Chief Eddie Gallagher (right, in cap) takes control of a prisoner (far left), an ISIS fighter who had been wounded. A helmet cam video showed Gallagher taking charge of the prisoner. Then, the Iraqis brought in a barely-conscious ISIS fighter who had been wounded in an air strike. "And then, some of the platoon started to see what they thought was his bullets actually connect with old men, with school-age girls, and they had to realize, 'Wait a minute: all these stories that he's been telling, maybe those aren't jokes,'" he said. At first, the SEALs passed it off as just talk. Philipps said, "There's a subculture of SEALs who feel that, to a certain extent, they are above the law and should be – that the real fighting, the dirty fighting that must be done by unconventional forces, sometimes isn't as pretty as the rulebook makes it sound."īut some members of Alpha began to believe Gallagher was needlessly risking casualties, exposing his men to enemy fire on a rooftop, for instance, where a helmet cam captured the moment one of them got hit.Īs Philipps tells it, some days Gallagher would hole up in a sniper position and come back bragging about his kills. And you know, unfortunately that meant breaking the rules." The rest of us, we wanted to get after it. Anybody that wasn't cool with it was kind of labeled as a coward. "Originally that was Eddie's idea," Vriens said, "but at the same time we were signing on with it. But Vriens said Gallagher told them to turn off their GPS trackers so they could get closer to the fight without headquarters knowing. They were supposed to stay 1,500 yards behind the front line, backing up Iraqi troops as they retook the city of Mosul from ISIS. Gallagher gave Vriens and the rest of Alpha Platoon exactly what they wanted.
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