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

by Leigh Neville

  Leonard noted:

  Every time we went through an intersection it was like there was more and more Somalis at each intersection. Every time we went a block there’d be more people shooting at us. The Rangers would stop – I told the driver, “Don’t stop at the intersections,” because we were sitting ducks. Each intersection was like an ambush. It was their inexperience unfortunately. You know the Rangers are best at what they do. The Rangers then were the best small unit fighting force – but they just weren’t used to working with the level of soldier that we were. In fact lots of Delta operators were Ranger prior to coming to the Unit.

  As the convoy worked its way north, McKnight was informed that Super 64 had been downed, south of the Olympic Hotel. The new orders were still to head to the Super 61 crash site, load all personnel back onto the convoy’s Humvees and trucks and then head down to the second crash site. McKnight was also told the 10th Mountain QRF had been scrambled and were heading to the airfield prior to launching a second ground convoy to secure the Super 64 crash site.

  The GRF’s vehicles were already fully loaded meaning that, even if they made it to the second crash site, they would be unable to drive everyone out on the vehicles. In the absence of another CSAR asset or the standby platoon of Rangers that had been trimmed from the force package, it was, however, the best, and only, plan they had. Unknown to McKnight and the GRF, Struecker’s battered three-Humvee convoy, reinforced by a scratch force drawn from the cooks, armorers, and security detail at the hangar, would also soon enter the fray attempting to reach the second crash. As we shall see, this heroic effort was frustrated by both continual Somali ambushes and the quality and timeliness of the directions given to Struecker from the air.

  The GRF continued its lethal traverse of the city. A number of times the convoy abruptly halted, either due to confusion on the directions supplied by the C2 helicopter or because they had run into another roadblock. The fire was intense but no more so than at the intersections, which saw Somalis on either side wildly firing at the convoy.

  “[When the vehicles are stopped] clearly it’s a lot better to get out of the vehicles and fight. It also seemed that at each stop someone was wounded and was lying in the street. You’d get up to administer aid and get them to safety,” said Matt Eversmann. “[At the intersections] it was the most unbelievable thing. You could see these people – their battle drill was just to line up on both sides of the street, face center and then shoot while the Americans are passing through. There’s no telling how many casualties the Somalis inflicted on their own. Unbelievable to watch this happening.”

  Gary Keeney noted:

  That convoy stopped three or four times during the entire lost convoy fiasco. One of those times, the worst of it happened. Every time that convoy stopped we were a target and people were dying and people were getting shot, people were getting injured. As long as the convoy was moving, we were safer. We were harder for them to hit us with RPGs.

  Keeney remained on the truck carrying the prisoners. He explained:

  The six operators posted three to each side of the five-ton truck: front left Mike F, front right Matt Rierson, middle right was Paul Leonard, and I was in the back right corner. Alex and Joe were on the left side. Because I was in the back I had visibility of [Ranger Private Richard “Alphabet”] Kowalewski [who was driving the truck behind Keeney and the operators] and he kept stopping at the intersections so he’s receiving fire up and down, left and right. We were trying to tell him that – “Don’t stop at the intersection. Stop short or come up with us and stop forward.” The one stop that cost him his life was that he stopped again at a spot that wasn’t good. The RPG that hit his vehicle came from an alley directly to his left side.

  Kowalewski had already been shot once in the shoulder and was struggling to control his vehicle under the constant hail of gunfire. Keeney continued:

  It was like slow motion, I didn’t see the RPG flying through the air but I saw the RPG’s explosion hitting the front left of the truck around the driver’s door, between the driver’s door and the engine compartment. When it exploded I saw a head, and it wasn’t a head it was a helmet, but I thought it was a head, flew out the passenger window. He was alone in the vehicle, the only guy in the front cab.

  Kowalewski went unconscious or was immediately killed, his foot came off the brake and his truck rolled forward and collided with our truck. His truck then stalled. Our driver separated us from his truck and that’s when I got down off the truck. Matt Rierson said “Greedy, go help with that casualty” or something to that effect. I ran around to the truck and a [Ranger] E5 was already there and looking at me and hollering for my assistance. “Sergeant, Sergeant, I can’t get him out, I can’t get him out, he’s stuck.” So I climbed into the five-ton through the passenger door and I looked at Kowalewski and I knew he was gone.

