Full Battle Rattle

by Changiz Lahidji

  Chris shouted the whole time, “Take cover! Stay down!”

  “Holy fucking shit!”

  The impact was so violent that I was sure that everyone inside 6-1 was dead. My first thought was: We have to recover the bodies before the Somalis get ahold of ’em.

  But I couldn’t see shit or breathe because of the dust. And as soon as it started to clear, I heard vehicles hurrying toward the intersection and bursts of automatic gunfire. In a matter of seconds militiamen converged on the intersection from all directions like locusts. They were running on foot and they were arriving in Toyota pickups painted camouflage green and brown.

  Several of us were already on our feet and moving in the direction of the downed helo, which we couldn’t see because the empty three-story apartment on the corner to the left of us blocked our view.

  Chris screamed, “Down! Get down! Watch behind you!”

  Before I knew what was happening, bullets were whizzing over my head from several directions and slamming into the building and the ground. I knelt behind a low wall in front of the building, leveled my M16, and starting firing. We had to hold back the Somalis who wanted at the downed helo and the people inside.

  A huge wave of adrenaline slammed my system. My body was pumped to the max and my arms and legs were shaking. I had to will myself to calm down, and pick out targets. The Somalis, on the other hand, were fucking crazed, firing wildly in all directions and running into the open with no regard to the danger they were exposing themselves to. I took down dozens of them, and they kept coming. When I could I did a double tap—a shot to the torso, followed by a second to the head. I hit a young guy in the head; a man with a gray beard directly in the heart.

  There was no time to think, and they were too close to use grenades. It was just, point, aim, shoot, and search for a new target, which wasn’t hard. They were pouring into the intersection from several directions, probably high on khat and seemingly with little regard for their lives. I saw women and a few boys mixed in the wild onslaught of men.

  Bodies started to pile up, dotting the dirt with dark blotches of blood. I prayed for the whole fucking nightmare to end.

  What I didn’t realize was that all the 100 or so men in the TFR who had deployed on this mission were trapped in the heart of Mogadishu and surrounded by thousands of crazed militiamen, and we were in the fight of our lives.

  Angrily I shouted, “Motherfuckers! You motherfuckers! Go away!”

  A teammate to the right of me growled, “Changiz, calm down!”

  “Fuck that. I’m going to kill all those motherfuckers!”

  It was total hell. The noise alone was incredible. Overlapping bursts of automatic weapons fire, the whoosh, whine, and explosion of RPGs, men shouting, others screaming in pain, women howling. I was so focused on firing at targets that I couldn’t discern the chatter coming through my headset.

  Fire came at us in all directions.

  Chris shouted, “Three-sixty. Form up three-sixty!”

  The twelve us made a rough circle and inched closer to the downed chopper as we covered for one another. I faced northeast. The downed helo came into view in my left periphery, lying on its side like a beached whale.

  It looked big and sad without its rotor and tail. The windshield was shattered and the side door wide open. Some of the operators inside were still alive, returning fire and trying to get out. Very brave men, I thought.

  A Toyota pickup flew into the intersection, kicking up clouds of dust. A masked man in its bed shouted as he directed a stream of .50 cal rounds at the wrecked Black Hawk. We took cover as heavy bullets tore into the ground and concrete around us. When I peeked up to fire back, a rocket fired by another SF team on the opposite side of the intersection lit up the Toyota. The explosion flipped the truck in the air like a toy, and it careened out of view. As it crashed to the ground it sent up an arch of flames and sparks.

  While we ducked, moved, covered, and fired, the Somalis kept coming in waves. Sometimes they used frightened-looking women as shields. The dust and cordite clogging the air made it hard to breathe. There was no time for even a sip of water.

  Even though sweat poured off me, I didn’t even think of my thirst, or anything else because I was so focused on defending the helo and holding back the clansmen. They popped up everywhere—doorways, windows, alleys, on roofs. We controlled our shots, conscious of running out of ammo. Forty minutes into the battle, I had gone through ten mags. There were two more in my vest, five in my pockets.

