Ma-alinti Rangers

This quote stands for the tragic series of events that happened on the 3rd and 4th of october 1993 - 15 years ago on this day in Mogadishu Somalia

I've come to realize that most people do not give a fuck at all anymore about wars, death, poverty, and so on, we've become used to it, the media, gaming industry bring us from time to time a 'realistic' view on war that we think it's a walk in the park
I can't disagree with people saying "what's in the past is in the past, we have to look forward instead of backwards" yes indeed, we should but this doens't mean we should forget about for instance what happened 15 years ago

I'm not here to defend the American overseas policy, I'm not, I'm here for the simple man doing his job, putting bread on the table for his family by simply following orders. Men and women who refuse to die for 'king and country' but who would die and died in service to protect their fellow soldiers, the people who payed the ultimate price so that others would make it home. If only more people would look at it this way, things might be different in the future

I'd like to tell the story of 'The day of the Rangers', a story that has been told before by Mark Bowden in his book called 'Black Hawk Down' which was made into a film, if this doesn't ring a bell, please read on.

In the late eighties, start of the nineties, Africa had grown -pardon my language- to shit. Civil war and chaos reigned through different countries of the black continent, one of them was Somalia, after a coup d'etat, a man called Mohammed Farrah Aidid, became the most important figures of Somalia being one of the biggest warlords. Somalia was divided and enraged due to tribal wars, Aidid's tribe, the Habar Gidr, being one of the biggest. You can compare this tribal war with the tribal war of Rwanda which meant the death of over 1 million people in 1994 ...
If it wasn't for the UN Somalia might of been the Rwanda of 1992, The UN with the US as one of the most important countries instated peace coalition forces in the coutry, the US leading the forces with 20,000 marines deployed. This series of events had put an end to fightings for some time, and food supplies began to enter Somalia to prevent a nationwide tragedy of starvation and stop the warlords of using hunger as a weapon.

By the end of '92 and start of '93 the US started the withdrawel of it's marines, leaving the remaining UN forces low in numbers, Mohammed Farrah Aidid, started attacking and killing the remaining UN forces who were still in the country, the biggest strike was the brutal assault and death of 24 Pakistani soldiers, which were slaughtered by a angry mob who was know as Aidid's militia. This was the signal for the US to send in troops again, former president Clinton decided not to deploy a massive amount of troops but send in small units of elite forces being: Army Delta Force, Navy Seals, and the Army Rangers. Their mission was to seize Aidid and bring him to justice, the mission was estimated to take up to one month. It lasted for 3 months until October.

I won't be getting into the whole story so I'll just start out with october 3rd.
The mission objective on october 3rd was to capture 2 of Aidid's ministers, the mission was scheduled at noon, being a first time because previous mission-who went smoothly- were performed at night due to the technical advantages US forces had (Night vision). Noon was also a bad timing, Somalies were hooked on a drug named Khat, bringing them in extase, making them feel 'supernatural', invincible, you know the works. The building where the 2 ministers were was located in one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods of the city being Bakara market, where guns, RPG's and so on were sold like we would buy vegetables and fruit on a market.
So taking all this together, attack during daylight, when they're all fucked up on Khat, the most dangerous part of town where the militia can mount a counterattack in few minutes. Sounds like a recipe to disaster to me, I'm not alone, 15 years ago, many of those men had the same thoughts about it.

The mission was planned to go like this: Delta force would fly in with 4 AH 6 Little Bird choppers, each one carrying 4 Deltas, they would storm the objective and seize the targets. One minute later 4 MH-60 Black Hawks would hover above the four corners of the target building, each one carrying 6-8 men fast-roping down from the choppers and secure a perimeter around the building. These 4 'chalks' would hold the perimeter until 5 minutes later a ground convoy of Humvees and 3,5 ton trucks would arrive to load up the prisoners and the landed Deltas and Rangers, bringing them all back home.

The mission planned started to crumble apart during the fast roping of the Rangers, Pvt. Todd Blackburn, age 18, missed the rope and fell down from the chopper on the street, breaking his spine, leaving him half dead. Blackburn received first aid and was loaded up into a Humvee and was evactuated, during his evac, the Humvee gunner, sgt. Dom Pilla was shot in the head, making him the first KIA.
As soon as the second part of the convoy was about to leave, the one thing nobody would hold true happened, the report through the radio/intercom/walkie talkie "Black Hawk down, we've got a Black Hawk down" gave everyone a shock. The chopper was hit by an RPG which killed the tail rotor and made the chopper go down. The CSAR chopper (Combat Search And Rescue) was sent to the crashsite to give first aid and defend the wounded until relieved. Delta and Ranger forces who were at the target building were sent out to secure the crashsite. Ground forces struggled to reach the site because of the growing number of hostile forces converging on their positions, the whole city was mobilized by the militia, women and children were used as human shields, making this a very delicate situation.

The US forces at that time in Somalia had a code of honor which still lasts until this day, 'Leave no man behind, dead or alive, we all come home together' this being said, pilot Cliff Wolcott and his co-pilot were killed upon impact and due to the heavy crash the chopper 'dug' itself in and the 2 pilots were unable to be retrieved by hand, to get them out they would need heavy tools to cut open the cockpit and get them out. by this time the wounded crew chiefs were evacuated and the approaching ground forces arrived at the scene.

At that time Super-64 flown by Michael Durant replaced Super-61, flown by Wolcott who just crashed. Seems like Super-61 had left a curse upon it's position in the formation, few minutes later, Super-64 took an RPG hit and went down seconds later in a different part of town.

