Black Hawk Down

by Mark Bowden

  Then Maddox shouted, “I can’t see! I can’t see!”

  The driver’s helmet was askew and his glasses were knocked around sideways on his head.

  “Put your glasses on, you dumb ass,” Spalding said.

  But Maddox had been hit in the back of the head. The round must have hit his helmet, which saved his life, but hit with such force that it had rendered him temporarily blind. The truck was rolling out of control and Spalding, with both legs shot, couldn’t move over to grab the wheel.

  They couldn’t stop in the field of fire, so there was nothing to do but shout directions to Maddox, who still had his hands on the wheel.

  “Turn left! Turn left! Now! Now!”

  “Speed up!”

  “Slow down!”

  The truck was weaving and banging into the sides of buildings. It ran over a Somali man on crutches.

  “What was that?” asked Maddox.

  “Don’t worry about it. We just ran over somebody.”

  And they laughed. They felt no pity and were beyond fear. They were both laughing as Maddox stopped the truck.

  One of the D-boys, Sergeant Mike Foreman, jumped from the back of the truck, ran up, and opened the driver’s side door to a cabin now splattered with blood.

  “Holy shit!” he said.

  Maddox slid over next to Spalding, who was now preoccupied with his wounds. There was a perfectly round hole in his left knee, but there was no exit wound. The bullet had evidently fragmented on impact with the door and glass and only the jacket had penetrated his knee. It had flattened on impact with his kneecap and just slid around under the skin to the side of the joint. The remainder of the bullet had peppered his lower leg, which was bleeding. Spalding propped both legs up on the dash and pressed a field dressing on one. He lay his rifle on the rim of the side window, changed the magazine, and, as Foreman got the truck moving again, resumed firing. He was shooting at everything that moved.

  To make room for more wounded on the back of his Humvee, wounded Private Clay Othic, who had been shot in the arm at the beginning of the fight, jumped out the back and ran to the second truck. One of the men riding there proffered a hand to help him climb aboard, but with his broken arm Othic couldn’t grab hold of anything. After several failed attempts he ran around to the cab, and Specialist Aaron Hand stepped out to let him squeeze in between himself and the driver, Private Richard Kowalewski, a skinny quiet kid from Texas whom they all called “Alphabet” because they didn’t want to pronounce his name.

  Kowalewski was new to the unit, and quiet. He had just met a girl he wanted to marry, and had been talking about leaving the regiment when his tour was up in a few months. His sergeant had been trying to convince him to stay. Minutes after Othic slid in next to him, Kowalewski was hit by a bullet in his shoulder, which knocked him back against the seat. He checked out the wound briefly and straightened back up behind the wheel.

  “Alphabet, want me to drive?” asked Othic.

  “No, I’m okay.”

  Othic was struggling in the confined space to apply a pressure dressing to the driver’s bleeding shoulder when the RPG hit. It rocketed in from the left, severing Kowalewski’s left arm and entering his chest. It didn’t explode. The two-foot-long missile embedded itself in Kowalewski, the fins sticking out his left side under his missing arm, the point sticking out the right side. He was unconscious, but still alive.

  Driverless, the truck crashed into the back end of the one before it, the one with the prisoners in back and with Foreman, Maddox, and Spalding in the cab. The impact threw Spalding against the side door and then his truck careened into a wall.

  Othic had been knocked cold. He awakened to Specialist Hand shaking him, yelling that he had to get out.

  “It’s on fire!” Hand shouted.

  The cab was black with smoke and Othic could see the rocket fuse glowing from what looked like inside Alphabet. The grenade lodged in his chest was unexploded, but something had caused a blast. It might have been a flashbang mounted on Kowalewski’s vest or rocket propellant from the grenade. Hand jumped out his door. Othic reached over to grab Kowalewski and pull him out, but the driver’s bloody clothes just lifted damply off of his pierced torso. Othic stumbled out to the street and noticed his and Hand’s helmets had been blown off. Hand’s rifle was shattered. They moved numbly and even a little giddily. Death had buzzed past close enough to kill Kowalewski and knock off their helmets but had left them virtually unscathed. Hand couldn’t hear out of his left ear, but that was it. Both men found their helmets down the street—they had evidently blown right out the window.