  Another SF A-team took up positions on the NW corner and there were Rangers to our left, on the other side of the downed helo.

  Chris was on the radio, screaming for air support again. “Chalk Two, under intense fire! Need backup! Support … now!”

  What I didn’t know at the time and learned later was that Lieutenant Colonel Gary Harrell in the command Black Hawk had ordered the Delta convoy to alter its route. Instead of returning to base, it had been directed to help rescue the downed pilot and crew of Super 6-1. This turned out to be hugely problematic, because the convoy increasingly ran into roadblocks and clusters of militiamen who shredded their vehicles with rocket and automatic weapons fire at every intersection. Additionally, the men directing the convoy hadn’t prepared for this diversion and had gotten lost in the warren of streets and alleys around Chalk 2.

  In fact, the twelve-vehicle convoy had done a complete circle around the crash site and was back where it had started on a street behind the target house. They’d already taken a number of casualties. Now, as they turned south, an RPG tore through the steel skin of the third Humvee and exploded, blowing the three men in the backseat onto the street. All of them were severely wounded. Private Adalberto Rodriguez had the back of one of his thighs torn off. As he struggled to his feet, the fourth vehicle, a truck bearing the Somali prisoners, rolled over him.

  My buddy, Tim Martin, the third man in the backseat, had absorbed the brunt of the blast. Although he was still conscious, the explosion had ripped off the lower half of his body.

  All three men were loaded into a five-ton truck and the convoy proceeded and continued to take fire from rooftops, buildings, alleys.

  While the convoy made its way south, another Black Hawk, call sign Super 6-4—which had inserted the team at Chalk 1—also took an RPG hit. Pilot CWO Mike Durant described it as like hitting a speed bump. He didn’t know the extent of the damage or the location until the aircraft started to spin due to an inoperable tail rotor, which was unable to counter the torque of the engine.

  A helo pilot for ten years, Durant’s priority now was to save his life and the lives of his crew. As he attempted to guide the helo to a clearing, he shouted into his radio. “Six-Four hit! Going down.”

  Someone in the command Black Hawk radioed back, “Six-Four, you okay?”

  “Going in hard,” Durant responded. “Going down!”

  Militants who saw black smoke coming from the tail of the stricken bird cheered and fired into the air in celebration. Filled with new confidence, hundreds of them converged on the crash site.

  Pilot Durant managed to land Super 6-4 upright in a less urban area a mile and a half southwest of Chalk 2. But there were two problems. First, the low huts around it and rising black smoke made it easy to find. And, two, all US rescue forces were focused on getting to Chalk 2 and Super 6-1.

  General Garrison back at base HQ hastily assembled a convoy comprised of mostly support personnel, including some cooks. But almost immediately after entering the city, the convoy ran into roadblocks and rebel ambushes that seriously hindered its progress.

  With two Black Hawks down and the majority of the 150-man RTF pinned down in downtown Somalia, things were going from bad to worse. And the officers directing the operation were running out of options.

  At the Super 6-4 crash site, pilot Durant, his copilot CWO Ray Frank, and the two crew chiefs had survived, but were badly injured. In an act of remarkable bravery, two Delta operators, Sergeant First Class Randy Sh
ughart and Master Sergeant Gary Gordon, volunteered to jump from another Black Hawk to defend the wounded on Super 6-4 until the rescue team arrived. But sadly the two highly skilled operators were no match for the scores of frenzied militiamen who rushed to the crash site, firing AK-47s and RPGs.

  Shughart and Gordon fought bravely until they ran out of ammo and were killed along with copilot Frank and the 6-4 crew chiefs. The Somalis plundered their possessions, stripped their bodies, and dragged them through the streets. Pilot Mike Durant was beaten and captured alive.

  At Chalk 2, the Rangers to the left of us and the A-team on the north side of the intersection provided cover as we fought to within twenty yards of downed Super 6-1. That’s when three helos swooped in—two MH Little Birds (Killer Eggs we called them) and one Black Hawk—their miniguns and .50 cals blazing. They unleashed a lethal torrent of high-caliber rounds and rockets on the militiamen to our north and west, causing them to pull back. It was an awesome display of US firepower and gave us a few minutes to reload and catch our breath.

