Day of the Rangers: The Battle of Mogadishu 25 Years On

by Leigh Neville

  By this point, the level of incoming fire was heavy and only increasing. Another Delta operator made this assessment: “The guys we were fighting were not well trained [but] there were just a whole lot of them. They were not real good with their guns or other gear but had a lot of ammo and kept shooting.” Norm Hooten explained that often targets were appearing at very close range: “You’re within a doorway away or over a brick wall … within 10 feet. So it’s very, very close and very personal.”15

  Further up Marehan Road, the CSAR team were by now on the ground and establishing security around the crash site. Belman remembered:

  We hit the ground, get our stuff together and then you’re moving toward this courtyard because we’re trying to move up the street whilst staying off the street. We clear a couple of rooms. In one building there was some women and children in there, we just kind of left them alone and moved on because we weren’t staying there. So we moved up the road and hung a left toward where the actual crash site was. Tom’s [DiTomasso] guys got there just before us.

  Moments after descending from the fast rope, PJ Fales was hit. He recalled: “As we collected at the crash the enemy zeroed in on our location and steady rifle fire increased and while all of that was happening I was hit in the leg.” The AK round had struck him in the back of his left leg.16

  Belman continued:

  The first indication of enemy fire was I saw Scott Fales limping and he’s bleeding but it wasn’t really registering that he’d just been shot. Then I saw Jim M, a Delta guy who’d been in the crash and his face was pretty badly damaged was sitting against a wall and then I clued in that there was a ton of fire going on. I became acutely aware of bullets all over the place and that lasted until the evening when we could get inside the buildings adjacent to the crash.

  Fales managed to limp into cover with the assistance of two of the Rangers and treated his own wound. The highly experienced Fales saw the first signs of shock setting in and quickly administered an IV on himself whilst still providing covering fire with his GAU-5 carbine. Meanwhile Wilkinson headed to the helicopter. He encountered one of the crew chiefs, Staff Sergeant Charlie Warren, whom DiTomasso had earlier saved from the Somali civilians, in a stunned and concussed state. He asked C-Squadron’s EOD technician to escort Warren over to the casualty collection point [CCP] that Delta medic Bob M had established near the tail of Super 61.

  One of the other Delta snipers that had been on board Super 61, Jim M, although suffering from a serious head wound inflicted during the crash, was working to free the dead pilot. Wilkinson confirmed that both pilots were deceased and with the assistance of Belman, managed to cut free the body of the co-pilot, Donovan “Bull” Briley. Wilkinson then instructed Belman to move the wounded Delta sniper to the CCP so his head wound could be assessed and treated.

  Tom DiTomasso had established the initial defensive positions using his Ranger chalk and these were reinforced by Belman’s security element. “As the CSAR team started treating the casualties from the crash, I linked up and positioned Sergeant Yurek’s team on the southwestern side of the crash. I also sent Specialist Gould’s M60 crew, which traveled with Sergeant Yurek, to the northeast with Staff Sergeant Lycopolus,” commented DiTomasso.

  “This alleyway really isn’t very large. On my side you basically had a four-way intersection [with Marehan Road heading north and south]. You had Rangers at the far side of the alleyway pointed north, west and south. The CSAR team trained so well together … we just flowed into our responsibilities,” said Belman. “Out in front was some folks from DiTomasso’s team – [Specialist] Shawn Nelson, [Specialist John] Stebbins was there, [Specialist John] Waddell …”

  Belman continued: “My [own] defensive position was right at the end of the helicopter, under the tail, facing the alley. Right next to me was Tom DiTomasso, [DiTomasso’s RTO] Jason Coleman, and [Air Force Combat Controller] Pat Rogers. [Delta Captain and commander of the CSAR element] Bill C was there, moving in and around the crash.” Ranger Sergeant Alan Barton and Specialist Shawn Nelson covered the north-south axis of the intersection with Marehan Road. C-Squadron Sergeant Major Tommy C and Sergeant Major Rick W from 3 Troop established defensive positions near the cockpit.

