by Mark Bowden
As battles go, Mogadishu was a minor engagement. General Powell has pointed out that the deaths of eighteen American soldiers in Vietnam would not have even warranted a press conference. Old soldiers may snort over the fuss generated by this gunfight, but it speaks well of America that our threshold for death and injury to our soldiers has been so significantly lowered. This does not mean that military action is never worth the danger, or the price. Our armed forces will be called upon again to intervene in obscure parts of the world—as they already have in Bosnia. To prepare for these twenty-first-century missions, there are probably few more important case studies than this one.
The mistakes made in Mog weren’t because people in charge didn’t care enough, or weren’t smart enough. It’s too easy to dismiss errors by blaming the commanders. It assumes there exists a cadre of brilliant officers who know all the answers before the questions are even asked. How many airborne rescue teams should there have been? One for every Black Hawk and Little Bird in the sky? Some of the failures deserve further study. During the battle, efforts to steer the lost convoy from the air turned into a black comedy. At risk of a cliché, how is it that a nation that could land an unmanned little go-cart on the surface of Mars couldn’t steer a convoy five blocks through the streets of Mogadishu? Why did it take the QRF fifty minutes to arrive at the task force’s base when things started to go bad? Shouldn’t they have been better positioned at the outset? But these are all questions that are only obvious in retrospect. The truth is, Task Force Ranger came within several minutes of pulling off its mission on October 3 without a hitch. If Black Hawk Super Six One had not been hit, the “bad” choices made by Garrison would have been called bold. We will never know if Admiral Jonathan Howe was right to believe a lasting peace might have been achieved in Somalia if Aidid had been captured or his clan dismantled as a military force. It seems unlikely. In the years since the warlord’s death, little in Mogadishu has changed. The Habr Gidr is a large and powerful clan planted deep in Somalia’s past and present political culture. To think that 450 superb American soldiers could uproot it violently, thereby clearing the way for, as General Powell puts it, “an outbreak of Jeffersonian democracy,” seems far-fetched. In the end, the Battle of the Black Sea is another lesson in the limits of what force can accomplish.
I began working on this story about two-and-a-half years after the battle was fought. I had been intrigued by the early accounts of the fight, both as a citizen and as a writer. It was clearly an important and fascinating episode, one with tragic consequences for many and lasting implications for American foreign policy. Given the fierce but limited nature of the gunfight—a small force of Americans pinned down overnight in an African city—I realized that it might be possible to tell the whole story. But the undertaking intimidated me. I had no military background or sources, and assumed that someone with both would tell the story far better than I could.
Nevertheless I remained curious enough to read whatever stories I saw about the incident. I was especially intrigued by President Clinton’s subsequent struggles to deal with it. Particularly poignant were newspaper accounts I read of Clinton’s meetings with the parents of the men killed in the battle. Larry Joyce and Jim Smith, the father of Corporal Jamie Smith, had reportedly questioned the president sharply in one of those meetings. I wondered about the informal visit the president paid to soldiers wounded in Mogadishu as they recuperated at Walter Reed Army Hospital. How did those men feel about meeting with the man who had sent them on the mission, and then abruptly called it off? At the Medal of Honor ceremony for the two Delta soldiers, I read that the father of posthumous honoree Sergeant Randy Shughart insulted the president, telling him he was not fit to be commander in chief.
When I was asked by The Philadelphia Inquirer to profile President Clinton in its magazine as he ran for reelection, I tried to answer some of these questions. Interviewing some of the families for an account of their session at the White House, I drove up to Long Valley, New Jersey, one spring afternoon to meet with Jim Smith, a retired U.S. Army captain and former Ranger who had lost a leg in Vietnam. Jim and I sat in his den for several hours. He described the meeting with Clinton, and then talked at length about his son Jamie, how it had felt to lose him, and what little he knew about the battle and how his son had died. I left his house that day determined to find out more.
