The four Navy SEALs — three of them from Pearl Harbor — were being methodically hunted down by more than 100 heavily armed Taliban fighters in June 2005 as the Americans fought back and raced, fell and tumbled headlong down a steep mountainside in Afghanistan.

When it was nearly over, Lt. Michael Murphy, from SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One at Pearl Harbor, had been shot in the stomach and through the chest and back.

Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell was wounded and had been blown off his feet multiple times by rocket-propelled grenades.

Matthew G. "Axe" Axelson, a 6-foot-4 surface sonar technician, was shot in the chest and had slumped forward, but picked up his rifle and fought on before being mortally wounded in the head.

Petty Officer Danny Dietz, the only SEAL in the group not based at Pearl Harbor, had blood pouring from five wounds.

"When Axe got up, it was the bravest thing I ever saw," Luttrell wrote in his book, "Lone Survivor." "Except for Danny. Except for Mikey, still commanding us after taking a bullet through his stomach so early in the battle."

Last Thursday, President Bush announced that Murphy, 29, from Patchogue, N.Y., will receive the Medal of Honor posthumously on Monday. His parents, Dan and Maureen, will accept it during a White House ceremony.

Murphy is the first U.S. service member to receive the nation's highest military award for valor in the six-year-old Afghanistan war. Only two such medals have been awarded for valor in Iraq.

A fellow SEAL who was senior officer in charge of Murphy's unit at the time of the mountainside attack said yesterday that Murphy would want to deflect the praise onto others.

"As humble a guy as Murph was, he'd be the first to tell you that he was doing his job and that he doesn't deserve this award. It's definitely an award that represents the actions of all the guys that day," said the lieutenant commander named "Sean," who didn't give his last name for security reasons.

Five of the six Pearl Harbor SEALs deployed to Afghanistan with the Alfa squad were killed as a result of the initial Operation Redwing and an ill-fated rescue when an MH-47 Chinook helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade.

The Hawai'i SEALs killed in the crash were Senior Chief Information Systems technician Daniel R. Healy of Exeter, N.H.; Machinist's Mate 2nd Class Eric S. Patton of Boulder City, Nev.; and Quartermaster 2nd Class James E. Suh of Deerfield Beach, Fla.

Altogether, 19 U.S. service members died June 27 to 28, 2005, in the Kunar Province operations.

Sean, the lieutenant commander, was in another Middle East location with the other half of the SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One platoon, and flew with those Hawai'i SEALs to Afghanistan to assist in the search and recovery.

The SEALs carried the bodies of two of their brethren, Murphy and Dietz, off a recovery helicopter at Bagram Air Base, and went out into the mountains in search of Axelson.

"Mike (Murphy) was probably one of the most genuine and humble men that you'd meet," said Sean, who's now based in San Diego. "He had a compassion for those around him that was obvious from the moment you met him."

The four SEALs were dropped deep behind enemy lines east of Asadabad in the Hindu Kush to locate a high-level Taliban militia leader and to provide intelligence needed to capture or destroy the local leadership.

However, local Taliban sympathizers discovered the SEAL unit and immediately revealed their position to Taliban fighters, and the team was besieged on a mountainside by scores of enemy fighters.

The SEALs, bloodied from a fusillade of gunshots, rocket-propelled grenade blasts and tumbles down the rocky mountainside, were attempting to reach a village and a house from which they could fight off the attackers.

Luttrell wrote in his book that he went up to Murphy, who was badly wounded, and asked, "Can you move, buddy?"

"And he groped in his pocket for his mobile phone, the one we had dared not use because it would betray our position," Luttrell said. "And then Lieutenant Murphy walked out in the open ground. He walked until he was more or less in the center, gunfire all around him, and he sat on a small rock and began punching in the numbers to HQ."

Luttrell heard him say, "My guys are dying out here. ... We need help."

At that moment, Luttrell saw Murphy take a bullet straight to the back and blood spurt from his chest, but Murphy braced himself, returned to his fellow SEALs' position, and started firing again.

Luttrell, who fought and fell farther down the mountainside, and survived for four days before being rescued by a Pashtun tribe, said Murphy knew the only place he could make the phone work was out in the open, and with the knowledge it would cost him his life.

"The bottom line is if he (Murphy) had not done what he did, the call for help would have never gotten out," Sean said. "No one would have known for quite some time what would have happened to them, and Marcus (Luttrell) very well may not have survived."

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.