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

by Leigh Neville

  1720 HOURS: GRF #2 APPROACHING 2ND CRASH SITE; ROAD HAS BEEN BLOCKED WITH TIRE FIRES; GRF #2 RECEIVING HEAVY FIRE.

  Struecker recounted:

  At this point the clans are pretty adept at directing us, so now the battle is in their backyard and they’re going to force us to go where they want us to go. One of the routes that the helicopter gave me was, “Jeff, take this right turn and go down the road for two blocks and take a left,” and I can’t go two blocks because they’ve set up all of this garbage, concertina wire, tires … the kind of stuff you can move by hand. And its four foot high and you can’t get over it. So the helicopter doesn’t know that they are doing that so they can direct us into an ambush.

  Along with the temporary roadblocks, the Somalis had seemingly used earthmoving equipment to establish an earthen berm on one road that forced GRF #2 to yet again turn around to attempt to find another passage through. Struecker continued:

  These guys [Somalis] know what they’re doing and they’re doing it pretty well given their capabilities and their technology. To this day I’m pretty impressed by their resolve. There was significantly less enemy fire but it was well coordinated. There was [one] well-coordinated vehicle ambush that could have been really, really devastating if they had pulled it off well.

  They initiate on my Humvee, the first Humvee, with an RPG and then I get hit from probably 10 automatic weapons from the side of the road which is about 10 feet away but it’s all directed on the first two Humvees. The rest of the convoy backs up and we’re stuck in the middle of this ambush. The two of us return fire and back out of there. During that whole ambush, nobody on either of those two vehicles gets hit … [The Somalis] must have been shooting with their eyes closed to miss us! It was a well-coordinated, well-executed vehicle ambush, if they’d hit the big trucks in the middle it would’ve been textbook. They were just stupid enough to open up on the first Humvee which gave everyone else the chance to run away.

  Struecker was forced to reverse and ram the second Humvee to escape the ambush:

  I told [Private First Class] Jeremy Kerr, who was driving my Humvee, to put it into reverse, stomp on it, and run into Moores, he’ll figure out what we’re doing, he’ll back out of here. We’re returning fire as we’re getting out. I called back up to the helicopter and said, “I can’t take the road that’s blocked, can’t go down this road because it’ll kill a bunch more guys in the Humvees, find us another route.”

  At one point, GRF #2 could even see the Super 64 crash site in the distance as they crested a rise, but the path to the south was blocked by roadblocks and burning tires. Many of the Somalis who had been moving toward the objective building and Durant’s helicopter now took the opportunity to fire on the convoy. GRF #2 drove through the murderous fire, all the while being forced to reverse and turn around multiple times in the narrow streets as one route after another was blocked.

  1740 HOURS: GRF #2 LINK-UP W/GRF #1 AT K-4 CIRCLE. GRF #2 ATTEMPTING DIFFERENT ROUTES; RECEIVING HEAVY FIRE WHEREVER HE GOES; CHANCE LINK-UP … RETURNING TO COMPOUND TRANSLOAD PC AND WIA FROM DISABLED VEHICLES – ENTIRE FORCE RTB.

  In another miscommunication, the Rangers on GRF #2 were unaware that McKnight’s convoy was headed back to the airfield until they literally ran into each other north of the K-4 Traffic Circle. Paul Leonard was surprised to see other American vehicles: “I didn’t know about it, another convoy coming out. They obviously knew we were coming back. I saw several Humvees drive past us.”

  McKnight’s convoy had been heading west whilst GRF #2 was heading east. It took some time to turn the GRF #2 vehicles around and transload the wounded from McKnight’s Humvees and the surviving five-ton. Struecker was stunned by the damage incurred by McKnight’s vehicles. He recalled:

  We were in bad shape but those guys were really, really in bad shape. I was kind of shocked when I saw their vehicles: “What the heck happened?” What we just went through was bad but what those guys went through was a lot worse.

  Most of them were limping out of the city, so shot up that they couldn’t keep going. One Humvee was totally destroyed and a five-ton was pushing it down the road. We link up with them [McKnight’s GRF] on Via Lenin Road. They were so shot up that we just stopped what we were doing and put most of the dead and the wounded on the five-tons and on our Humvees. Moores made the decision to take them back to the base. One of the Humvees – they had fired all of their ammunition, the only thing they had left was the guy on the top who had his pistol out and he had about five rounds left.

