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

by Leigh Neville

  By now, the second convoy had been launched from the airfield led by Struecker and Lieutenant Larry Moores and it too was receiving directions from above. To add insult to injury, at times the seemingly conflicting directions were being received and acted upon by the wrong convoy. Dan Schilling had taken over navigation for the convoy from McKnight who had been wounded by fragments; he “seemed dazed and was slow to respond to issues. I think also that the situation was overwhelming to him, as it put him a bit out of his element. Ranger commanders aren’t used to working vehicle convoys or so I’ve been told,” noted Schilling in his book.3

  Danny McKnight in his own memoir notes that in his view:*

  there was no “lost” convoy … I believe this misperception may have been presented by many in the convoy because it seemed so to them, and that is understandable. That is probably because the planned route of movement changed after Super Six One was shot down in the city. The new route was created on the move with no time to stop and brief everyone on the new movement plan.4

  After realizing the contradictory state of the directions he was receiving, Schilling took the initiative to contact one of the reconnaissance helicopters overhead, likely an OH-58D, and asked them to direct him to the crash site. Unfortunately he didn’t specify which crash site and the helicopter directed them back down Hawlwadig past the objective toward Super 64. Schilling realized the error and the helicopter began to finally direct them toward Super 61. Gary Keeney recalled:

  We were missing turns and ending up on roads that were blocked. At some point making all of these turns, we passed by the ground force element moving to the crash site. We’d already stopped one or two times and received some casualties and were kinda in a bad way and I distinctly remember seeing [fellow operator] Phil P and we exchanged one of those looks like, “What the fuck, man? I don’t know what’s going on with this convoy but we’re not supposed to be seeing you.” They probably didn’t even know we were heading to the crash site. We didn’t know it. I guess McKnight knew it.

  Leonard agreed: “We went up and down the same road two or three times and I’m thinking ‘What is going on?’” The route was further complicated by some of the narrow streets the convoy was directed to use by the C2 aircraft: “These aren’t all two- or three-lane streets – there’s not room for a big Humvee to get down a particular alley,” said Eversmann. Keeney shared their frustration: “We were on Armed Forces Way, we were out of the mess. Then Colonel McKnight or whoever was leading this convoy did a U-turn on Armed Forces Way, went back traveling east and then made a right and went back south into the badlands! When that happened I was like, ‘Holy shit, what the fuck is going on here?’”

  Jeff Struecker, the Ranger Sergeant with the best understanding of the maze-like road network, had returned to the Task Force Ranger base with the three Humvees carrying Blackburn, leaving McKnight’s GRF without any experienced navigators. Instead the GRF had to rely upon directions provided from the C2 helicopter. When it had to return to the base to refuel, the task became even more problematic. Coupled with the fragmentary and often late directions from overhead, the Rangers weren’t used to conducting vehicle movements, particularly in a city, and basic drills like advising each vehicle as to its destination were missed.

  Struecker recalled that as a key lesson learned:

  One of the things we didn’t do well was we didn’t allow anyone else to navigate – I was the only guy who did navigation for the vehicles so when I pulled out [to take Blackburn back to the hangar], no one had any clue about how to get around the city. They are totally dependent on the helicopter. That’s part of the reason that McKnight’s convoy goes back and forth down the same street more than once because they don’t know how to navigate through the city. We really didn’t do that well. We should have spread that navigation responsibility around but we didn’t.

  The longer they were on the ground, the greater the number of roadblocks that appeared. Whether by design or accident, the Somalis were trying to isolate the crash sites from the convoy. Leonard recalled:

  They had tires, they had barbed wire, they had wood, rocks, over four foot high – these things were pretty formidable roadblocks – they were big enough that you couldn’t get the Humvees over unless you were experienced and the Rangers just weren’t. These roadblocks had people behind them shooting at us. I described it one time as being like the movie Saving Private Ryan – when they come up on the beach and the gate drops and you’ve got all of these rounds flying at you – that was it.

