No easy day

I`ve read the book “no easy day” by the teller “Mark Owen” (not his real name of course) and his writer Kevin Maurer. The book is a self-biographic from a soldier that was in the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. In the book you follow Mark Owens life, from his childhood in Alaska, when he signed up for the military and his life after his career as a soldier.

The book has a lot of details. That is good because it makes the book more interesting and exciting. You really get the picture of how it was in the mountains of Afghanistan when they were attacked by choppers, Taliban’s or whatever. It is the best book I ever read.

It starts with him telling about his childhood in Alaska. He lived out in the wild with his family. His dad was an industry worker but he had a past of serving in the military. His mom was a teacher at the local school.  Mark had three sisters as well. Mark and his father were often hunting and laying traps. They would go out with the snowmobile. One day Mark was freezing. They had been out for some hours. He told his dad that he wanted to go home, but his dad refused. He just told mark to run behind the snowmobile. So mark was pretty strong in his mind from his childhood.

 Mark was trusted with guns very early. But one time he was securing his gun in front of the fireplace. He forgot the Fireplace was hot and backed in to it. He got a shock and by accident he fired his gun. The sound woke up everyone in the house. Marks father was very calm and wise, he just asked mark what went wrong and that was it, he thought nearly shooting himself was a lesson for the rest of his life.

Mark was a top student at his high-school, he was so good that he won the “student of the year” contest, but mark didn’t like the title so he lowered his grades. I do not understand why he would do such a thing but I guess he didn’t want to be taken for a nerd or something. But he still had great grades when he finished school. 

He never got to play whit action figures or play videogames so Mark was curious about the military. When he was 18 he signed up for the navy. He worked at the navy for 3 years until he signed up for bud\s, bud\s is the military training for everyone who wishes to join the special units. It is the toughest education on earth. The soldiers are forced to hold their breath till they drown; when they drown the instructor pulls them up. They also get to swim in the ocean, a lot of physic, and after all this there is a final exam, to survive the hell week. The hell week is when they marsh across USA, from West Virginia to California. They marsh all day and sleeps 3 hours. The soldier that completes this education now gets to join Special Forces. And that was marks final goal. So he joined the seal team 5, also called DEVGRU. He served there and trained there for some years.

On second of marsh an alert from a water treatment plant in northern Iran was transferred to the NAVY SEALS. The Taliban had a plan to blow the whole plant. The mission was later on given to seal team five. And this was marks first operation.  They went in under cover from darkness, they had the polish special force GROM coming in from air whit choppers. Mark and his team moved in head on. But they did not know the Taliban’s knew they were coming.  But, they thought that the seals came in from the east, and then when they moved to the east they gave he seals the opportunity to gain ground in the facility. Seals found several Taliban’s sleeping in small rooms. They were hand cuffed and unable to shout for help. So they moved on, soon the fight would come, mark felt it, he was so nervous that he nearly dropped his weapon. But the Taliban’s fled.  But the mission was successful. They secured the plant, disarmed the bomb and caught about 20 Taliban’s that were sleeping.

Mark put a lot of thought about what it would be like to shot someone. He had been on 11 missions and never even fired his gun.

On the 24 of February mark joined the DEVGRU for a special operation. The mission was to clear a building from Taliban’s. The building was in a good position and the Taliban’s used it for snipers and other stuff. So they fly in by choppers to Jalalabad. By the cover of darkness they sneaked into the large building, mark was concerned. It went to smooth.

 He was a little spooked of the unfamiliar environment. It was cold; the winter was coming to the Irak. The wind blew through the clothes. And it was so quiet. The only thing mark could hear was the steps of soldiers. Outside of the building it was a village, and everything was threshed, burned and abounded. The city was grey. Every house was wrecked, a result from many years of war. It was sand everywhere. The sand came in whit big sandstorms. But it went to smooth, mark knew that this would come to be the first time he fired a weapon at an enemy. 

The plan was to secure the building and then let the cavalry blow it up.  They were there. The door was locked.  One of the soldiers kicked it in. They secured the bottom floor and then moved up. The building had 4 levels and a roof. It all went smooth until they came to the third floor. Suddenly, Taliban’s rushed down from the fourth floor and took cover behind sandbags, and it got worse, the Taliban’s rushed up towards them, they were surrounded. And then mark threw a grenade at the sandbags, he killed them all. He saved an entire group whit elite soldiers, but they were not out from the danger, they heard Taliban’s rushing in from behind so they moved up to the fourth floor where they could get in positions to kill the Taliban’s, which they did. But it was not over. The Taliban’s had put up soldiers on the roof of the building next to them. When they heard shots they saw that they were coming from the building next to them, they rushed twords the wall. And the Taliban’s was not good fighters, they could barely aim. So mark peaked out and aimed his weapon, the searched the building and he saw a Taliban, he had an enemy in his sight, now it was only to pull the trigger. He took the shot and that was it. When he saw the other Taliban’s he gave an order to the cavalier to shot rockets at them. And after that they regrouped back on the street. They went back the same way as they came.

Back at the base mark was given a medal for saving 10 men. He received a silver star.

After this it was back to normal, all the training. A soldier that works in the NAVY SEALS has one week semester on a year. Mark had no family in Virginia and hadn’t time to go to Alaska. So he just lived on the base, and saved his spare time to Christmas or something that had to do whit family.