  At this time, another Humvee was hit by an RPG and disabled, wounding the three Rangers inside. On fire, it was abandoned in the street. The SEAL “Cutvee” was running on its rims and was so badly damaged it had been pushed down the road by the five-ton driven by the Delta operator. The decision was made to disable it and leave the bullet-ridden wreck at the K-4. “We set thermite grenades on the [immobilized] Humvee, stripped it of everything, and then took the rest of the vehicles back,” remembered Struecker.

  With the wounded and dead loaded onto the GRF #2 vehicles, Moores conferred with McKnight and the C2 helicopter and it was decided to withdraw back to the airfield with GRF #2 providing force protection for McKnight’s battered convoy. Although enemy fire was lessening as they neared the edge of the Habr Gidr territory, a GRF #2 Humvee was struck by an RPG and the Humvee carrying Matt Eversmann was hit by gunfire as they crested a rise and got their first glimpse of the ocean and the Task Force base, wounding the vehicle’s driver, Ranger Sergeant Mark Luhman.

  Suddenly all firing stopped and an eerie quiet descended as the combined convoys headed toward the airfield. They were now in another clan’s territory, one friendlier to the United Nations forces. “It was like an imaginary DMZ [de-militarized zone]. I remember all of a sudden it stopped. Wow, like there’s nobody shooting,” said Eversmann.

  1735 HOURS: QRF DEPART FOR CRASH SITE #2.

  Along with the scratch rescue force drawn from the Task Force support personnel, Struecker was aware that the 10th Mountain QRF also had the capability to come to their aid: “We knew we had a company from 10th Mountain that was available should we really get in a jam. They had launched. I didn’t know that they got within a couple of blocks of the target building and just got shot to pieces.”

  In fact, the 10th Mountain Quick Reaction Company or QRC had launched a platoon-sized rescue element soon after the second ad hoc Ranger convoy had departed from the airfield. The combined Ranger convoys of GRF #1 and #2 actually ran into the QRF convoy as they headed back to the airfield after their link-up, speeding through Lieutenant Colonel Bill David’s force who had dismounted to clear an ambush.

  It had been previously agreed between Nixon and the 10th Mountain that the QRC would be placed on a 30-minute warning standby whenever Task Force Ranger launched on a mission. If and when they launched, the QRC would be placed under the temporary operational command of Garrison and Task Force Ranger. Barely six minutes after the downing of Super 61, the QRC received the request to assist from Garrison in the JOC. On the rotational QRC duty on October 3 was callsign Tiger, C-Company of the 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment of the 10th Mountain. This same QRC company had been involved in the battle to reach the downed Courage 53 a week earlier.

  After negotiating a circuitous route known as MSR Tiger that would keep them out of Habr Gidr territory, the QRC arrived some 45 minutes later. C-Company would be reinforced by a small number of Ranger and Delta personnel on four Humvees and three five-tons, including Delta Colonel Lee Van Arsdale who had been leading the JSOC headquarters element for Task Force Ranger. The QRC and Ranger element departed the airfield for the Super 64 crash site 20 minutes after the QRC arrived. The 10th Mountain soldiers were in a total of six five-ton trucks reinforced with sandbags carrying a pair of infantry platoons and some ten Humvees, two with the 2-14th battalion commander (Lieutenant Colonel Bill David) and C-Company commander on board. Several of the five-tons were empty in anticipation of carrying out the Ta
sk Force Ranger personnel from one of the crash sites.

  Their route was similar to the one taken by Struecker, Moores, and Nixon: straight up to the K-4 Traffic Circle, north up Via Lenin and then turning to the right and heading east along National until they reached Hawlwadig. From there they would turn right again, heading south until they reached the Super 64 crash site past the Olympic Hotel and the original objective. If they were prevented from reaching National, the plan called for them to head further north and turn at a disused milk factory before working their way south, bypassing National.