  Keeney, in the truck with Leonard, agreed: “We were in the fatal funnel over and over again. We were just sitting ducks to anyone firing from a rooftop or doorway ...” Leonard added:

  One time we hit a barrier and he [the driver] couldn’t get over it. I’m sitting up there [on the Mk19] and seeing people running down the road shooting at me so I get down in the vehicle and the driver says “I’m stuck.” So I kicked the gear and said, “Now push on the brake a little bit” – none of these guys knew how to engage the four wheel locking out. On Humvees you have to apply pressure to the brake, give it gas and watch out! So he went right up over this three-foot berm and he couldn’t believe it.

  1654 HOURS: GRF #1 REPORTS NUMEROUS CASUALTIES (NUMBERS/TYPE UNKNOWN).

  Gary Keeney reported:

  The driver of our five-ton was injured and he wasn’t driving very well as the result of his injuries. Ultimately [C-Team operator] Mike F had to get into that vehicle and drive it for him. I remember Mike telling me he had to push the guy out of the way and as he’s driving the five-ton, he’s shooting out his window with his .45 [pistol].

  Ranger Specialist Eric Spalding in the passenger seat had been shot twice through the legs whilst Ranger Private John Maddox who had been driving had been hit in the helmet by an AK47 round, the force temporarily blinding him.

  Twice the convoy passed frustratingly close to the Super 61 crash site. “I could hear the gunfire. Literally I could hear the .50-caliber machine guns and the 40mm grenades going off. I could hear them in the distance and then they would stop and then they’d get further away. And then they’d get closer. The ground convoy was trying to break through,” said Tom DiTomasso with Chalk 2 at the crash site.

  Kurt Smith, on foot with F-Team, remembered seeing the convoy go past whilst they were on their foot movement to the crash site:

  We traveled east for two blocks and arrived at an intersection. The Ground Reaction Force drove by from north to south. There was a distinct difference in operating procedure when I saw it. Instead of Rangers and operators boldly pulling security from their positions on the vehicles, they were maintaining very low silhouettes as if they had driven through several ambushes [as they already had]. The convoy passed, and we continued east one more block before turning north.5

  As the convoy again headed onto Armed Forces Way, Schilling made a final attempt to head to the Super 61 crash site. They turned east in this last attempt but were again engaged by an ambush, narrowly avoiding an RPG fired at their Humvee. With the .50 cal. firing to cover their withdrawal, Schilling’s and McKnight’s Humvee turned around and pulled back around the corner to discover the rest of the GRF still waiting on the main road. Due to yet another communications breakdown, the convoy had not followed them east and instead stopped.

  Finally, after consultation with Harrell and Boykin, Colonel McKnight was forced to make the painful decision to abandon efforts to reach either of the crash sites and instead try to nurse his shot-up convoy back to the airfield. McKnight himself had been hit in the neck by a fragment from an RPG next to his carotid artery and was wounded in the right arm. Matt Eversmann agreed with McKnight’s decision to head for the base: “The sheer number of wounded … I think the reality was we couldn’t even stuff any more people on these vehicles anyway. It was a smart call.”

  With the number of dead and wounded on the GRF, and taking into consideration the state of their vehicles, there is little doubt that even had they been able
to break through to the Super 61 crash site, they may have done as much harm as good. Although they would have been able to reinforce and likely expand the defensive perimeter around the alleyway, they would have added significantly to the already stretched medical resources at the site.

  Delta Ground Force Commander Scott Miller later remarked: “The convoy going back, as we listened to the debriefs afterwards, was in a terrible firefight, convoys were riddled with RPGs and automatic weapons fire, they are losing individuals, KIAs, individuals wounded in action, and they are fighting their way back trying to get back to the airfield.”6

  Most importantly, with two five-ton trucks now out of action and several of the Humvees shot to pieces, they simply wouldn’t have had the cargo capacity to actually load up the CSAR team, the Ranger chalks and the Delta assault force. The Humvees were jam-packed with casualties already. If the GRF had made it through, a longer and more hazardous version of the later “Mogadishu Mile” would have occurred with the able-bodied Rangers and operators forced to run back to the airfield alongside the GRF vehicles. They undoubtedly would have incurred significant casualties, as the relatively short Ranger and Delta foot movement to the Super 61 crash site had already demonstrated.

