Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War

Lieutenant Colonel Bill David was to assemble the rescue convoy of Malaysian APCs and four Pakistani tanks. He was confused, given that he had 300 of his men from the 10th Mountain Division eager to join the fight. He and General Gile decided that once the foreign troops linked up with their men, they would ask the Malaysians to fill their APCs with American troops, who may be able to make better use of the armored vehicles.

It is nine thirty at night when the rescue forces drive to New Port to connect with the Malaysians and Pakistanis. There are almost 500 men among the D-boys, SEALS, 10th Mountain Division men, and Rangers in the group. The Malaysian officers agree to replace their men with American infantry in the APCs, provided that each vehicle retains a Malaysian driver and gunner.

The waiting Rangers are impatient during the planning phase, particularly when they learn that Smith has died. They want revenge, and they want to help their fellow Rangers.

Steele hears the convoy approaching and thinks that this is the most dangerous time of the night. He hears the shooting intensifying, and “with that much shooting, with two jumpy elements of soldiers about to link up in a confusing city in darkness, the biggest threat to his pinned-down men were their rescuers” (272). It is almost two in the morning. Steele tells everyone to stay away from the doors and windows and to back up out of the courtyards. The Rangers are “all terrified of the 10th Mountain Division, whom they regarded as poorly trained regular army schmoes, just a small step removed from utterly incompetent civilianhood” (274).

Captain Drew Meyerowich is with the Delta operators who are leading his portion of the convoy toward Steele’s position. Two of the Malaysian drivers take a wrong turn and are bogged down in heavy fighting.

Dale Sizemore, who cut the cast off his arm, is thrilled to be in the fight at last. He shoots at anyone he can see from his position in the Humvee.

Anderson is in a Humvee near Sizemore’s vehicle. He is anxious at each stop when they have to get out of their vehicle for security duty. He feels as if he can’t find anyone to shoot at and is impressed, but also deflated, by Sizemore’s confidence and aggression.

The American helicopters attacked the garage of Kassim Sheik Mohamed earlier in the day. Kassim is an affluent supporter of Aidid. He escapes to a hospital and returns two hours later to find that his garage is destroyed, and his accountant and mechanic are dead. He drives the two men to the cemetery. Islamic law compels Kassim to bury the bodies before sundown, but American helicopters keep flying over the cemetery, scaring away Kassim and other Muslims who are trying to bury their dead. He is not able to complete the burial until he returns at three in the morning.

Half of the convoy has stalled on the outskirts of the city. Delta Sergeant John Macejunas takes a small force to the site of Durant’s crash, looking for Shughart and Gordon. There is no one there. Macejunas and his men set thermite grenades on the helicopter, destroying it so that an enemy cannot use the equipment.

Many of the Malaysian drivers refuse to plow through roadblocks because they are often filled with mines. Meyerowich gets the D-boys out of the vehicles and tells them they are proceeding on foot to the pinned-down force, which is only blocks away. Private James Martin is killed as they move.

The 10th Mountain unit reaches Steele, who asks to see their commander. 

The D-boys try to retrieve Elvis’s body from the wrecked helicopter, causing a delay. The men waiting in the APCs are anxious to leave. In one hour, the sun will begin to rise. An RPG hits Stebbins’s APC. The Malaysian driver refuses to leave until he receives orders from a commander. Outside, gunfire is increasing. The wounded on the vehicles now want to get off and “[feel] like targets in a turkey shoot” (285).

On the radio, Miller tells Garrison that it will be at least 20 minutes before they can cut Elvis’s body from the wreckage. Garrison says he will “stay the course until they are finished” (285).

Steele is frustrated as the light grows, thinking, “placing three hundred men at jeopardy in order to retrieve the body of one man was a noble gesture, but hardly a sensible one” (286). The work finishes at sunup. Then, the Rangers and D-boys who have been fighting for 14 hours realize that there is not enough room on the rescue vehicles for all of them. They will have to run back through the same streets they fought their way through on the way in. 

The Malaysian drivers drive too fast for the men on foot to use the vehicles for cover. Soon, they reach their original position at the target house near the Olympic Hotel. Sergeant Randall Ramagalia takes a shot in the shoulder. He begins running and shooting, and the other men follow him: “All semblance of an ordered retreat was gone. Everybody was just scrambling” (287).

