roads in Afghanistan. They might understand it in theory, but they were always left at home to worry.
    The families waited for the men in dress uniforms to arrive at their door and deliver the news that we weren’t coming home. The SEAL community has lost a lot of great guys, and DEVGRU alone has lost more than its share. Those sacrifices have not been for nothing. The lessons we learned and the heroic actions of our brothers were not going to be in vain. We knew the risks on deployments and in training. We knew how to live with them, and