Mike Durant

In the meantime, you know, Ray's getting out of the aircraft.

He had a lower leg fracture and a back injury, but not as incapacitated as I was.

I mean, with a femur fracture and a crushed spine.

You're not going anywhere.

I mean, it's hard to get out of a freaking Blackhawk healthy.

You know, you got to step over the controls and everything else.

So I just decided I'm going to fight it out from the cockpit.

But Ray gets himself out, and we never said another word.

We talked about the spinning and what we did and the power control levers, and that was it.

I mean, the last time I saw him, he was standing by the cockpit.

He had his MP5, and he's getting ready to go do his thing.

I did some stuff that I still don't understand completely.

I mean, I obviously took my helmet off.

It's a flight helmet.

It's not a Kevlar or anything.

And then I had my wedding band on my watch band.

And I took those off, and I set it on the center console.

Can't explain it.

No idea why I did that.

And then, again, I settled on the fact that I'm going to do what I can from the cockpit here.