  “Two more intersections and now we do another U-turn and we’re heading back to the airbase because we’ve lost too many guys. We went up and down that road three or four times and we had a lot of casualties,” recalled Leonard, still manning the Mk19 on Cavaco’s Humvee despite his leg wound. Even on Armed Forces Way, they were still receiving significant fire: “We passed this intersection [when] I see up ahead of me the same kind of truck we had, a military five-ton, but unloading a bunch of Somalis, and again the Rangers don’t shoot.”

  Even at this stage of the battle some of the young Rangers were hesitant to fire, either due to inexperience, combat shock, questions about the rules of engagement, or a combination of all three. “The .50 cal. goes by and didn’t even light them up and I’m like, ‘What is going on?’ So now it is so close, maybe 15 feet, maybe 25 at the greatest, it was really danger close [a military term denoting weapons being employed in dangerously close proximity to friendly troops] using the Mk19. I’m bouncing rounds into the ground and into the vehicle and it blew up the vehicle and the gas tank.” After Leonard’s Mk19 was finally empty, he resorted to his CAR15 and eventually his pistol. He recounted:

  I was sitting on Cavaco. The Rangers freaked out about that but I was using him to support my leg. The [Ranger] First Sergeant was there too and he was really confused – I felt sorry for him: “Who do I shoot at? Who don’t I shoot at?” I was pointing out people to shoot out. I actually gave my gun [CAR15] to a Ranger. I said, “Why aren’t you shooting?” and he goes, “Because my gun’s broken,” so I handed him my CAR15 and I pulled out my pistol. I didn’t shoot anyone with it because we were almost back to the airfield. It was just crazy, the confusion.

  The militias were brazenly attempting to take advantage of the American rules of engagement, counting on the likelihood that the Rangers and operators would not fire on unarmed civilians. Struecker recounted:

  I watched it with my own eyes where a 25-year-old guy runs across the street, picks up an AK47 and shoots at the Humvees, we drop him and don’t even think about it. A guy who’s 17 years old runs across the street, picks up the AK, shoots at the Humvees [and we] drop him without thinking about it. Seven-year-old kid runs across the street, picks up the same AK47, shoots at the vehicles and everyone on the vehicles hesitates because inside they’re thinking “Well that’s just a kid, I can’t kill a kid” and it’s not until I start to shoot that they decide, “Well I better shoot because otherwise he’s going to kill me.”

  I don’t think they were asking, “Is it lawful for me to kill them?,” they were more saying, “Isn’t it wrong if I kill this woman?” I came to the opinion that the people in Mogadishu have lived under war and famine for so long that human life just doesn’t mean anything. Human life just doesn’t have value there.

  Just as it appeared that Leonard’s fellow Delta operator Gary Keeney would escape unscathed, his luck ran out as they headed for home. He recalled:

  When we got back out on Armed Forces Way and turned left again, for the second time and the last time, that’s when I got shot. I was still engaging people but the fire had reduced significantly and that’s when all of a sudden, “Bam,” I got struck in the leg. It just scared me because I wasn’t expecting it like all the other times. [Delta Medic] Don H who was still working on Griz at the time looked up at me and goes, “Greedy, you okay?” and I just kinda looked down and said, “Yeah, I’m fine, man.”

  1703 HOURS: SECOND RANGER GROUND (GRF #2) ELE [ELEMENT] RECONSTITUTED AS RECOVERY FORCE FOR 2ND CRASH SITE.

  While the GRF convoy was fighting its way through ambush after ambush, at the Task Force Ranger base, the second ground convoy was being assembled. Chief amongst it would be Sergeant Jeff Struecker who had earlier led the Blackburn MEDEVAC convoy out of the city. He explained, “I had a couple of guys wounded but still able to fight, [Dominick] Pilla’s dead, Blackburn – at this point it doesn’t look like he’s going to make it – a couple of guys just light gunshot wounds, nothing that would prevent us from going back out, but the vehicles are in real bad shape.” Struecker continued:

  We had the search-and-rescue force that was already going in at the first crashed Black Hawk, Cliff Wolcott, I didn’t know this as I’m on the way back with Blackburn. By the time I get back, Durant’s Black Hawk has crashed and we don’t have anybody else to go out to a second crash site. When I got back [Lieutenant Larry] Moores is waiting for me, saying, “Hey, you need to get your guys back on the Humvees, we’re going back out to the crash site.” And I’m like, “What crash site? We’ve got a search-and-rescue bird.” “No, the second crash site,” answered Moores. When 64 went down, I didn’t even know 61 had gone down.

  Lieutenant Moores was preparing the cooks and the ammunition guys and the intel guys to get on to the five-tons and ride in the middle of the convoy. It was basically, “Anybody who has a gun, get on the big trucks.” This was the point that [Major] Craig Nixon [the Ranger battalion executive officer who had been acting as the Task Force Ranger liaison to the 10th Mountain] joined us at the back on Larry Moores’ vehicle. He gave me a specific amount of time to get more fuel, get more ammunition, get the vehicles ready to go back out and just like you see in the movie, one of the special operators [Sergeant John M] who came back on my Humvee said, “Jeff, go clean your Humvee up” … so we cleaned the blood out of the back of that Humvee.

  Struecker was thinking the same as every other man who had run the gauntlet already that day: “Everything inside of me was saying don’t do this. Don’t do this because you’re going to get every one of your men killed if you go back out there. Personally, I was thinking it was a suicide mission. If I drive back through what I just went through, I’m going to die in the next few moments, no question about it.”7

  He later credited Nixon with inspiring him to lead his men out once more:

  He [Nixon] said, “Any idiot can go in on a hot landing zone the first time. But, it’s asking guys to go back into the exact same LZ after they’ve already been there and after they know how dangerous it is, that takes real courage and takes real leadership skills. You need to get your men ready for what we’re about to ask them to do.”

  The incident shown in the film where a young Ranger is hesitant to go back out actually occurred. Struecker spoke to him: “‘I’m not going to make you do this, but I need you on those Humvees. The rest of the guys who are on the city streets fighting for their lives – they need you,” and as the vehicle convoy mounted up, he spotted the young man climb aboard a departing Humvee with his SAW.8

  Moores and Nixon had recruited virtually every support Ranger at the airfield: mechanics, cooks, armorers, clerks, analysts, and those providing perimeter security. “They loaded up all the headquarters personnel because they needed more Ran
gers. They washed out all the trucks and loaded up all those headquarters personnel and those guys kept on trying to come back out to us,” added DiTomasso.

  Christened GRF #2, the convoy consisted of four Humvees and three five-ton trucks carrying a 27-man mixed force of Rangers and a scattering of operators. Struecker was in the lead vehicle, with Moores and Nixon in the Humvee directly behind him. Both lead Humvees mounted .50 cal. machine guns.

  The Ranger GRF #2 would soon be plagued by the same communications mishaps as McKnight’s convoy. Struecker explained:

  We don’t know exactly where Durant’s Black Hawk crashed so he [Moores] gives me the instruction to turn my radio to the air frequency to talk to the helicopters and get directions from the helicopters. What he [Moores] didn’t know was that Danny McKnight was on the same frequency getting directions from the same aircraft. So the same [C2] aircraft is giving directions to two convoys. McKnight doesn’t know that, I don’t know that, so McKnight is turning when I’m supposed to be turning.

  The newly established convoy was first engaged by enemy fire barely after they had left the airfield gates. It was as if the whole city was looking for an opportunity to shoot at the Americans. GRF #2 then proceeded to the K-4 Traffic Circle and, already under now heavy fire, drove north on Via Lenin and then turned east onto National. They had also incurred their first casualties. Ranger Specialist David Eastabrooks, driving one of the Humvees, had been shot in the hand. Struecker himself suffered another close call. An RPG had impacted next to his Humvee, lifting one side of the vehicle off the ground.