In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way.
—Tim O’Brien
This is a true war story, with all the contradiction that implies. It is the story of dangerous men in dangerous places who had known years of war but never victory, and certainly nothing like peace; a generation of elite fighters who in the absence of any clear end to conflict, had to decide what the hell they were fighting for.
Even in the best circumstances, the facts of any true war story are hard to track down. But through more than two years of research and reporting, I have worked to sift the facts from a pile of confusion, misinformation, and intentional lies. This account braids together interviews with more than two dozen current and former Navy SEALs and more than nine thousand pages of court transcripts and confidential Navy documents. The facts have also been assembled from service records, medical records, performance evaluations, interviews with Eddie Gallagher’s family, and videos of law enforcement interrogations. The effort benefited from a trove of more than six thousand text messages sent by Gallagher to friends, his wife, and his superiors, and twenty-three hundred messages sent among the SEALs in Alpha platoon. Those texts gave special insight into the moment-to-moment, unfiltered thinking of Gallagher and his men without the benefit of hindsight. Through it all, Gallagher, who is the main presence in this book, never said a word for the project, despite my attempts to interview him. In public he has denied the darkest accusations made against him, and in court he was acquitted of nearly all wrongdoing. Like the Navy authorities that investigated the platoon, I ran into several SEALs who are included in this account but refused my interview requests. Some had reason to hide what happened, to say nothing, or to lie. What is missing is as telling as what is included.
Because the people I was able to interview inevitably had gaps in knowledge, the details included in this account are supported by multiple sources and, wherever possible, by photos, letters, journals, texts, and videos. The result is the most complete and accurate account ever compiled of the story of Alpha platoon, and perhaps the first book to offer an unvarnished look at life in the SEAL Teams.
I tried to tell the story the way it was told to me. Because of that, the language is often the raw, full-throttle talk of young warfighters, and the accounts of war and death are presented with the same grim, unfiltered details that the SEALs experienced. Despite no shortage of deceit and betrayal, what follows is ultimately a chronicle of hope. Even when hit and knocked down over and over, the SEALs at the core of this fight remained determined never to ring the bell. This is their war story.