Mark was in many famous operations, the redwing operation, the Neptune spear and enduring freedom. But the book is about Neptune spear. The mission that killed Osama Bin Laden. I could write about every operation he was in but that would take ages, but I want to tell about the important ones and those which I remember best.

The summer of 2009 mark joined the joint special air service. Joint special air service is a group that only works whit aircrafts. The main goal is to keep villages safe from Taliban’s that are looking to stay in the houses, and then they steal and kill people. Plus the villages are good strongholds for the Talibans, and that gives them an advantage in battle.  One day it was an attack on a village south of Jalalabad. The joint special air service went in. The chopper dropped mark and his unit, they ran to cover and saw the Taliban’s rushing towards them through the desert, he started to pick them of one after one, the Taliban’s soon realized that they were not succeeding and retreaded.  And then the hunt began. They fled to a mountain village. Mark and his team ran after them, but on another rout. They dumped the armor to run faster. And they cut the Taliban’s of, they opened fire and killed the rest of them. It may sound incredibly easy for them, but they are very skilled soldiers and the Taliban’s are very bad so it make sense.

Mark was getting used to the killing and the violence. But he didn’t feel good. He felt guilt for all the men he killed. Mark took some weeks away. He went to Alaska to visit his family. But after one week he felt weird. He missed the action, all his friends. That group of soldiers had become his new family. He was ready to die for them. When you are in this sort of situations you depend on everyone else. That I think creates a strong bond between soldiers. It becomes a brotherhood of some kind. Where everyone knows and trusts each other.

So Mark went back to the base in Virginia. It took him some days to get back to the routine. And when he arrived everyone seemed to be sad. Mark walked into the barrack where he was working and asked if something was wrong. His commander replied “haven’t you heard, al-Qaida fly two airplanes into the twin towers, thousands dead.” Mark didn’t know anyone that could have gotten hurt, so he wasn’t sad, angry but not sad. Some months later there was a rumor going around saying that the pentagon (USA military operations base) had ordered an attack on Osama Bin Laden. And there was nothing more to that. But two months later the seal team 6 was handed the mission. The leader of the mission was William MC raven. The pentagon named the operations “operation Neptune spear”.

The book is mainly about this operation and in the book they explained it very good, whit pictures and maps. There were four groups, Charlie, alpha, bravo and delta. Past the 10 years they had been collecting info about Osama bin laden and this were the first hit, they thought several times that they had found him, but they were never right, but now they were one hundred percent sure. They fly whit Blackhawks, a Blackhawk is a big cargo chopper that can carry 40 soldiers. Plus one little bird. A little bird is a small attack chopper. The little bird’s mission was to hover above the hotel and be on lookout. So by the cover of the little bird they went in. He was hiding in Pakistan, Pakistan and USA was not friends and if they had been spotted they had been pursued by attack jets. And they had been killed, so they had to fly low to avoid detection on the radar. The building he was hiding in was a three story building. It was not the standard mud hut. Five men jumped off on the roof.                            20 outside, 10 in the big yard and 15 outside the walls. The dog patrol started to run around the compound, they were keeping civilians away. The rest of the outside group went in, surrounding the building, now marks group were moving to secure the guest house. They meet no resistant. But when they moved out and towards the main building one of the choppers fell down crushing the wall! Half of the delta group moved and help those which got injured. The chopper had been hovering to long and that removed all air under it, and the air that was under then ended up on top of the chopper crating a force strong enough to push the chopper down.  The good thing was that no one died but now they knew they were coming. Stealth was out of the question, so they put a C4 on the door and blew it up. Luring the Taliban´s to think they were coming from the bottom floor. But five men were luring on top of the roof. Osama was hiding on the middle floor in the bedroom. His two lifeguards guarded one stair each. They were making much noise on the bottom floor. So when the man that guarded the stair to the third floor looked away one of the soldiers came down and spotted him, the Taliban saw him to and jumped to cover, the Taliban were extremely stupid and peaked his head out, in one half of a second the soldier fired, the Taliban fell to the ground. Now they were surrounded. The one remaining Taliban took cover in a room. He turned around to see what happened to the other one. He looked away and a soldier shot him to. Now they were outside the room that Osama bin laden was hiding in, Mark moved in. He was face to face whit the terrorist. Osama Bin laden screamed something and pushed one child and a woman in front of him, like a human shield. In cover of them he picked up an AK-47 and as fast as Mark saw the weapon mark shot through the woman and killed Osama Bin Laden. Now they just had 10 minutes to leave before the local polis would appear. So they took all the Intel they could get, computers and documents. And when they got back to the base and looked at the information they found some interesting things. Like assassination of Barack Obama, Crashing a plane into New York, Bombs, and much more. They were stopped in the right time. If the mission had failed the assassination of Barack Obama had been done, because it was planned to happen just two weeks forward.

I thought this was very exciting. All the secrets he shared and his detailed version of combat really gives you the thought of how it could be. And I think he wrote this book to give information about this, there were so many versions of this operation and Mark just wanted to sort it all out. And a lot of people like this book because it`s special. Another reason why he wrote this book was to show the public how it was to be an elite soldier. And he also gave some tips how to survive it.

This was the best book I have every read, it`s so authentic. Many military books are quite similar, but this book, it has something special that catches the reader.  Maybe it’s the details or the action that does it. You can tell that Mark has the sense of writing. And it’s not just for those which are interested in military history. This book is so well explained so everyone can read it. If a person wants to learn more about Special Forces and about military related historical events, this is the book.