Mark Bowden - Black Hawk Down

There was no answer at first. The radio net was filled with calls related to the crash of Mike Durant’s helicopter. When McKnight did hear from Command again, he was asked to report the number of Rangers he had picked up from Staff Sgt. Matt Eversmann’s Chalk Four. He ignored the request. He wanted to know where the hell he was.

“Romeo 64, this is Uniform 64. From the crash site, where am I now? How far over?”

“Stand by. Have good visual on you now … Danny, are you still on that main hardball [paved road]?”

“I’m on the exfill road. Down toward National.”

“Turn east. Go about three blocks east and two blocks north. They’re popping smoke.”

“Understand. From my location I have to go east farther about three blocks and then head north.”

So the increasingly deadly search resumed. As they turned another corner, they encountered a roadblock. Piling out of the vehicles to provide security, the Americans were hit with a terrific volley of fire from the Somalis.

Staff Sgt. John Burns took two bullets, and Pfc. Adalberto Rodriguez was hit by a volley. His body armor stopped a round that hit his chest, but three other bullets struck the inner thighs of both legs. He dragged himself out of the vehicle, and medics began patching him up. They helped him back into the humvee.

Spec. Eric Spalding jumped out of his truck to help carry Burns to a vehicle and, as he carried him, he felt the sergeant get hit by another round. Spalding was about to climb back into his seat on his truck when he was grabbed by an enraged Rierson and yanked back out to the street. The sergeant was shouting so hard his face was beet red, and Spalding could see veins bulging in his neck, but the noise of gunfire was so loud he couldn’t hear.

“What?”

The sergeant put his florid face right up to Spalding’s nose and enunciated every word.

“PULL YOUR F-ING TRUCK FORWARD!”

Their sudden stop had left the vehicles behind backed up, and Rierson’s humvee was stuck in the middle of an intersection again, exposed to enemy fire.

To make room on the back of his humvee for the wounded Burns, Pfc. Clay Othic had jumped out and run down to another truck. Sgt. First Class Bob Gallagher held down a hand to help him climb aboard in back, but with his broken arm Othic couldn’t grab hold of anything. After several failed attempts he ran around to the cab, where Spec. Aaron Hand stepped out to let Othic squeeze between himself and the driver, Pfc. Richard Kowalewski, a skinny, quiet kid from Texas whom they all called “Alphabet” because they didn’t want to pronounce his name.

Two humvees farther back, Pvt. Ed Kallman sat behind the wheel, increasingly amazed and alarmed by what was happening around him. Ahead, he saw a line of trees on the sidewalk begin to explode, one after the other, as if someone had put charges in each and was detonating them one at a time. Somebody with a big gun was systematically taking out the trees, thinking Somalian gunmen were hiding in them.

As the convoy moved out again, it suddenly seemed to be raining RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades). Pfc. Tory Carlson was wedged in between the two rear seats of the second humvee in the column. Stuffed in behind him, shooting out the open hatch in the rear, were Sgt. Jim Telscher, the wounded Rodriguez, and Commando Master Sgt. Tim “Grizz” Martin, who was leaning against a row of sandbags to one side.

Carlson heard a grenade explode behind his humvee, and moments later came a blinding flash and an ear-shattering Boom! The inside of his vehicle was clogged with black smoke. The goggles he had pinned to the top of his helmet were blown off. A grenade had gone through the steel skin of the vehicle, right in front of the gas cap, and exploded inside. The blast blew Rodriguez, Telscher and Martin out of the back end of the moving vehicle.

It ripped the hand guards off Sgt. Jeff McLaughlin’s M-16 and pierced his left forearm with a chunk of shrapnel. He felt no pain, just some numbness in his hand. He told himself to wait until the smoke cleared to check it out. The shrapnel had fractured a bone in his forearm, severed a tendon, and broken a bone in his hand. But it wasn’t bleeding much, and he could still shoot.

Carlson felt himself for wet spots. His left arm was bloody where shrapnel had pierced it in several places. His boots were on fire. A drum of .50-cal ammo had been hit, and he heard people screaming for him to kick it out! Kick it out! He booted the drum, then stooped to pat out the flames on his feet.

The explosion blew off the back side of Rodriguez’s left thigh and practically tore Martin in half. The grenade had poked a football-sized hole right through the skin of the humvee, blown on through the sandbags inside, passed through Martin’s lower body, and penetrated the ammo drum.

Telscher, Rodriguez and Martin now lay writhing on the road behind the smoking humvee. Rodriguez had tumbled about 10 yards before coming to rest. His legs were a mass of blood and gore. He began struggling to his feet, only to see one of the five-ton trucks bearing straight for him. Its driver, Pvt. 2 John Maddox, stunned and momentarily disoriented by another grenade blast, rolled the truck right over Rodriguez.

Soldiers scrambled again from the vehicles to pick up their wounded comrades. Medics did what they could for Rodriguez and Martin, both of whom were gravely wounded. Rierson helped carry some of the injured and found places for them in the back end of humvees. In the rear of one he found an uninjured Ranger sergeant hiding, curled in fetal position. There wasn’t enough time to say or do anything about it.

November 29, 1997

PVT. ED KALLMAN, who had felt such a surge of excitement an hour earlier when encountering battle for the first time, now felt a cold sweat of panic behind the wheel of his humvee toward the rear of the lost convoy. So far, neither he nor anyone in his vehicle had been hit. But he watched with horror as the convoy disintegrated before him. He was a soldier for the most powerful nation on earth.

If they were having this much trouble, shouldn’t somebody have stepped in? Where was a stronger show of force? It didn’t seem right that they could be reduced to this, battling on these narrow dirt streets, bleeding, dying! This isn’t supposed to be happening!

Men he knew and admired were dead or bellowing in pain on the street with gunshot wounds that exposed great crimson flaps of glistening muscle. They were wandering in the smoke, bleeding, dazed, their clothing torn off. Those who were not injured were smeared with the blood of others.

Kallman was young and new to the unit. These were men he looked up to and felt good about going into battle with, men who knew how to fight and would keep him safe. If these experienced soldiers were getting hit, sooner or later he was going to take a hit, too. And all this dangerous driving wasn’t even taking them back to the base. They were supposed to be rescuing the two Blackhawk pilots who had been shot down, Cliff Wolcott and Mike Durant, along with their crews. Now they were going to be out in this horror all night!

As Kallman slowed down to let the humvee in front of him clear an intersection, he looked out the open window to his left and saw a smoke trail coming straight at him. It all happened in a second. He knew it was a rocket-propelled grenade and he knew it was going to hit him. It did. Kallman awoke lying on his right side on the front seat with his ears ringing. He opened his eyes and was looking directly at the radio mounted under the dash. He sat up and floored the accelerator, and the vehicle took off, fast. Up ahead he saw the convoy making a left turn, and he raced to catch up.