Born to serve: The Michael Murphy story

Born to serve

Chapter One: On the Mountain

On a June afternoon in 2005, Navy Lt. Michael P. Murphy lay in hiding on the side of a ridge in the lawless eastern mountains of Afghanistan.

Chapter Two: Growing Up In Patchogue

The answer to that question might be found in Murphy's upbringing on Long Island.

Chapter Three: Two Relationships

Murphy met Heather Duggan through mutual friends in 1996, at a summer carnival on Long Island. Duggan, who grew up in Mount Sinai, graduated from high school that year. She told Murphy, then a college sophomore, that she planned to attend Penn State in the fall.

Chapter Four: A Father’s Experience

Decades earlier, the father had also risked everything to serve his country and had come away with a permanent physical wound and a deep distaste for what soldiers are asked to do. But he let his son make his own decisions.

Chapter Five: Rigorous Training

Michael was not to be dissuaded. In 1998, he graduated with a pair of bachelor's degrees from Penn State -- in political science and psychology. And exactly as his father had done more than 30 years earlier, he put on hold his plans for law school.

Chapter Six: Earning The Trident

Navy SEALs are involved in the most treacherous and secretive military operations. An assignment might require SEALs to surprise an enemy by swimming silently ashore from a submarine in darkness, or to rappel from a helicopter onto a mountain peak.

Chapter Seven: Getting Serious

As a lieutenant who came through Officer's Training School, Murphy was the second-ranking member of his platoon, a unit of up to 44 men. But you'd never know it from the way he dealt with fellow SEALs.

Chapter Eight: Military Life

Since a SEAL's strength is his ability to get in and out unseen, their cover was effectively blown and a decision had to be made.

Chapter Nine: The Tragic End

Murphy's mission, known as Operation Red Wing, resulted in the worst loss of life for the SEALs since the program's inception in 1962. In all, 11 Navy SEALs -- 8 in the helicopter, plus Axelson Deitz and Murphy -- were killed.

The shepherd who saved the SEAL

When Afghan shepherd Muhammad Gulab left this mountain home one morning in June 2005 to check on a strange noise his family had heard in the woods, he found a frightened and wounded American soldier pointing his rifle at him.