Fourteen men posted this morning to pay their respects to Lt. Michael Murphy and the millions of others who have sacrificed everything for our country. To honor that sacrifice, we did The Murph.
YHC gave a quick recap of Lt. Michael Murphy’s story – he was part of a four-man Navy Seal team that was overwhelmed by Taliban forces in Asadabad, Afghanistan. All four men had already been wounded and, unable to radio for help from their sheltered mountainside position, it was Lt. Murphy who opened himself to more gunfire in order to successfully make the call. In fact, after being shot in the back and dropping the radio, he picked it back up and finished the call before returning to the fight. He saved one man’s life that day.
The crazy thing is just how many similar stories there are. There’s PFC Ross McGinnis, 19, who deliberately threw himself onto a grenade in Iraq to save all four people in his vehicle. Or Sergeant Henry Johnson, part of the Harlem Hellfighters, who suffered 21 wounds while rescuing a soldier and repelling a German raid in WWI. Or 1st Lt Jack Lummus who continued to give orders at Iwo Jima after losing both legs to a landmine. The list goes on and on. And today, we should take a minute while we are at our family BBQ’s or poolside and reconnect with that history and remember the legacy of these heroes.
With that in mind, we began the simple benchmark workout:
- 1 mile run
- 100 pull-ups
- 200 merkins
- 300 squats
- 1 mile run
The PAX broke up the middle section into 20 rounds of 5 pull-ups / 10 merkins / 15 squats, then hit the final run hard, finishing right around 50 minutes. COT and Grundy prayed us out.
It was an impressive sight to see so many men post to the Milestone Marsh at 0500 on their Monday off. For me, the legacy of our fallen heroes is folded into the DNA of F3. I see the qualities of leadership and selflessness spreading across F3 nation as if they’re contagious. And it’s not simply as a group, but the individual men of F3 all seem to embody that spirit personally. And isn’t that the best way to remember our heroes, to try and embody their greatest qualities? Thank you men for the remarkable effort, and enjoy your Memorial Day!
