J.R. Labbe 
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Labbe: A place for broken warriors to heal
A Special Ops legend turns his attention to fixing men he trained to do jobs that most Americans would rather not admit are part of war
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J.R. Labbe
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DALLAS — Billy Shelton’s blue eyes sparkle as if lit from within. That could be why the people who know him best describe him as a man with a fire inside.
Shelton’s passion has always burned for young Americans who do the kinds of jobs that many folks would rather not admit are part of war.
Special operations forces. Commandos. Covert ops.
Shelton, 62, knows the life well. He lived it. He did two tours in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969 as a U.S. Army Special Forces commando and covert operator. He says he lived through action in places like Hobo Woods, the Iron Triangle, Fire Support Base Holiday Inn and Fish Hook.
For the past 30 years, Shelton has mentored and trained the new generation of war fighters in the skills they will need to survive. He’s a living legend in the special-ops community.
But now he has a new passion, revealed to him in a dream: to provide wounded warriors returning from Iraq and Afghanistan an environment where they can rehabilitate physically and mentally while enjoying the best that nature has to offer.
Wounded warriors like Marcus Luttrell.
'Out of the hole’
Marcus Luttrell and his identical twin brother, Morgan, stand together at the end of the bar at Abacus. They are the picture of physical perfection: 6-foot-5 30-somethings with torsos like upside-down triangles on legs of steel-wire cables.
Working out with 50-pound cinder blocks and truck tires can do that to a person.
Both Navy SEALs have known Shelton, whose nickname is Soupbone, since they were preteens and followed his physically grueling training that prepared them for special forces work. Shelton’s "tuneups" are as demanding as the initial training.
"No matter how long I trained or how good I got, he never cut me any slack," Marcus said. The intensity of eyes so dark they appear not to have pupils is slightly jarring.
Morgan, who is still on active duty, walked to another part of the bar. He declined to talk about his next assignment.
Marcus Luttrell said it’s customary in his family for the men to serve. "You’ve got to give to your country before you can take from it," he said.
What Luttrell gave almost killed him. "Little Big Horn in turbans" is how he described in his book the situation that he and his SEAL team encountered during an August 2005 operation in Afghanistan.
Their success in taking out a Taliban kingpin who commanded more than 150 fighters depended on remaining undetected. Three unarmed Afghan goatherds, one of them a teenager, threw that into jeopardy when they stumbled across the Americans.
What followed was a tense discussion among the SEALs on what to do. If they followed the "strictly correct military decision" — kill civilians to avoid detection — they knew that Americans back home would condemn them for it.
With no means to detain the goatherds on a rocky and treeless landscape, the four SEALs voted. According to Luttrell’s book, one voted to kill them, one voted to spare them and one abstained. It was up to Luttrell.
The SEALs released the goatherds, knowing that it might mean the betrayal of their location. An hour later, the Americans were overwhelmed by Taliban fighters. The SEALs put up one hell of a fight — 35 Taliban bodies were spotted in the area — but before it was over, 16 special forces personnel, including eight SEALs, from the rescue mission were dead. It was the largest single-day loss of life in SEALs history.
"Look at me right now in my story," Luttrell wrote in Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of Seal Team 10. "Helpless, tortured, shot, blown up, my best buddies all dead, and all because we were afraid of the liberals back home, afraid to do what was necessary to save our own lives. Afraid of American civilian lawyers. I have only one piece of advice for what it’s worth: If you don’t want to get into a war where things go wrong, where the wrong people sometimes get killed, where innocent people sometimes have to die, then stay the hell out of it in the first place."