My initial requests to the Pentagon media office were naive and went nowhere. I filed Freedom of Information requests for documents that, two years later, I have not received. I was told the men I wanted to interview were in units off-limits to the press. My only hope of finding the foot soldiers I wanted was to ask for them by name, and I knew only a handful of names. I combed through what little had been written about the battle, and submitted the names I found there, but I did not receive a response. Then Jim Smith sent me an invitation. The army was dedicating a building at the Pixatinny Arsenal near his home in memory of Jamie. I debated whether to drive up. It would take the whole day and, with my lack of success, the story had receded in priority. Still, I had been moved by my conversation with Jim. I have sons just a few years younger than his Jamie. I couldn’t imagine losing one of them, much less in a gunfight someplace like Mogadishu. I made the drive.
And there, at this dedication ceremony, were about a dozen Rangers who had fought with Jamie in Mogadishu. Jim’s introduction helped break down the normal suspicion soldiers have for reporters. The men gave me their names and told me how to arrange interviews with them. Over three days at Fort Benning that fall I conducted my first twelve interviews. Each of the men I talked to had names and phone numbers for others who had fought there that day, many of them no longer in the army. My network grew from there. Nearly everyone I contacted was eager to talk. In the summer of 1997, the Inquirer sent Peter Tobia and me to Mogadishu. We flew to Nairobi, paid our weight in khat, climbed in the back of a small plane with sacks of the drug, and flew to a dirt airstrip outside Mogadishu. Accompanied by Ibrahim Roble Farah, a Nairobi businessman and member of the clan, we spent just seven days in the city, long enough to walk the streets where the battle had taken place and to interview some of the men who had fought against American soldiers that day. We learned how Somalis had perceived the sometimes brutal tactics in the summer of 1993, as UN troops led a clumsy manhunt for Aidid, and how widespread appreciation for the humanitarian intervention had turned to hatred. Peter and I left with a feel for the place, for the futility of its local politics, and some insight into why Somalis fought so bitterly against American soldiers that day.
In the months after I returned, I found military officers who were eager to hear what I could tell them about the Somali perspective, and about the battle. My work from the ground up eventually led me to a treasure of official information. The fifteen-hour battle had been videotaped from a variety of platforms, so the action I had painstakingly pieced together in my mind through interviews could be checked against images of the actual fight. The hours of radio traffic during the battle had been recorded and transcribed. This would provide actual dialogue from the midst of the action and was invaluable in helping to sort out the precise sequence of events. It also conveyed, with frightening immediacy, the horror of it, the feel of men struggling to stave off panic and stay alive. Other documents fleshed out the intelligence background of the assault, exactly what Task Force Ranger knew and was trying to accomplish. None of the men on the ground, caught up completely in their own small corner of the fight, had a complete vision of the battle. But their memories, combined with this documentary material, including a precise chronology and the written accounts of Delta operators and SEALs, made it possible for me to reconstruct the whole picture. This material gave me, I believe, the best chance any writer has ever had to tell the story of a battle completely, accurately, and well.
Every battle is a drama played out apart from broader issues. Soldiers cannot concern themselves with the forces that bring them to a fight, or its aftermath. They trust their leaders
not to risk their lives for too little. Once the battle is joined, they fight to survive as much as to win, to kill before they are killed. The story of combat is timeless. It is about the same things whether in Troy or Gettysburg, Normandy or the Ia Drang. It is about soldiers, most of them young, trapped in a fight to the death. The extreme and terrible nature of war touches something essential about being human, and soldiers do not always like what they learn. For those who survive, the victors and the defeated, the battle lives on in their memories and nightmares and in the dull ache of old wounds. It survives as hundreds of searing private memories, memories of loss and triumph, shame and pride, struggles each veteran must refight every day of his life.
No matter how critically history records the policy decisions that led up to this fight, nothing can diminish the professionalism and dedication of the Rangers and Special Forces units who fought there that day. The Special Forces units showed in Mogadishu why it is important for the military to keep and train highly motivated, talented, and experienced soldiers. When things went to hell in the streets, it was in large part the men of Delta and the SEALs who held things together and got most of the force out alive.
