Tyrone S. Woods—known to everyone who mattered as Rone—would have turned fifty-five today. Instead of blowing out candles or raising a glass with old teammates, the calendar simply marks another year without him. September 11, 2012, bled into September 12 in the Libyan coastal city of Benghazi, and in those dark hours Rone made a choice that echoed far beyond the compound walls. He did not choose the easy path. He chose the right one. And it cost him everything.

Rone was no stranger to danger. A former Navy SEAL who had transitioned to the shadowy world of private security contracting, he carried the quiet confidence of a man who had stared death down more times than most people breathe in a lifetime. At forty-one he still moved like the operator he had always been—lean, deliberate, eyes that missed nothing. On the night of September 11 he was part of the security detail at the U.S. Special Mission Compound in Benghazi. The Ambassador was there. A small team of State Department personnel. A handful of armed contractors. Routine, or so it seemed.

Just after 9:40 p.m. local time the first wave hit.

Dozens—then hundreds—of armed men swarmed the front gate. They carried AKs, RPGs, and diesel-fueled rage. The Ansar al-Sharia fighters breached the perimeter in minutes. Gunfire shredded the night. Grenades detonated against the outer wall. Flames licked up from burning vehicles and trash piles. Inside the compound, men scrambled for weapons and positions. Rone and his teammate Glen Doherty were already moving.

They fought from the tactical operations center to the main building. Bullet impacts chipped concrete inches from their heads. Tracers lit the darkness like deadly fireworks. Rone’s M4 barked controlled pairs—center mass, head shots when he could get them. He covered retreating State personnel, dragging a wounded man to cover while rounds snapped past his ears. He never hesitated. Never asked for backup that wasn’t coming fast enough. He simply did the job.

By 10:30 p.m. the compound was overrun. The attackers set fires. Smoke choked the air. Screams mixed with automatic fire. Rone and Glen made it to the roof of one of the annex buildings—a fortified villa about a mile away where the surviving Americans had fallen back. From that rooftop they turned the tide.

Rone set up behind a sandbag parapet with a heavy machine gun. The belt-fed weapon roared to life. Long bursts chewed through the advancing fighters. He walked the fire left to right, suppressing squads trying to flank the annex. When the gun overheated he switched to his rifle, picking off silhouettes against the burning skyline. Glen fed ammunition, called targets, kept the link alive. Together they held the high ground like it was Thermopylae.

Reinforcements from a CIA annex nearby finally arrived after midnight—another small team of operators who had fought their own way through the city. They linked up, reorganized, and pushed back. But the attackers kept coming. RPGs slammed into the compound walls. Mortar rounds began to fall. One landed close—too close.

At approximately 4:00 a.m. a rocket-propelled grenade streaked out of the darkness and struck the rooftop position. The blast was catastrophic. Shrapnel tore through Rone’s body. He collapsed instantly. Glen was hit seconds later by follow-up fire. Both men died on that roof, surrounded by empty brass and the smell of burning cordite.

They had bought critical time. The Ambassador’s body had already been recovered from the main compound. The remaining personnel were evacuated. Lives were saved because Rone and Glen refused to leave their post. They stayed when others could have run. They fought when surrender would have been easier. They died so others could live.

The official investigations that followed were long, contentious, and often politicized. Congressional hearings dragged on. Emails were parsed. Timelines debated. But none of that changed the raw truth on the ground that night: two men stood on a rooftop in a burning city and said, “Not on my watch.”

Rone left behind a wife, children, parents, brothers-in-arms who still carry his memory like a wound that never quite heals. His teammates speak of him in the present tense sometimes—“Rone would hate this weather,” or “Rone would’ve laughed at that”—as if he might walk through the door any second with that easy grin and a fresh magazine.

Today would have been his fifty-fifth birthday. Somewhere a cake sits unbaked. Somewhere a toast goes undrunk. Instead we remember a man who ran toward the fire when every instinct screamed to run away. We remember the rooftop in Benghazi. The heavy machine gun spitting defiance. The final stand that gave others tomorrow.

Your acts of courage, heroism, and selflessness will never be forgotten.

Happy birthday in Heaven, Rone. You went beyond the call. You did what was right when everything else was easy. And brother, you are missed—every single day.

Rest easy. The watch is still held.