Howe kicks down a door, and the men go inside to catch their breath. Nelson is still deaf, and his calm is gone. This is the most terrified he has been since the raid began.

As the men begin running again, they feel:

[…] disbelief that the mighty and terrible army of the United States of America had plunged them into this mess and stranded them there and now left them to run through the same deadly gauntlet to get out. How could this happen? (289). 

Surgeon Abdi Mohamed Elmi is at Mogadishu’s Volunteer Hospital. He has been treating wounded Somalis since the previous evening. By the end of the day, the hospital’s 500 beds are full. At another, larger hospital, the numbers are even greater. Elmi will not sleep for another 24 hours.

Bashir Haji Yusuf, the lawyer, wakes to hear the fight beginning again. Outside, he sees a dead American soldier in a wheelbarrow. Somalis spit on the body and kick it. Yusuf is appalled because “Islam called for reverential treatment and immediate burial of the dead, not this grotesque display” (291). The crowd is too wild for him to feel safe enough to intervene.

The Malaysians lead them all to a soccer stadium the Pakistanis are using as an operations base. Someone reads Steele a list of the names of the Rangers who are injured or dead. Steele realizes the magnitude of what they have been through. He is shocked to learn that four of his men are dead. He had only known about Smith up to that point. He sits alone and reviews the mission in his head, wondering if he made the right decisions.

Dale Sizemore begins looking for his men, wanting to tell them that he had not stayed at the hangar but had come to help them. He and Elliott see Smith’s body under a sheet and cry together.

The men fly back to the hangar or to the hospital at the US Embassy. Everyone is quiet.

At the Hangar, Howe and the D-boys prepare to go back out again. Gordon, Shughart, and Durant are still out there. Howe is angry that some of the Rangers are acting as if they lost the conflict, when he knows that they inflicted more damage than the Somalis. Whatever the numbers, “he knew they’d just fought one of the most one-sided battles in American history” (299). 

Sizemore can’t stop crying when he learns that Ruiz is dead.

Sergeant Glenn Harris gives Steele a list of the dead, which is worse than he had thought. There are 13 dead, six others are missing and presumed dead, and 73 are injured. A third of his company are dead or wounded. Steele walks to the field hospital to visit the wounded men. When he sees Phipps, he barely recognizes him because his head is badly bruised and swollen. Phipps tells Steele not to go back out without him. 

On Monday morning, American news reports the story of the raid, including “the grotesque images of dead American soldiers being dragged through the city’s dusty streets by angry crowds” (304). President Clinton demands to know how the disaster could have happened.

The men in the hangar watch the images of the crowds dragging the bodies. The bodies are hard to identify, but the D-boys believe one of them is Shughart. Pilots want to take the helicopters and shoot the entire crowd around the bodies.

Macejunas goes back into the city alone, dressed as a civilian and posing as a journalist. 

Durant’s captors ask him if he is willing to make a videotape, and he refuses. That night, the men bring a video camera and set it up. A Somali who speaks English interrogates him while the camera records, but he is not a skillful interviewer. Durant denies being a Ranger and says that “Innocent people being killed is not good” (308). His interview will air the next day. After the interview, a doctor cleans his wounds.

That night, the captors transport Durant to an apartment where they leave him with a man named Abdullahi Hassan. He is the propaganda minister for Aidid. Durant does not know that Aidid has paid his ransom, and if America wants to have him back, they will have to negotiate with Aidid. 

The day after the battle, Congress questions Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and Secretary of State Warren Christopher. As a result of the battle, over 500 Somalis have perished and 1,000 are wounded. Congress demands that American troops withdraw from Somalia.

The Clinton administration is unpopular with the military, and the failure of the raid is ammunition that his political opponents can use against him. During a six-hour meeting, the president and his advisors decide to withdraw by March of 1994. Former Ambassador to Somalia, Robert Oakley, goes to Mogadishu to deliver the message and demand Durant’s release. 

The man Durant stays with is known as Firimbi. He cleans Durant’s wounds and they can communicate in Spanish. On October 4, American helicopters overhead broadcast messages: “Mike Durant, we will not leave you. Mike Durant, we are with you always. Do not think we have left you, Mike” (312). 