Many of the young Americans who fought in the Battle of Mogadishu are civilians again. They are beginning families and careers, no different outwardly than the millions of other twenty-something members of their generation. They are creatures of pop culture who grew up singing along with Sesame Street, shuttling to day care, and navigating today’s hyper-adolescence through the pitfalls of drugs and unsafe sex. Their experience of battle, unlike that of any other generation of American soldiers, was colored by a lifetime of watching the vivid gore of Hollywood action movies. In my interviews with those who were in the thick of the battle, they remarked again and again how much they felt like they were in a movie, and had to remind themselves that this horror, the blood, the deaths, was real. They describe feeling weirdly out of place, as though they did not belong here, fighting feelings of disbelief, anger, and ill-defined betrayal. This cannot be real. Many wear black metal bracelets inscribed with the names of their friends who died, as if to remind themselves daily that it was real. To look at them today, few show any outward sign that one day not too long ago they risked their lives in an ancient African city, killed for their country, took a bullet, or saw their best friend shot dead. They returned to a country that didn’t care or remember. Their fight was neither triumph nor defeat; it just didn’t matter. It’s as though their firefight was a bizarre two-day adventure, like some extreme Outward Bound experience where things got out of hand and some of the guys got killed.
I wrote this book for them.
Group shot of Task Force Ranger without Delta Force. Humvees are in rear. Courtesy: David Diemer.
Black Hawk Super Six Four, piloted by CWO Mike Durant, moves in from the ocean over Mogadishu. Courtesy: Shawn Nelson.
Rangers Alan Barton, Ron Galliette, and Rob Phipps pose after returning from a night mission. Courtesy: Shawn Nelson.
Rangers Jamie Smith and Aaron Williamson in the Mogadishu hangar. Courtesy: James Smith, Sr.
Ranger Keni Thomas aboard a Black Hawk heading out on a mission. Courtesy: Jeff Young.
(left to right) Ranger Joe Harsoky, Air Force Combat Controller Dan Schilling, and Ranger Mike Pringle posing before their Humvee, which led the Lost Convoy through the city. Courtesy: Dan Schilling.
A Black Hawk flares before landing on one of the many practice missions in Mogadishu’s dunes. Courtesy: Dale Sizemore.
The only photograph taken from the ground during the battle on October 3. It was snapped looking west from Chalk One’s position at the southeast corner of the target block. Target building looms in the background to the right. Courtesy: Jim Lechner.
Rangers pose in a Humvee topped with a Mark-19. Courtesy: Clay Othic.
Rangers Brian Heard (left) and David Floyd pose in the hangar prior to a mission. Courtesy: Dale Sizemore.
Maj. Gen. William F. Garrison, commander of Task Force Ranger, as he testified before the U.S. Senate committee in 1994. Courtesy: Associated Press.
Ranger Clay Othic posing behind the .50 caliber machine gun in the turret of a Humvee. Courtesy: Dan Schilling.
Ranger Lorenzo Ruiz, who was killed after taking the wounded Othic’s place in the Humvee turret. Courtesy: Dale Sizemore.
President Clinton with Ranger Scott Galentine at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Galentine had his severed thumb sewn back onto his hand. Courtesy: Shawn Nelson.
AFTER WORD
One thing an author should never do is comment on a review of his book. I am going to do it anyway, and on the most prominent notice Black Hawk Down received after publication in 1999. And while it may at first sound like a complaint, it is not.
Well, maybe a little.