  Belman noted that “the volume of fire was extremely high,” and growing as more Somalis surrounded the crash site. “Women and children were screaming and running at us from all directions. Some of them had weapons, and some did not. The weapons ranged from machine guns to small knives and machetes,” said DiTomasso.

  Crew chief Sergeant Ray Dowdy was still alive and trapped in his seat on the left side of the helicopter. Wilkinson managed to dig him out of the rubble and cut him free. As he was dragging the wounded crew chief from the wreckage, the PJ was struck in the face and lower arm by steel fragments from incoming gunfire striking the Black Hawk. The crew chief was also wounded again before Wilkinson could get him to cover, losing the top of two fingers to a Somali bullet.

  At Delta medic Bob M’s suggestion, Belman then began pulling the Kevlar ballistic lining from the aircraft in an effort to improve their position. The lining might not stop the bullets and RPG fragments but it might have slowed them down. Belman positioned the Kevlar sheets to help shield the CCP from fire as much as possible. Bob M later mentioned:

  In hindsight, this could have been avoided by moving the wounded directly into a building. We had anticipated a fairly rapid extraction by vehicle and had planned to establish the CCP in relation to the downed AC [aircraft] so the wounded could be easily loaded. The CCP was in a fairly open spot. By the time we figured out we were going to be there for a while, it was difficult to move casualties without being exposed to fire.

  When we tried to move the wounded into a house, we took more casualties. We ended up waiting until dusk to move. The lesson learned was to establish the CCP in the most secure and accessible area ASAP and delay all but immediate lifesaving treatment until you get there. A generic location can be planned … but look for a better spot when you get there.17

  DiTomasso agreed:

  Every time someone tried to pick up a litter, he drew fire. It was as if the enemy could see our every move. One soldier and I tried to pick up one end of a litter when a bullet pierced through the soldier’s right rear hip, knocking him over. The decision was made that we would wait until dark to move the casualties inside the building.

  “Every time we tried to move someone, somebody else would get shot. We had 19 wounded there at one point,” added Belman.

  Bart B, another Delta medic, detailed how they even tried using tin sheets to drag casualties to safety;

  At the first crash site, I do know of one instance where a group of people on one side of an alley tried to push a piece of tin roofing across to the other side to pull a wounded soldier back across the alley. The plan was to tie a rope to the tin sheet, push it across the alley, the group on that side would load the casualty onto the tin, and the other side would then pull him across the danger area. The empty tin was shot up on the way across – needless to say, that plan didn’t work.18

  Wilkinson explained that, although wounded, his fellow PJ Fales was not out of the fight: “As we carried folks back to the triage point, Scott [Fales] positioned himself at the tail of the aircraft and was setting up and providing cover down the alleyways and up the street, and we would put the casualties behind him.” Even when told the arrival of McKnight’s convoy was imminent, Fales refused to be placed on a stretcher. “No, I’m not getting on the litter. I’ll shoot from here.” Eventually he relented under considerable protest.19

  When hand grenades were posted over a wall by the encircling Somalis, Fales saw the danger and threw himself onto two wounded Rangers to shield them from the blast. Incredibly, the fragmentation missed all three. Fales later managed to escape his stretcher [he had been tied to it to force him to try and stay under cover] and rejoined the fight. “I’d fire a few rounds to push them back, then put my rifle across my lap and turn around to do my
medical duties.”20

  Despite the incredibly difficult conditions under heavy enemy fire “the level of first aid performed at the crash site was extraordinary because nobody died of their wounds at the crash site. I believe the two pilots were killed on impact of the crash,” noted DiTomasso.

  Whilst the CSAR team and the Rangers of Chalk 2 held down the crash site, the assaulters and other blocking positions were fighting their way to them and were by now heading up Marehan Road toward the intersection. Norm Hooten remembered: “[In terms of ] true cover there was only the recesses of the doors and little piles of debris” to take shelter behind. The majority of the enemy fire was directed from the north down Marehan Road and from the west and east into the alleyway where Super 61 lay.