  The QRC soon began to run into ambushes and several Humvees were struck by RPGs just past the K-4. Lieutenant Colonel David’s men had spotted the two destroyed Task Force Ranger Humvees near the K-4 and the 10th Mountain soldiers bravely cleared the area under fire, searching for any wounded or dead Rangers in or near the vehicles. They remounted their own vehicles and pushed on, just managing to reach National but coming under a withering amount of small-arms and RPG fire from the east which halted their progress.

  Instead of trying to drive head first into the enemy fire, the QRC followed the alternate plan and swung north before running into a massive ambush near the milk factory where they came under fire from numerous RPGs and heavy machine guns including Soviet 12.7mm “Dushkas.” The QRC infantry platoons again dismounted and conducted an assault against the enemy positions; one Ranger and one 10th Mountain soldier were wounded during this action which succeeded in suppressing the enemy machine-gun positions.

  The C-Company commander, then-Captain Michael Whetstone, later noted: “The SNA militia had effectively sealed off the area around the Rangers against any penetration by thin-skinned vehicles.” As they attempted to push through, the QRC were thwarted at every turn. Finally, the QRC was ordered to return to the airfield as Garrison attempted to organize United Nations armor to accompany another rescue effort.9

  AH-6s were overhead but experienced difficulties differentiating between friend and foe on the ground and were subsequently not “cleared in hot” to conduct gunruns. This proved to be another important lesson learned as communication difficulties between the Tiger callsigns and the AH-6s, along with the airspace initially being restricted to only Task Force Ranger aircraft, meant that the 10th Mountain QRC could not call upon its own integral attack helicopter component either. The four AH-6 Barber callsigns were also overstretched trying to protect both crash sites and provide some air cover for GRF #1 and GRF #2 as they returned to base.

  1830 HOURS: QRF RECONSTITUTES FORCE AFTER BREAKS IN CONTACT CAUSED BY AMBUSH; RTB TF RANGER COMPOUND.

  Garrison informed the 10th Mountain command that a request had been placed with the United Nations for access to Pakistani M48 main battle tanks and Malaysian Condor armored personnel carriers to form an armored reaction force that would fight their way into the city. The QRC infantry company would form an integral element of that effort, which became known as Task Force David after its commander, and thus they were reluctantly directed to return to the airfield after more than 90 minutes trying to fight their way through to the Super 64 crash site.

  Even as they attempted to withdraw, the Tiger Company soldiers were forced to fight another dismounted action to break contact with the enemy, allowing the convoy’s vehicles to turn around. Two 10th Mountain soldiers, Private First Class Eugene Pamer and First Sergeant Gary Doody, were awarded the Silver Star for their bravery during the battle. As the vehicles began to move, the soldiers ran alongside to suppress enemy fire until they could board their vehicles. Almost an hour after their first contact, their own organic Cobra gunships were finally overhead to provide air cover as they returned to the airfield to rearm, regroup, and receive medical treatment for their three seriously wounded soldiers.

  DiTomasso, hunkered down at the Super 61 crash site, remembered:

  All afternoon and into the evening we kept hearing them making contact with the enemy. They made several attempts plus they were trying to get to Durant’s crash site but they just couldn’t get to it because they didn’t have armored vehicles. I knew Lieutenant Larry Moores was trying to get his platoon on Humvees to the crash site. I knew he would make it through eventually.

  Whetstone has remarked in his excellent account of his battalion’s service in Somalia, Madness in Mogadishu, that he felt that, had his QRC been launched earlier, they might have been able to make it through to one of the crash sites. His men were on their vehicles and ready to move minutes after Super 61 was shot down. He believed that any delay surrendered the initiative to the militia, allowing them to erect roadblocks and channel any rescue attempt. Nonetheless he also understood that, in the fog of war when hard decisions had to be taken immediately, holding the QRC back until the status of the McKnight and Struecker convoys could be ascertained made tactical sense.10

  At the Task Force Ranger base, the bloodied Ranger GRF #1 and #2 convoys finally staggered through the gate. Struecker’s and McKnight’s respective convoys had suffered an astonishing 36 casualties between them, including a number of fatalities. Little Bird pilot Karl Maier recalled: “The convoy was coming back and they were unloading people and parts [of people]. They were hosing them out to get ready to go back out. Most of them, their tires were flat but they were still using them. It was a mess.”