The review in question was written by the fine reporter and writer William Finnegan, whose work is often seen in The New Yorker. More importantly, it appeared on the cover of The New York Times Book Review, and in that sense, it was terrific. Any publisher will tell you that a review on the cover of The New York Times Book Review is about the best free advertisement for a book possible, with the exception of having your book turned into a hugely successful, award-winning movie by Jerry Bruckheimer and Ridley Scott. But Hollywood’s version was still a few years away when the book was published, and my publisher, Morgan Entrekin, and I were thrilled by the attention. The book had been turned down by every major publisher in New York. Morgan had gambled where the others would not, so while we were both proud of the book, we had plenty of reason to doubt its commercial prospects.
To see my book noticed on the cover of The New York Times Book Review, with an extremely clever illustration showing tiny Somalis tying down a Black Hawk helicopter like Lilliputians binding Gulliver, was the kind of attention writers dream about. And it was not a bad review. Finnegan had almost entirely nice things to say about the book. But it was ultimately disappointing. After years of reporting and writing, what a writer looks for in a book review is some hint of dazzlement. What I wanted was a sentence or—please God—a paragraph to leap out and say something like “This extraordinary piece of reporting and writing sets a new standard in the history, no ... make that “the entire history,” of war literature. It catapults Bowden into the front ranks of living American writers. ...” You know, that paragraph. It didn’t have to be in exactly those words. I was flexible. But Finnegan was not dazzled. I would sum up his take thusly: This newspaper reporter Bowden has done a yeoman’s job of telling the story of a battle that would otherwise have been forgotten. In concluding, he wrote, “Bowden has performed an important service.”
Important service?
The most interesting line in Finnegan’s review was this awkward one, referring to my writing style:
“What this demotic, you-are-there prose lacks in literary finesse—and the black irony and high style of the best modern war reporting, from A. J. Liebling to Michael Herr, is entirely absent from Black Hawk Down—it makes up in pure narrative drive.”
Okay. The prose was definitely “demotic,” which means “ordinary, everyday vernacular.” And it was most definitely “you-are-there,” which looks easier to write than it is. And there is no question Black Hawk Down lacked “black irony” and “high style,” although I did think some patches of exposition were fairly stylish. Then came the zinger: those qualities, “black irony” and “high style” were hallmarks of “the best modern war reporting.” Finnegan did go on to say my lack of “finesse” was made up for “in pure narrative drive,” but it is hard not to read that sentence as a put down. He was saying that the prose in Black Hawk Down, my prose, was plain and ordinary, and that while the book was a page-turner, it was most definitely not filled with fancy writing, ironic writing, or high style, the kind of prose one finds in, say, Michael Herr’s Dispatches and in the war reporting of A. J. Liebling. Worse, this ordinariness permanently exiled Black Hawk Down from the ranks of “the best modern war reportin
g.”
The ordinary, vernacular prose in Black Hawk Down was a deliberate choice. I labored to remove myself completely from the narrative. In the newsrooms where I grew up as a journalist, we were taught to report the hell out of a good story, and then “get out of its way,” in the great tradition of George Orwell, who advised “good writing is like a windowpane.” But writing like this cuts against the stylistic grain of most modern “literary” journalism, which features the voice of the narrator front and center. The journalism of Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, and Michael Herr has inspired generations of nonfiction writers, myself included. It placed the writer in the center of the action, if not as the main character then as its supercharged narrative voice. While this method was important for writers trying to break journalism free of the tiresome dictates of newspaperese a half century ago, it has since produced an ocean of self-absorbed, forgettable, derivative nonfiction. It spawned an orgy of confessional memoirs, where writers competing to be more and more outrageous slide carelessly between truth and fiction. All stories are, of course, filtered through the writer. To be perceived as literary in certain circles it became essential to actually write about yourself.
Black Hawk Down is most decidedly not about me. There was fancier writing in my two earlier books, particularly Bringing the Heat, but for this story I wanted to capture the voices of the soldiers who had taught me, in such detail, about the battle. Here was a wrenching, bloody, traumatic experience that had seared itself into their hearts and minds. It was, for most of them, the single most important episode of their lives, and I felt as I conducted interview after interview that they felt not so much burdened with its memory as entrusted with it. It strongly influenced the way I chose to write it.