  Hooten recalled:

  We bypassed the street we were supposed to turn to the north and as we went past it we got the call [from the helicopter], “You’re going too far.” We had to stop to figure out what they were saying and we realized that we’d gone about half a block on. At that point, the line of march changed. So we [F-Team] ended up second in line on that side of the street. So that put Jon Hale’s team in the lead and that’s when Earl Fillmore got shot. It was a fatal hit, he didn’t fall, he just collapsed.

  I remember Earl turning around. I was standing next to [Staff Sergeant] Michael Moser and [Sergeant First Class] Chris F and we were kinda down behind this pile of rubble between a tree and maybe about a meter away from the external wall of a house. We were hunkered down and I could see Earl stopped at the intersection on one knee up against a house on the corner. There was probably only five meters between my team and Earl’s team so we were in close trail formation.

  That’s when Earl got hit and that one burst of fire that hit Earl Fillmore actually hit Mike Moser in the arm as well. When Earl got hit we all returned fire immediately and as we were returning fire Mike got hit through his right forearm. Chris F and I picked him up [Mike] to move him inside and Chris got hit in the back but his body armor stopped it. John B [team leader of B-Team] and another guy recovered Earl so they were dragging Earl and we were dragging Mike.

  Mike Moser remembered being hit: “Within several yards, that nasty ‘crack-crack-crack’ sound erupted again, and I was struck in the right elbow. Kinda surprising how painful that was – put me on my back instantly. I spent a few seconds or so wondering if I’d regain the use of my right arm as my teammate wrapped some Kerlix [bandage] around my boo-boo [wound].”

  Moser added:

  It was only after he [Chris F] was struck in the back by another burst that I realized there were bigger concerns than my little elbow … That burst was the one I assume killed Earl [but] I do not know this. Shortly, Norm [Hooten] and my team leader [John B] hustled us up and directed us all through a set of doors opening into a courtyard. Upon standing up, I looked over and saw Earl in the street, obviously gone.

  The round had struck Earl Fillmore, the medic from A-Team, in the head, easily penetrating the plastic ProTec helmet he wore and killing him instantly. He was at the time the youngest soldier to ever pass Delta selection and was widely respected within the unit. “He was a fearless and tenacious combat medic,” said Delta medic Bob M later, “he kept his medic skills intact so he could not only fight his way out of a tight spot, but he could take care of his injured comrades.”21

  Hooten said that he:

  finished dragging Mike in [after Chris F was hit] and went back to get Chris and we’re talking maybe two meters – we had almost had Mike in the door when Chris got hit. Chris was on his back and obviously in a lot of pain. They fired another burst and I lay down next to him and said, “Where are you hit?” and he said, “I’m hit in the back.” I felt around under his vest looking for the wound and I felt the round. It was still hot. So the round was sticking through the inside of his vest. So I said, “Hey, your vest stopped it” – it looked like the round had hit a wall and ricocheted. He was a lucky guy.

  Kurt Smith tried to hold Chris F down while the operators “isolated and exposed the wound under his body armor. On his lower back side, where his kidneys would be, there was a five-inch diameter area where it appeared the skin had been burned off like a giant blister. Whatever hit him did not penetrate the soft portion of the body armor. His armor saved him quite a bit of pain.”22 Moser added: “My teammate who caught the round in the back was okay – turned out it was likely a rabbit round – skipped off a wall – and was pretty spent. His soft body armor stopped it.”

  “When B-Team got hit, that’s when we started to do entries. Moving from house to house, either internally or externally. We were doing bounding overwatch and actually doing entries on the rooms. Some of the doors didn’t require [explosive breaching] charges, we could just kick them open,” said Norm Hooten. All the while they were under continual heavy fire. “There was quite a bit of RPG fire, most of it going down the street – it wasn’t very effective, they’d just point it around a corner and shoot. Sometimes you’d see them skipping off the ground and think, ‘Oh man, here it comes’. They weren’t good with the RPGs but they had a lot of them.”