  So I crawled up on top of him to work out why he was stuck and basically all it was, was a piece a webbing from his LBE [load bearing equipment] that was stuck around some jagged metal. Once I unhooked it off the jagged metal, he came right out. So I pulled him out and then me, and that E5 threw him in the back of the nearest Humvee that ended up having [Delta Direct Support Special Forces Medic] Glenn I in it. When I went back into the [immobilized] five-ton to recover any equipment, I grabbed his pistol … and I looked down at the floorboard and part of his arm and hand were there. I remember picking it up and I gave it to the E5 who was standing there and I said, “Throw this in the vehicle with him.”

  Kowalewski had actually been struck by a second RPG that hadn’t detonated or was struck by a part of the first as it exploded. In either case, there was what appeared to be a live RPG warhead embedded in his body. “I didn’t know there was an RPG in his chest,” said Keeney. “I didn’t see it, I didn’t observe it. What came out later when we pulled him off [the Humvee] was that there was a live ordnance RPG round inside his body. I don’t even know if it was a full round, it might’ve actually just been the tailfins, I don’t know. That second five-ton never went back with us. When we pulled Kowalewski out of there we left the vehicle.” The Explosive Ordnance Disposal detachment at the airfield were notified of the RPG as the convoy finally headed back and Kowalewski’s body was later placed in a sandbagged bunker before the warhead could be made safe.

  Again, the convoy began to slowly move off under intense fire from all directions. Somalis were firing down from rooftops, alleyways, and doorways, spraying a manic burst or launching an RPG before ducking back into cover. As they braved the gauntlet of fire, another Ranger was shot and killed, this time Ranger Specialist James Cavaco who had been manning an Mk19 on one of the Humvees.

  Paul Leonard recalled the incident vividly:

  I was in the back of this five-ton and Cavaco, I saw him get shot right in the face. The Rangers weren’t getting up on the Mk19 because they’d get shot at. The Rangers seemed to be getting a little freaked out. I look at Matt [Rierson] and say “Hey Matt, want me to get on that gun?” and he says “Get on it” so I run back there. This is where my inexperience in combat comes in – I take my CAR15 and lay it in the back of the Humvee and Matt’s yelling at me – he goes “Hey put that gun around your neck!” so I put my CAR15 back over my neck and get up on top.

  Matt Eversmann, who had been out in the street assisting with the casualties ran to get on board one of the departing Humvees only to make a grim discovery: “I jumped into the back of a Humvee and I jumped on top of a young Ranger who’d been killed and I think it was Cavaco.” Keeney remembered the effect Cavaco’s death had on his fellow Rangers: “When Cavaco got shot, I remember a couple of Rangers in that vehicle, they allowed the situation and the death of their team leader to overcome their emotions and their actions,” He recalled. “They just went to tears because that was the first time they’d seen someone die. It kinda messed them up there for a little bit until they got back in the fight at some point.”

  Paul Leonard was now on Cavaco’s Mk19. He recounted:r />
  We’re sitting there and I’ve only got several rounds left before I needed to reload. I asked “Do we have another can of Mk19 rounds?” The Rangers told me we had another can. So not to waste the few rounds I had left before I needed to reload, I saw a few bad guys moving up the road towards us. Bounding from parked vehicles on the side about 800 yards away.

  I was inside the Humvee while we were waiting to move to avoid being shot at. I tap the 18-year-old Ranger who was driving on the shoulder. Watch this, I pointed [out] one of the guys bounding toward us, I fired a single round at the guy, and I almost couldn’t believe it myself, the round landed right in front of him and exploded. I repeated that several times, I was having a lucky day. I reloaded the Mk19 before we started to move again.