The situation began to look hopeless, up to now, the US forces had suffered more casulties in one hour than they had in the past 3 months.
No CSAR chopper was available this time to fly in and secure the second crashsite, remaining ground forces were directed to the site but were slowed down in such a way by the militia, they would never reach the site in time, the ground convoy who returned to base, dropping off wounded and killed men, returned to the city to the site, they were also unable to reach because of the roadblocks the militia had set up. No one could reach the site in time to hold off the angry mob who was approaching to kill everybody left alive in that helicopter. Nobody except for 2 Delta snipers, circeling around the city, msgt. Randy Shughart and msgt. Gary Gordon offered themselves to be dropped off and hold the site until relieved. To keep it short: these 2 men died in their attempt to protect the shot-down crew. Of the second crashsite including the 2 delta snipers, the pilot - Mike Durant is the only one who survived, he was beaten half dead and then captured and held for 11 days. As for Shughart and Gordon, if you'd wanna use the term 'hero', hold these 2 in mind...
I think they somewhere knew they wouldn't come home from this mission, knowing of their experience, they would've stand an excelent chance but being overwhelmed by hundreds of militia against 2 lonesome snipers, the odds turned against them, knowing what to expect, knowing they ran a big risk of dying in some shithole country didn't held them back of going in to protect those men.

In some way I respect the Somali point of view, they would protect their houses etc whatever the cost, a war is still a war, kill or be killed, but butchering, cutting of limbs and carry them around as trophies aren't exactly my thoughts of fighting a war. The remains of Shughart and Gordon and the killed crewmembers were returned a few days later.

But this wasn't the end of the tragedy. They still needed to protect and evcuate the first crashsite, which was constantly under fire, during the night of the 3rd and 4th of october, the 2 pilots were finally cut out of the wreck and Pakistani and Malasian armored vehicles were send out to the site to evacuate all remaining personel. They probably forgot how many troops were still in the city because the capacity of the armored vehicles was too small to carry everyone back home, many troops had to , yes run all the way back, knowing that they were constantly under fire, 360°around, I would run my ass off...

This is a short version of telling the story, in a short version there isn't always room for giving names, giving details, so this might be not touching to you or who ever that is reading this at all, not knowing who this is about makes it easier to deal with...

Prices were payed for this battle of Mogadishu..
500 and more are estimated to be killed on Somali side, leaving over a 1000 wounded
The US suffered 18 KIA's and around 80 injured men.
The overall death rate on Somalian side continues to add up, in 1993, the people who died of starvation and the conflicts it bring with it was 300.000

threehundred thousand and still counting

In some way this event led to the genocide of 1 million people in Rwanda in april of 1994, hadn't the US and UN hadn't had this bad experiences in Somalia, bad experiences being, wanting to help out and getting shot for it... Maybe they would have interveaned in the conflict that killed one fifth of the Rwanda population at that time...

Me, being a 20 year old guy, it's kinda hard to comprehend what thrives men to do vicious things like cutting up dead bodies, or just killing in general, I won't be judging anyone here because who am I to judge if I wasn't there to experience what they experienced

this story isn't meant to tell you that the US ain't that bad at all, and that all others are the real bad guys...

this story is for Jamie Smith, who was shot in his tigh while saving one of his men he served with, Smith caught a bullet he wasn't supposed to catch, the bullet hit his artery in his tigh, his comrades give him the best of care they could give, they even tried to clamb off the artery to stop the bleeding, which meant ripping open the wound in order to find the artery, they did everything they were capable of doing in that particular situation.
Jamie Smith died that night at the age of 21.

this story is for Richard Kowalewski, who drove a truck in the lost convoy, trying to evacuate the wounded who were loaded up his truck. The truck cabine was shot by an RPG (rocket propelled grenade/bazooka) which went through the door to end up stuck into Kowalewski torso and not exploding. Kowalewski survived the hit, was evacuated to the base.
Richard Kowalewski died at the age of 20.

this story is for Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon, for using the worst of mankind to help protect the best of mankind. They both received the Medal Of Honor posthumously after being cut to pieces and driven around the city tied to a rope behind a car...
they didn't ask to be heroes, sometimes it just turns out that way
Randy and Gordon both left a wife and kids

this story is for the daughter of Maria Osman, who was killed due to the crash of the second chopper on her house, while taking a nap
She died at the age of 3...

this story is for You, so You would realize, war isn't how we see it on tv, movies and games. war isn't a game, it's life or death, kill or be killed

"Dulce et decorem est pro patria mori", the old lie
these have become empty words for the veterans of the battle for Mogadishu, I bet to say, these words have become empty words to every man or woman who has seen war with his/her own eyes...

I wrote the story on the things I can still remember from reading the book, watching the movie and doing some research on the internet about it, I might be wrong about some things but this is the story in main lines, if you wanna know more about it just look it up in wikipedia or whatever...

Black Hawk Down, the movie starts out with a quote by Plato, i'd like to use it as an endnote

"Only the dead have seen the end of war"

to end this entire story, these words are written by Randy Shughart in his last letter to his wife and kids.

"My Love, you are strong and you will do well in life. I love you and my children deeply. Today and tomorrow, let each day grow and grow. Keep smiling and never give up, even when things get you down. So, in closing, my love... Tonight, tuck my children in bed warmly. Tell them I love them. Then hug them for me and give them both a kiss good night for daddy."