  Hand also found the lower portion of Kowalewski’s arm. Just the left hand and a bit of wrist. He picked it up, ran back to the Humvee where the D-boys had placed Kowalewski, and put it in the mortally wounded man’s pants pocket.

  Still dazed, Othic crawled into a Humvee. As they set off again he began groping on the floor with his good left hand collecting rounds that guys had ejected from their weapons when they jammed. Othic passed them back to those still shooting.

  Many of the vehicles were running out of ammo. They had expended thousands of rounds. Three of the twenty-four Somali prisoners were dead and one was wounded. The back ends of the remaining trucks and Humvees were slick with blood. There were chunks of viscera clinging to floors and inner walls. McKnight’s lead Humvee had two flat tires, both on the right side. The vehicles were meant to run on flats, but at nowhere near normal speed. The second Humvee in line was almost totally disabled. It was dragging an axle and was being pushed by the five-ton behind it, the one that had been hit by the grenade that killed Kowalewski. The Humvee driven by the SEALs, the third in line, had three flat tires and was so pockmarked with bullet holes it looked like a sponge. SEAL Howard Wasdin, who had been shot in both legs, had them draped up over the dash and stretched out on the hood. Some of the Humvees were smoking. Carlson’s had a gaping grenade hole in the side and four flat tires.

  When the RPG hit Kowalewski in the cab of the first truck, it forced everything behind it to a halt. In the noise and confusion, no one in McKnight’s lead Humvee noticed, so they proceeded alone up to Armed Forces Road, rolling now at about twenty miles per hour. The observation helicopters called for a right turn (the convoy had driven past the crash site a second time about seven blocks back, this time one block to the east of it, looking in vain for a street wide enough to make a left turn). When they reached Armed Forces Road, Schilling was surprised to find it deserted. They turned right and had gone only about forty yards, planning to turn right again and head back down toward the crash site, when Schilling saw out his right side window a Somali step out into an alley and level an RPG tube at them.

  “RPG! RPG!” he shouted.

  The Humvee’s big turret gun was silent. Schilling turned to see why Pringle wasn’t shooting, and saw the gunner down in back grabbing a fresh can of ammo. Pringle raised his hands to cover his head.

  “GO!” Schilling screamed at the driver, Private Joe Harosky.

  But instead of shooting out of the intersection, Harosky turned into it, and bore straight down on the man with the RPG tube. This happened in seconds. The grenade launched. Schilling saw a puff of smoke and heard the distinctive pop and the big ball of the grenade coming right for them. He froze. He didn’t even raise his weapon. The grenade shot straight past the Humvee at door level on his side. He felt it whoosh past.

  “Back up! Back up!” he shouted.

  Schilling got off a few rounds, and Pringle was back up working the .50 cal before they’d cleared the alley. When Schilling turned around, worried they’d ram the Humvee behind them, he discovered they were all alone. Harosky backed out into Armed Forces Road, where they turned around and headed west. They spotted the rest of the column where they’d left it, still facing north just shy of the main road.

  McKnight, who had been silent ever since the U-turn back by the Olympic Hotel, seemed to recover himself at this point. He got out of the Humvee and confer
red with Sergeant Gallagher outside by the hood of the vehicle. Gallagher was furious about the confusion. But as he confronted McKnight, he was hit with a round that knocked him to the street. He fell right at Schilling’s feet. Bright red blood pumped in spurts from his arm. Schilling had never seen such scarlet blood. It was obviously arterial. It shot out in powerful squirts. He pressed his fingers to it and fished for a field dressing in his medical pouch. He patched up Gallagher as best he could, shoving in Curlex (a highly absorbent gauze that is used to help stop bleeding) and bandaging it tightly. In their weeks in Somalia, the PJs had given all of the men additional training with field dressings. They’d practiced with live goats, shooting the animals and then having the men work on them, getting their hands in some real gore. The experience helped. Gallagher walked back to his own vehicle, but Schilling kept his weapon. He needed the ammo.

  They had been wandering now for about forty-five minutes. McKnight was ready to pack it in. There were now far more dead and wounded in the convoy than there were at the first crash site. He called up to Harrell.