  Gary Keeney in the last surviving five-ton from GRF #1 remembered the grim task that awaited them:

  When we got back to the airfield the first thing we do is unload all of our injured guys first. We didn’t have any dead on our truck. Then we started unloading the prisoners and in the course of that I realized that four of those guys were dead. I don’t know how many were injured. At least two of them were shot in the head.

  Paul Leonard was still up on the now empty Mk19 when they swung into the compound. He recalled:

  So we pulled in to the airport which was being blocked by another convoy. I got the [Ranger] 1st Sergeant out of the vehicle to get our vehicles in. The five-ton [was] just full of wounded people. I wouldn’t let them put me on the gurney until all the [wounded] Rangers had gone first. So I eventually went into the tent to get evaluated and there was a nurse who was trying to get an IV into me. She was very nervous, so I told her, “Hey, just calm down, you do this all the time.”

  I then asked another nurse, “Am I going to lose my leg?” and she said, “Can you move your toes?” and I wriggled my toes and she said, “No, you’re not going to lose your leg,” and from that point on, I didn’t care what anyone said, you’re not taking my leg. More than you know, they wanted to take my leg below my knee and I wouldn’t let them do it.

  As the wounded were treated and the most serious stabilized for flights to Landstuhl in Germany, the walking wounded and the able-bodied men of Task Force Ranger and the 10th Mountain resupplied themselves with water, ammunition, and grenades. Most importantly they all retrieved their night-vision goggles and weapon sights in anticipation of a further rescue attempt later that night alongside the Pakistani and Malay armored units.

  Jeff Struecker and his men prepared to go back out into the city. He explained:

  McKnight wisely goes back to the Operations Center and puts [Major] Craig Nixon in charge of all the vehicles on the ground and Nixon kind of comes up to me and says, “Jeff, I think we’re going to go back out there but we’ve got to wait to see what happens with 10th Mountain” and then he comes back to me, and we’re getting our vehicles ready, and says “Hey, 10th Mountain got shot to pieces, we’re going back out there but we’re waiting for the United Nations to help us out.” That took a while.

  * * *

  * Four private military contractors from Blackwater USA were killed in Fallujah, Iraq on March 31, 2004, after their soft-skinned SUVs were ambushed. Their burnt bodies were mutilated and hung from a bridge.

  * Although in sporadic contact for more than a year, the author failed to interview McKnight despite numerous attempts.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE LONG NIGHT

  “Wha
t came next was hours of fighting between ninety-nine Americans and tens of thousands of the Somali militia, all armed with rifles, grenades, and rocket-propelled grenades and determined to kill as many Americans as possible.”

  Colonel Jerry Boykin, Commanding Officer, 1st SFOD-D (A)

  As the numerous relief convoys fought their way back to the airfield, the mixed Ranger and Delta element strongpointed in the buildings along either side of Marehan Road, just south of the Super 61 crash site, were in the fight of their lives. Norm Hooten explained that the Somalis “had a lot of ammunition. They had an abundance of RPGs. They were not professional soldiers by any stretch of the imagination and it’s probably a good thing for us that they were not. These guys mortared the airfield every day for three months and only managed to hit one time, but they weren’t afraid to fight.” The Americans were also vastly outnumbered. One militia commander later claimed that the Super 61 crash site was surrounded by some 360 SNA militiamen supported by several hundred additional armed civilians.

  Tom DiTomasso noted the location of the various units as night fell on the crash site: “Captain Steele and the Rangers all occupied the buildings on the right side of the road, the east side, and the Delta troop got on the left side and cleared from building to building all the way up and came abreast of the crash site. Now we had all those guys [Captain Scott Miller and G-Team] at the crash site as well.”

  Ranger Corporal Jamie Smith’s condition continued to worsen. “He was shot in the leg, but he was shot way up close to the hip, so you couldn’t get a tourniquet on him, you know. And we kept pushing IVs into him for hours and he would say, ‘Am I gonna die?’ And we would say, ‘No, you’re not gonna die,’” remembered Hooten. Delta Medic Kurt S tried everything to stem the bleeding and save the young man’s life. At one point he was forced to tear the wound further open to be able to access the artery and try to clamp it with his own hands. Kurt S had run out of the blood and IV solution that Smith desperately needed.