  The operators were by now perhaps a block short of the crash site and, with several wounded, quickly established their own casualty collection point in a Somali house. Smith recounted:

  Earl Fillmore and Mike M [Moser] went down. Norm directed me to enter and clear the building next to us and establish a casualty collection point. I entered the building. Greg A followed me in. There was a family inside the building. After ensuring they had no weapons I instructed them to sit in the back corner of a room and be quiet.23

  “Within the courtyard, we estimated we were still short of the crash site by some 50 to 100 meters. So, this courtyard position was what grew into a larger CCP,” explained Moser. Although seriously wounded himself, Moser:

  tried to assist Bart B with rigging an IV using my one arm. A few unwounded guys naturally cleared the residence of any threat, and aside from a very unlucky Somali family, no enemy were found. The family was flex-tied and sequestered, the immediate room secured. It was here in this room adjacent to the courtyard that I spent the remainder of the event. At some point I distributed my unused ammo to my TL [team leader]. He told me to remain here, but the bulk of the assault force was continuing on toward the site. The CCP population continued to grow with Rangers.

  Hooten added:

  At this point we had John B and Jon Hale and their guys in one of the buildings and then we had my team and Moser and a couple of casualties in the building next to it. Captain Steele and his crew had come up and they were right where we had been hit. We were exchanging fire from building to building by this stage.

  Ranger Sergeant Keni Thomas with Watson’s Chalk 3 braved the street to run back to Steele to request a medical evacuation for Fillmore. In a still controversial move, Steele asked Thomas whether the casualty was “one of ours?,” undoubtedly meaning the Rangers and underscoring the tension between Steele and the operators. Thomas replied that the casualty was Delta. With the area considered too hot for an evacuation by helicopter, their only hope lay with McKnight’s convoy.24 Sergeant Watson continued to attempt to reach the GRF and arrange a ground evacuation, with no success. No one knew exactly where McKnight’s convoy was.

  The other Ranger chalks were still some distance behind further down the street from the operators and were taking a tremendous amount of fire. “We moved forward until we reached the intersection, and, immediately, we were suppressed by intense enemy fire. We quickly returned fire and continued to move. With Somalis shooting at us from every direction, it seemed as if we had run into a wall of lead. We began to bound from wall to wall and low crawl to any available cover,” recalled Lieutenant Perino in a written statement.25

  His statement continues:

  I briefly paused outside of a courtyard with Sergeant [Mike] Goodale and tried to call Lieutenant Tom DiTomasso … on the radio to get him to guide us to his location at the crash site. He answered me, but
I couldn’t understand him due to all of the weapons fire around us. As I began to move down the street, a hail of bullets landed where I had been kneeling. One of those bullets hit Sergeant Goodale. He began yelling, “I’m hit! I’m hit.”

  I looked down and saw a pool of blood gathering underneath him. Surprisingly, his wound did not seem to be too bad, so I immediately grabbed him under the arms and dragged him into the courtyard. Almost immediately, one of our medics ran into the courtyard and began to administer first aid. I checked with the medic who assured me the wound wasn’t serious, so I headed out into the street and linked up with my lead element. Up the street, I saw two American soldiers about a block ahead. I figured that they were either with the Combat-Search-and-Rescue element or from Lieutenant DiTomasso’s chalk.26

  In the temporary CCP, Hooten’s operators were looking to continue moving up to the crash site. “Bart B was seated across from me, Norm and others [were] manning the doorway keeping us safe and evaluating whether we could continue to move further up the street once the threat was reduced. Several other wounded were collected there as well, including Goodale, one of the Ranger kids who was shot in the ass – about which we had many laughs,” said Moser.

  Steele and his command element had stopped in the street and established a temporary command post [CP] near the tree where the Delta operators had been hit. Steele, Lechner, and their RTO Sergeant Chris Atwater were attempting to call in close air support from the AH-6s. Atwater’s UHF radio was receiving interference from the emergency beacon on Super 61 and Lechner had to rely upon his FM radio to make contact with the pilots. They had placed bright orange VS-17 panels on the ground to mark their position from the air and Lechner vectored in Barber 52, who conducted two quick passes to establish the location of friendly forces before swinging back in and engaging targets north up Marehan Road with his miniguns.