  Chris called out, “Status.”

  We responded one by one. Some guys on the team had sustained minor injuries, but miraculously we were all alive. I was so jacked on adrenaline, I had to check my legs and torso before I answered, “All good. Fucking A.”

  With the intersection finally clear of militants, a rescue Black Hawk swooped in and disgorged a team of PJs (Air Force Pararescue) and medics, who stepped over Somali bodies and quickly went to work extracting and patching up the wounded men from Super 6-1. In a matter of minutes they got everyone out, except for pilot Wolcott, whose body was pinned in the wreckage.

  Incredibly, the battle dragged on until hours after dark, when a two-mile-long column of more than 100 armored vehicles that included Pakistani tanks and Malaysian APCs finally arrived. Rescue workers freed Wolcott’s body from the 6-1, piled the dead and wounded into their vehicles, and started back to base. Mentally and physically exhausted, the twelve of us humped back to our Humvees.

  I drove the lead Humvee with Chris seated next to me. All of us were stunned and quiet. Back at base, I heard the horrible news. Task Force Ranger had sustained nineteen casualties, including my friend Tim Martin, who had hung on bravely but died while being medevaced to Germany. Another seventy-three were wounded.

  Somali officials estimated that 800 to 1,000 militiamen died in the battle with as many as 4,000 wounded.

  For bravely volunteering to defend Super 6-4, Delta Force operators MSG Gordon and SFC Shughart were both posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the first bestowed since the Vietnam War. Tim Martin received a Silver Star.

  10

  HAITI

  For many days after the battle, a sad, dark pall hung over all of us who had survived Operation Gothic Serpent. At the hangar on the beach, we mourned our dead colleagues and questioned the policies and tactics that had resulted in the terrible debacle.

  I heard one Ranger ask, “With command helicopters overhead viewing the whole scene, how did we manage to get trapped in downtown Mogadishu?”

  “Hell if I know,” I answered.

  Another Ranger chimed in, “Why didn’t the Delta C Squadron assault team simply exfil by helicopter after they had seized the targets?”

  “Beats the shit out of me.”

  “If Delta was going to leave with the prisoners by road, why weren’t they given tanks and APCs so they could blast their way out?”

  “Good question.”

  Terrifying images haunted us all. At night, I heard guys calling for their dead friends in their sleep. I had trouble sleeping as well and often woke up trembling and covered with sweat. In my nightmares I’d see my buddy Tim holding his intestines and begging for my help.

  Two weeks after what became known as the Battle of Mogadishu, President Bill Clinton announced that he was ordering the cessation of all military actions against Mohammed Aidid, except those that required self-defense, and ordered the withdrawal of all US forces. For those of us who wanted to avenge the loss of our brothers, this added to our distress. However policymakers in Washington spun it, the battle had been an ignominious defeat.

  I was extremely upset. Some of us blamed President Clinton; others felt Admiral Howe and General Garrison were responsible.

  It was hard enough to get over friends dying. But how could the powerful United States let some savage warlord in a lawless country treat us like this and get away with it? Didn’t that send a negative message to the rest of the world? Weren’t we the good guys who had come to save the starving Somali people?

  It was an indecorous ending to an unsound mission. Today, twenty-three years later, sounds and images from the Battle of Mogadishu still haunt me.

  * * *

  I needed a break. My commanders in 3rd Group realized that, and, when I returned to Fort Campbell in November ’93, gave me orders in the form of a PCS to report to Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey, California, to study Arabic.

  Not only was I close to my family, I happened to be located in one of the most beautiful places on earth. In gentle Monterey, which was often shrouded in a fine mist, I started to slowly heal psychologically from the horrors of Mogadishu.

  Halfway through the sixty-four-week course, I received orders to return to Fort Bragg and join ODA 326. Now a senior E7, I was named assistant operations sergeant with duties that included studying intel on places we were about to deploy and briefing the rest of the team.