  —Romeo Six Four, this is Uniform Six Four. We’ve got a lot of vehicles that will be almost impossible to move. Quite a few casualties. Getting to the crash site will be awful tough. Are pinned down.

  Harrell was insistent.

  —Uniform Six Four, this is Romeo Six Four. Danny, I really need to get you back to that crash site. I know you turned left on Armed Forces [Road], what’s your status?

  But McKnight and his men had had enough.

  —This is Uniform Six Four. I have numerous casualties, vehicles that are halfway running. Gotta get these casualties out of here ASAP.

  They weren’t home yet.

  They began moving, and everyone heartened as word passed back that they were finally pointed back to the base. Maybe some of them would make it out alive after all.

  They found Via Lenin, a four-lane road with a median up the center that would lead them back down to the K-4 traffic circle and home. Spalding began to lose feeling in his fingertips. For the first time in the ordeal he felt panic. He thought he must be lapsing into shock. He saw a little Somali boy who looked no more than five years old with an AK-47, shooting it wildly from the hip, bright flashes from the muzzle of the gun. Somebody shot the boy and his legs flew up into the air, as though he had slipped on marbles, and he landed flat on his back. It happened like a slow-motion sequence in a movie, or a dream. The D-boy driving, Foreman, was a helluva shot. He had his weapon in one hand and the steering wheel in the other. Spalding saw him gun down three Somalis without even slowing down. He was impressed.

  He felt his hands curling up like someone with cerebral palsy.

  “Hey, man, let’s get the hell back,” he said. “I’m not doin’ too good.”

  “You’re doin’ cool,” said Foreman.

  SEAL John Gay’s Humvee was now in the lead. It was riddled with bullets and smoking and slowing down, running on three rims. There were eight wounded Rangers and Joyce’s body in back, with Wasdin’s bloody legs splayed out on the hood (he’d been shot once more in the left foot). Wasdin was yelling, “Just get me out of here!” The Sammies had stretched two big underground gasoline tanks across the roadway with junk and furniture and other debris and had set it all on fire. Afraid to stop the Humvee for fear it would not start back up, they crashed over and through the flaming debris, nearly flipping, but the wide, sturdy vehicle righted itself and kept on going. The rest of the column followed.

  It was 5:40 P.M. They had been battling through the streets now for more than an hour. Of the approximately seventy-five men in the convoy, soldiers and prisoners, nearly half had been hit by bullets or shrapnel. Eight were dead, or near death. As they approached K-4 circle, they braced themselves for another vicious ambush.

  OVERRUN

  ABOVE: Delta snipers Gary Gordon (left) and Randy Shughart. Both men were awarded Medals of Honor for their efforts to save Durant and his crew. Courtesy: Paul Howe.

  LEFT: Mohamed Shiek Ali, a veteran Aidid militiaman who fought against the Rangers on October 3 and was wounded in the right arm. Courtesy: Peter Tobia/The Philadelphia Inquirer.

  (left to right) Winn G. Mahuron poses with Tommie Field, Bill Cleveland, Ray Frank, and Mike Durant, the crew of Black Hawk Super Six Four. Courtesy: U.S. Army Special Operations Command.

  1

  Too many things were happening at the same time, all of them bad. Task Force Ranger was two hours into a mission that was supposed to have taken an hour. For General Garrison and his staff in the airfield JOC, watching and listening on TV screens and radio, and to element commanders Harrell and Matthews in the C2 Black Hawk, circling over the fight, there came the awful recognition that events had slipped out of control.

  Their force was now stretched beyond its limits. Durant’s crash site was in imminent danger of being overrun. Most of the original assaulters—about 160 D-boys and Rangers—were now either cut to pieces on the limping ground convoy or strung out on foot between the target house and the first helicopter crash site. They belonged to the strongest military power on earth, but until some additional force could be brought to bear, they were stranded, fighting for their lives on city streets surrounded by thousands of furious well-armed Somalis. Forces from a full company of the 10th Mountain Division, another 150 men, had arrived at the task force’s base and thrown itself into the effort to reach Durant’s crash site, but they were running into the same problems as the other vehicles trying to move through the deadly ambushes and roadblocks that had been erected all over the city.