  The convoy had by now turned north, heading on a road parallel to Hawlwadig and were directly east of the target building when the third Humvee in the column was hit by an RPG. Paul Leonard recalled:

  Just soon after that, we went around a corner, took a left, then right, and I remember a huge concussion [wave] as an RPG hit Grizwold’s [Tim Martin’s] vehicle. It literally turned it sideways. It turned our vehicle sideways. I was shooting at a bunch of people in front of us and I yelled at a Ranger to help Grizwold. Grizwold was on the ground. It looked like his legs were split and were up by his ears, he was so messed up. And his chest, where most of us keep our magazines for the CAR15, all the springs were popping out of his [magazines]. It was crazy looking.

  Tim Martin was grievously wounded, although not to the same extent as shown in the film where he is depicted being blown in half. Matt Eversmann said:

  There were a couple of guys lying in the street and I jumped out of the Humvee. Tim Martin was lying there, he’s still alive and I remember running right up to him. He’d been hit right through his hip, his leg was at a terrible angle and disfigured. The first thought is to get him behind some cover.

  I reached down to grab him and drag him to cover but he had on Nomex gloves and they slipped right off. So I grabbed his shirt or his vest or something. By that time somebody else was there. I know there were more people there quickly with more medical skills than I do. [Ranger Private] Adalberto Rodriguez got hit and was lying there too. He got hit through the thigh. We moved him, at this point it was get back on the vehicles and let’s get out.

  The two operators who took over from Eversmann were Gary Keeney and “Doc” Don H, a Delta Direct Support Special Forces Medic who both “grabbed Griz off the street and we put him in the five-ton with us, the other operators. He was still conscious.”

  Leonard was still firing the Mk19 to suppress the enemy fire:

  I remember a woman pointing at us. I took my eye off what I was doing for a brief moment, then I told someone to take care of Grizwold and then I shot this lady in front of me that was pointing at me. I could see a gun around the corner of a wall so I took off the side of the wall with the Mk19 – I only had like three rounds left. I took my focus off what I was doing because I was obviously focusing on shooting somebody before they shot me and I got shot.

  All of a sudden, it was like a hot hammer hit me in the leg, it was like a hot poker. The Rangers are trying to get me off the vehicle and I was still shooting. I told myself, “I don’t have time for this nonsense. I’m too busy.” My peripheral vision was diminishing because of the blood loss – from that point also my vision was black and white, I didn’t see color anymore – and I’m asking the Rangers to get a tourniquet around my knee, “Who’s got a tourniquet?” and nobody had because they were using them on everyone else so I took a first aid bandage, put it behind my knee and cranked on it to put some pressure on it. I felt like I was going to black out. There was a case of litre bottles of water and I drank two of them and I felt better. My vision seemed to improve some but the colour did not return for several days.

  The Rangers are trying to bandage my leg while I’m still shooting the Mk19. They wouldn’t move until they got my leg bandaged up, I said “Okay, bandage my leg up and let’s go!” It was an AK round that took off the front of my shin, it was pretty messed up, I’m very fortunate to have my leg.

  Matt Eversmann was likely in the back of that same Humvee and helped trying to treat Leonard’s wound. He recalled: “I do remember somebody got shot in the leg, I kinda remember trying to wrap a bandage on and it could have been him [Paul Leonard].”

  “I remember looking over and seeing Paul had been hit. He wasn’t all the way up on the gun and there was a look between me and him and there might have been some words that weren’t heard but were spoken that he was letting me know that he was fucked up, he was hurting in a bad way,” recalled Gary Keeney. Still the convoy rolled on.

  Delta operator Tim “Griz” Martin in the five-ton was still conscious. Gary Keeney was with him:

  I will never forget this. We were coming back in that five-ton after we’d gotten moving again after that last terrible and tragic stop and Griz reached up to grab my hand. He wanted to hold a fellow comrade’s hand. The fact that he wanted to hold my hand … he knew he was in a bad way and he needed to reach out to somebody and I was the guy there. He’s holding my hand and I’m trying to reassure him it’s going to be okay and we’re heading back.

  It didn’t last long, maybe 30 seconds or 20 seconds and then once I said, “Griz, I kinda need that hand back because it’s got my trigger finger on it.” As soon as I said that, he let my hand go. He was a professional to the end. All this time Doc H is there, packing his wounds full of Kerlix. He’s just working on him. Looking back on it, Griz was in shock.