  It was the end of August ’94 and ODA 326 was given seventy-two hours to prepare for Operation Uphold Democracy, which was designed to remove the military regime that had deposed Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991, thereby paving the way for his return to Haiti.

  Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest and populist leader, had been elected president of Haiti at the end of 1990 with 67 percent of the vote in what was considered the most honest election in Haitian history. Eight months into his presidency he was deposed by a group of military leaders led by army commander General Raoul Cédras, whom Aristide had recently promoted to commander-in-chief. Aristide’s enemies accused the president of violating the constitution and threatening mob rule.

  Exiled first to Venezuela and then the US, Aristide didn’t take his ouster lying down. Instead, he campaigned to organize international support to return him to power in Haiti. Part of his effort included a public relations drive that focused on human rights abuses carried out by the military junta that replaced him.

  His efforts got a huge boost when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992. One of President Clinton’s first declarations after his inauguration in January ’93 was to renew his campaign pledge to return Aristide to Haiti. When diplomatic efforts stalled, Clinton, at the urging of members of the Congressional Black Caucus, lobbied the UN Security Council for the passage of Resolution 940, which was adopted on July 31, 1994.

  Two days later, all of us in 3rd Group Special Forces were flown to Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba. There, we were joined by the Ranger 2nd Battalion and a fleet of ten CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters.

  While we were being briefed on plans for an airborne assault of the international airport in Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, the takedown of the Haitian military command, and detention of General Cédras, ex-president Jimmy Carter, Senator Sam Nunn, and retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell launched a last-minute diplomatic mission to try to settle the crisis peacefully.

  As we cooled our heels in Cuba, Carter, Nunn, and Powell spent two days in Haiti negotiating with General Cédras, who initially refused to concede to the legitimacy of the democratic elections. With a deadline from President Clinton nearing, the delegation showed Cédras a video of the 82nd Airborne Division loading into C-130s and explained that they were the lead elements of the 15,000-paratrooper-strong airborne assault force launching from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Within minutes of watching this, General Cédras capitulated and our mission was changed from a combat op
eration to a peacekeeping one.

  To my mind the abrupt cancellation was fraught with questions. Would the Haitian people greet us as liberators or resent us for meddling in their internal affairs? Would local gangs and even elements of the Haitian military turn on us as had occurred in Somalia?

  Our commanding officers had few answers, and had us prepare for a hostile environment and proceed with caution. Lieutenant General Hugh Shelton, in charge of the entire military operation, directed us to present ourselves as both imposing and reassuring. Instead of defeating the 7,000-man Haitian armed forces (the FAdH in its French acronym), we were now going to work with them to police the country once its leadership stepped down. We’d find out how we were going to achieve that when we got there.

  It was a weird situation to find myself in, especially on the heels of Somalia. And it happened to be the first time in history that the United States restored the deposed leader of another country to power. Clearly, the role of the US military was quickly evolving now that the Cold War was over. As a soldier it wasn’t my job to question or debate policy. I was ready to do what I was told.

  Early morning the following day, September 19, Rangers from 2nd Battalion landed in Port-au-Prince to secure the airport. They met no resistance. All of us in 3rd Group Special Forces touched down at the airport at 4 P.M. that afternoon fully loaded with M16s, Glocks, shotguns, combat vests, and helmets.

  We were greeted by hot, steamy tropical air, 2nd Battalion group commander Colonel Mark Boyett, and SF battalion commander Colonel Kay, whom I’d served under in Okinawa. Our command sergeant was Sergeant Major Mike Moore.

  We immediately spread out and established an armed perimeter around the fenced-in airport. Once Sergeant Major Moore announced “Area secure!” we started setting up big twenty-four-man tents on a grassy area near the runway.

  Hundreds of locals started to gather outside the fence to see what we were doing. Some waved; others asked for food. We handed out MREs and tried to establish a friendly rapport despite the language barrier. The local people spoke a particular variety of French Creole that even the few French speakers among us didn’t understand.