11/14/2025
Sad truth
On March 27, 2023, Mike Day died by su***de. Mike Day a US Navy SEAL was leading a raid against an al-Qaeda hideout in 2007 when he was shot more than two dozen times, and though he recovered physically, he eventually took his own life in 2023.
Day was selected to be the assault force commander on the mission. In all, there were 22 operators assigned to it, a mix of SEALs and Iraqi scouts. They were to infiltrate a single-story, walled compound in northeast Fallujah and find their target. For someone like Day, it was a routine assignment.
But the mission on April 6, 2007 would transform Mike Day’s life.
Mike Day’s team split into two groups: one to cover the outside, another to move inside and clear rooms. Day led the interior group, meaning he would be the first one into a room. Among his group of SEALs, this was a highly coveted honor: “We all want to be the first into the fight, and every SEAL is willing to accept the greater risk, especially for his buddy’s sake,” Day wrote.
But the second that Mike Day stepped through the door of a small room that day, it became clear that the mission of April 6, 2007, would be like no other.
“As I pivoted off my right foot to move down the left wall, I had the sensation that my body was being slammed with a dozen sledgehammers,” Day wrote. “…It was surreal, like something out of a movie: time slowed almost to a stop and everything happened in super slow motion, almost as if I were watching the scene unfold frame by frame.”
Four insurgents hiding in the room had opened fire on him. Their barrage of bullets caused Day to drop his rifle, while other bullets rocketed past him and into two Iraqi scouts standing in the hallway. As Day was struck by a hail of bullets, his first thoughts were of his family back home.
As he was being shot, Mike Day’s training as a SEAL kicked in.
But his next thought was to complete the mission.
“After I realized that I actually was getting shot, my second thought was, ‘God get me home to my girls, and then extreme anger,” Day recalled in a 2014 interview. “Then I just went to work. It was muscle memory. I just did what I was trained to do.”
He grabbed his pistol and fired it at the insurgents. Day killed one of the men who had shot at him. Then he saw a second man, reaching for a gr***de in his vest and pulling the pin. Day fired his pistol again and stopped the man in his tracks — but not the man’s gr***de, which dropped from his hand, rolled toward Day, and detonated. Everything went black.
When Mike Day regained consciousness a few minutes later, he sprung back into action. As the two remaining insurgents opened fire on Day’s fellow Navy SEALs, he started shooting at them. They turned and returned fire but Day was able to kill them both.
He then tried to radio his team, but Day’s radio had been damaged during the firefight. Nearby, Day found the body of his fellow SEAL Joseph “Clark” Schwedler, and used his fallen comrade’s radio to contact the rest of his men.
Had he been delayed even a moment longer, the building would have been destroyed in a fire mission. Instead, the strike was called off, and the rest of the team moved in to find Day and the other survivors. From the look on their faces, he finally understood just how much damage he had sustained.
“I didn’t even know how bad I was hurting until they came in and I saw the looks on their faces,” Day told reporters in a 2020 interview. “We all know that look.”
In addition to 16 bullet wounds directly on his body and 11 hits to his body armor, Day had also taken shrapnel from the gr***de that knocked him out. Despite that, he was able to walk to the medical helicopter without any support.
“I wasn’t being macho, but I was afraid if they picked me up, it would just hurt more,” he told reporters.
*In 2022 alone, there were 6,407 su***des among veterans — around 18 per day. On average, seven su***des per day were among veterans who received Veterans Health Administration care in 2021 or 2022.
Rest In Peace...
***de