  More tragedy unfolded. Ranger Sergeant Lorenzo Ruiz who had replaced the wounded Private Othic on the .50 cal on the rear Humvee was shot, the round penetrating under his right arm into his chest and causing what is known as a sucking chest wound. Ruiz would later be evacuated from the airfield to the US trauma hospital in Germany but sadly died during the flight.

  At the third stop, Eversmann lost one of his Chalk 4 Rangers, Sergeant Casey Joyce. He recounted:

  We stop, we all get out, I’m on one side of the street with Dave Diemer and Telscher and Joyce are on the other side of the street. This is where they decide we’re going to turn around, turn the whole convoy around, and move back ostensibly in a different direction. I don’t see it happen but Sergeant Joyce goes to shoot around a corner and he gets shot right under his left armpit. Jim Telscher and someone bring him over to my location and we start working on him the best we can while the vehicles are getting turned around. “Let’s get him on board, we’re going to head back to the airfield.” I think one of the vehicle commanders said “He’s dead.”

  “They tried to drive north and then east and then get to the crash site but they got ambushed so bad … that’s when Casey Joyce who was on Chalk 4 got shot,” remembered DiTomasso. Keeney agreed: “We were dealing a lot of death but the longer we stayed, the more we were getting fucked up and the more casualties we took.”

  Eversmann had climbed into another Humvee after Joyce was shot:

  At some point I got into the back of another Humvee, I’m scrunched in the back of this Humvee and the bad guys are shooting. I remember opening the door so I could start engaging to the front right of the vehicle [through the gap between the body of the vehicle and the inner edge of the door] and that was a great plan until I realized we’re screaming toward a parked car, we might hit this car and it’s going to snap my weapon in half!

  The nightmare battle continued as Eversmann recalled: “At some point, Jim Telscher wound up getting blown out of a Humvee that got hit by an RPG and was dragged by the vehicle for however long attached to the cargo strap … There were so many bad guys. Three dimensional battlefield. Rooftops, corners, on the street, behind vehicles.”

  The GRF had initially headed north behind the target building, parallel to Hawlwadig before turning west for several blocks. They then headed back down Hawlwadig past the objective before making a U-turn and traveling east toward the first crash sit
e. They then drove north, driving past and missing the crash site by a block before finally heading for Armed Forces Way, a route that would take them back to the airfield.

  Paul Leonard recounted:

  We turned around again and now we were the furthest distance away from town and this is when Matt [Rierson] got out of the truck and ran up to me and said, “Hey what’s going on?” And I’m like, “I know as much as you do.” He runs up to McKnight. The road we were on had a little hill and in front of McKnight this [Somali] car fishtailed and did a 90 degree turn – a sedan, it had a bunch of people in it. I was trying to tell McKnight to get out of the way because he was about 100 feet in front of me and the back of his head was right where I was going to shoot into this vehicle with the Mk19. The Rangers again are not shooting at it, their .50 cal. could have just lit it up. Anyway McKnight jumps in his vehicle and I pop several rounds over the top of his head. The 40mm rounds went right through the rear window and it just explodes.

  Apart from Schilling, McKnight, and the occupants of the lead Humvee, there seems to have been confusion about the route being taken and why, and even the objective of the mission at this stage. The other vehicles in the convoy weren’t aware that they were headed for the Super 61 crash. Keeney noted:

  I never knew that we were given the command to go to crash site one. The antenna was broken from my radio. All this time I’m thinking that we’re supposed to be going back to the airfield. I never knew there was an order given for the lost convoy to go to crash site one. That would have countered the GFC’s [Ground Force Commander] order from Scott Miller.

  Tom DiTomasso graphically explained the situation:

  That convoy is under fire, they are traveling down a single lane road and they are being shot at from both sides of the road. They’re also trying to drive as fast as they can to get out of the line of fire. The instructions to turn left or right are coming from a helicopter but that helicopter had to go and refuel. So the P-3 is now giving directions to the JOC and the JOC is trying to relay them to the convoy but by the time that transmission occurs, the convoy has already gone past the turn. It was just so chaotic.