  Two more 10th Mountain companies were en route, and the UN’s Pakistani and Malaysian forces had agreed to add their tanks and armored personnel carriers to the fight, but the logistics of assembling this polyglot rescue convoy would be daunting, and would take hours. In two more hours it would be dark.

  The men fighting for their lives out in the city knew nothing of the bigger picture. They could not see beyond the increasingly desperate struggle on their corner, and each still fought with the expectation that rescue was just minutes away.

  Shortly before Durant’s helicopter had been shot down, the one and only airborne rescue team had roped into the first crash site, the one just blocks away from the target building. They had flown in on Black Hawk Super Six Eight. Air Force Technical Sergeant Tim Wilkinson had been seated between the two crew chiefs in the back of it when a white chalkboard was passed from man to man. Written on it in big black letters was “61 DOWN.” The bad news produced a big jolt of adrenaline. It meant they were going in.

  They had been practicing together for months, a mix of soldiers from different units and branches. Wilkinson was one of two air force PJs on board. With them was a five-man team of D-boys and seven Rangers. Ever since the mission had been drawn up earlier that summer, this team of fourteen men had been preparing to rope down to a crashed helicopter, first at Fort Bragg and then in Mogadishu. Everyone knew there was a chance a helicopter could be shot down on one of these missions, although it was considered so unlikely that the CSAR element had originally been cut from the deployment. Garrison had put his foot down and it had been reinstated, but the bird still had been considered something of a luxury and a nuisance, like the bulky boxes of emergency medical supplies and equipment Delta surgeon Major Rob Marsh had insisted on hauling all over the world for the last eight years. There was always a temptation to avoid taking such ominous precautions, like the way the D-boys went into battle with their blood types taped to their shoes. You didn’t want to jinx yourself, but prudence dictated preparing for the worst. On the first six missions the CSAR team had flown in circles for an hour or so and then returned.

  Wilkinson and the other air force guys practiced emergency medicine like an extreme sport. Their job was primarily rescuing downed pilots, and since there was no telling where or when a plane would crash, from midocean to mountaintop, from frozen tundra to the middle of a crowded city, their unit’s motto, “Anytime, anywhere,” was a point
of pride. They were trained to climb cliffs, search deserts, and to dive out of airplanes at extremely high altitudes, if necessary, sometimes far behind enemy lines, to track lost and wounded flyers, patch them up, and bring them home. Their training was designed to push them beyond normal human constraints. Men sometimes died trying to pass the PJ course in the early 1980s when Wilkinson volunteered. He was twenty-five then, an avid outdoorsman. He decided to ditch a tamer career as an electrical engineer for something to make his heart pump faster. His personal nightmare had been the water drill at the army Special Forces SCUBA training facility. It was called “crossovers.” Trainees were weighted down with water-filled tanks and dropped in a deep pool. Holding their breath, they had to walk twenty-five meters to the other end without coming up for air. For Wilkinson, it was hard enough just to go that distance without blacking out, but the instructors would deliberately detain him, push him backward, disorient him, pull off his mask and fins, rough him up, tangle him up with other trainees ... simulating the helter-skelter, life-threatening stresses of a real-world rescue. To panic or black out meant failing the test. Those who made it across the pool had thirty seconds to catch their breath before setting out to recross the pool. This was done over and over again, until many of those who hadn’t failed had decided to quit. And this was just one such sadistic exercise. Those who made it through tests like these, and who had years of experience performing difficult rescues, were gutsy, hardened risk takers. But in the Special Forces world, the “blueshirts” were still considered slightly effete. The D-boys called them “shake-and-bake” commandos because the PJ route was considered a shortcut into the special ops community. In most other instances, the air force was the least physically demanding of the branches. Some of the D-boys saw their presence and the four SEALs as a genuflection to intraservice rivalry. This was a “joint” operation. Everybody wanted a chance to play in this war. There were plenty of guys who rose above such pettiness, but there was enough of it in the hangar to color Wilkinson’s weeks of deployment. It was something he and the other air force specialists had learned to live with.