Smith’s father learns that his son is dead. He is a former Ranger and knows that they would not report the death to him unless they’ve found a body. Camera crews arrive at his house, and reporters ask him who he blames for the loss. He tells them that he does not know enough to blame anyone, and that his son died serving his country. Two days later, he receives a Mailgram from a Colonel verifying that Smith died on October 3. 

Stephanie Shughart learns that her husband, Randy, is missing in action the same day. A week later, several officers visit her home to tell her that they’ve recovered Randy’s body. They discourage her from going to Dover, Delaware, to see the body. She knows this means that his body is unrecognizable and sends a friend in her place. 

Officers visit Dina Joyce to tell her that her husband is dead. They deliver a letter he had written to her before the raid. The letter says that Joyce loves her and intends to improve himself when he comes home so that they can be happy and grow old together. 

Durant’s main fear is that the Somali public will discover him, and Firimbi shares his worry. Firimbi grows fond of him and gives him a radio to listen to. He tries to explain to Durant why the Somalis are so angry with the Americans. He also explains that he is being kind to Durant because he knows it will improve America’s perception of Somalia after the pilot returns home.

A Norwegian Red Cross worker named Suzanne Hofstadter visits. She gives Durant papers to write letters. He writes to his family and asks them to pray for the other men. He also writes to his friends at the hangar and warns them not to touch the bottle of whiskey in his rucksack. He signs the letter with the letters “NSDQ,” meaning “Night Stalkers Don’t Quit.”

Two reporters, Mark Huband and Stephen Smith, visit him. Durant relays what has happened since the crash and since his capture. Huband asks why the battle happened, and Durant gives an answer that he will regret later: “Too many innocent people are getting killed. People are angry because they see civilians getting killed. I don’t think anyone who doesn’t live here can understand what is going wrong here. Americans mean well. We did try to help. Things have gone wrong” (321). After they leave, he regrets his words because it may seem that he is passing judgment on the American mission.

The next day, he hears his wife’s voice on the BBC radio network as she makes a statement to the press. At the end of her remarks, she says four words: “Night Stalkers Don’t Quit” (322). He knows that his letter made it to the hangar, and that the men received the NSDQ message.

Two days after the fight, a mortar kills Sergeant Matt Rierson, a leader of the Delta team, outside the hangar. The Rangers and D-boys review the mission in their heads and worry that there was something they could have done better. They erect a memorial outside the hangar in honor of the men who died, with the famous martial speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V:

Whoever does not have the stomach for this fight, let him depart. Give him money to speed his departure since we wish not to die in that man’s company. Whoever lives past today and comes home safely will rouse himself every year on this day, show his neighbor his scars, and tell embellished stories of all their great feats of battle. These stories he will teach his son and from this day until the end of the world we shall be remembered. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for whoever has shed his blood with me shall be my brother. And those men afraid to go will think themselves lesser men as they hear of how we fought and died together (325). 

Willi Frank learns that her husband, Ray, is dead after the funeral service for Cliff Wolcott. 

Durant has a dream that he is in a group of people whose faces he does not recognize. They disappear as a helicopter takes off, leaving Durant alone on the ground. 

Oakley arrives in Mogadishu on October 8. He meets with Aidid’s lieutenants and reports that the American military will withdraw. He delivers Clinton’s message asking for Durant’s release without conditions and adds “a chilling message” (327). Oakley warns that the Americans will rescue Durant by any means necessary and will have no qualms about destroying the city if that is what it takes. Aidid agrees to release Durant to Howe. 

The next day, Durant’s captors release him to Red Cross officials who take him to the airport Ranger base. When Durant arrives at the hangar, over 1,000 men are waiting for him. They all have a paper cup of Jack Daniels, a joke about the whiskey that he had warned them to stay away from in his letter. When Durant learns that he is the only survivor from the crew of Super Six Four, he fights back tears. The men sing “God Bless America” (330) as officials carry Durant’s stretcher toward the plane that will take him to Germany, where his wife will be waiting.

Every surviving American from the battle returns home within a month, and “Most would stay bitter about the decision to call off their mission” (329).