Mark Bowden - Black Hawk Down

“You’ve got to push on,” Steele told him. He wanted everyone together at the crash site.

“We CANNOT go further. Request permission to occupy a building.”

Steele told Perino again to keep trying.

Perino didn’t know it, but the courtyard where he stood was just 50 feet from First Lt. Tom DiTomasso’s men from Chalk Two, who had joined the search-and-rescue team at the crash site. They had taken cover in a stone house across an alley from the downed Blackhawk.

Perino tried to reach DiTomasso on his radio.

“Tom, where are you?”

DiTomasso tried to explain his position.

“I can’t see. I’m in a courtyard,” Perino said.

DiTomasso popped a red smoke bomb, and Perino could see the smoke drifting up in the darkening sky. It was nearly 5 p.m., about 90 minutes into the mission.

Steele’s voice on the radio kept pushing Perino to link up with DiTomasso: “They need your help.”

Perino said: “Look, sir, I’ve got three guys left, counting myself. How can I help him?”

Finally, Steele relented: “Roger, strongpoint the building and defend it.”

In the courtyard, the medic had his hand up inside Smith’s leg. Smith looked pale and distant. The medic had started a morphine drip. “It looks like it’s got his femoral artery,” he said.

He was distressed but focused. “It’s too high for a tourniquet, and I can’t put a clamp on it, and I can’t put a hemostat on it. All I can do is put direct pressure on it.”

Perino radioed Steele again.

“Sir, we need a Medivac. A Little Bird or something. For Corporal Smith. We need to extract him now.”

Steele relayed the request on the command net. It was tough to break through. With Mike Durant’s helicopter now shot down and the ground convoy laden with dead and wounded soldiers, every call on the radio was shouted and urgent.

Finally Steele got through. The answer came back from Command: “There would be no relief for some time, and putting another helicopter down in their hot neighborhood was out of the question.”

The captain radioed Perino back and told him that, for the time being, they would just have to hang on.

December 8, 1997

THE COMPANY CLERK, Spec. John Stebbins, ran into the street to get Pfc. Carlos Rodriguez, who had been shot in the groin and was howling in pain. Stebbins tried to drag him by his body armor, but Rodriguez was a tall, solid kid, and short, stubby Stebbins couldn’t pull him.

Rodriguez had both hands over his crotch, and blood was pumping out from between his fingers and flowing from his mouth. Stebbins reached around Rodriguez’s waist and half-carried, half-dragged him off the street. Rodriguez’s head dragged in the dirt.

One of the commando commandos ran over and helped haul Rodriguez into the courtyard of a house, where he was added to a rapidly expanding group of wounded men. A makeshift command post had been set up inside the house, which stood roughly a block from the wreck of pilot Cliff Wolcott’s Blackhawk.

Now, nearly three hours into the mission, the men feared they would be stuck at the house all night, cut off from other soldiers also pinned down at various locations near the wreck. Mission commanders had already radioed that it was too dangerous to try to land a helicopter and evacuate the wounded.

It was dusk now, and the men gave up on the ground convoy that was supposed to meet them at the crash site. They knew the convoy was lost and badly mauled. They had seen the vehicles drive past just a few blocks west about an hour earlier.

Everyone dreaded the approaching darkness. They were without their main technological advantage—their NODs (night optical devices), which allowed them to see in the darkness. The men had left them behind, assuming the midday mission would only take an hour. Most of them had left without their canteens, too, thinking they could do without water for an hour.

Now the force faced the night thirsty, tired, bleeding, running low on ammunition, and literally in the dark.

Sgt. TIM WILKINSON was inside the wrecked Blackhawk, tending to the wounded, when he got a radio call. The men holed up in the building across the street desperately needed another medic. Rodriguez was in terrible shape.

Wilkinson, who had roped down to the crash as part of a 15-man combat search-and-rescue team, gathered up his medical kit. Then he turned to his wounded fellow medic, Master Sgt. Scott Fales, and deadpanned an absurdly cinematic request.

“Cover me,” he said. Wilkinson was the team comic.

Head down, legs pumping, he ran and ran, plowing across the wide road, bullets snapping all around him. He burst into the courtyard and saw two of the big commando sergeants wrestling with Rodriguez, trying to get the terrified private under control.

Wilkinson cut open Rodriguez’s uniform and saw that a round had ripped through his buttock and bored straight into his pelvis, blowing off one testicle as it exited his upper thigh. Into the gaping wound Wilkinson stuffed wads of Curlex, loosely rolled gauze that expands as it soaks up blood. He slipped pneumatic pants over Rodriguez’s legs and pumped them with air to apply more pressure to the wound. The bleeding stopped.

He started an IV, then realized he was almost out of fluids. Fales had extra fluids at the crash site, but that meant another foray through the gunfire. Crouching and running at the same time, Wilkinson took off across the road again. He made it safely, and loaded up bags of fluids. With the bags cradled in his arms, he made yet another panicked dash across the road, the rounds screaming over his head. He arrived in the courtyard unscathed.

Wilkinson moved Rodriguez and the other wounded into a rear room. Then he turned to Capt. Scott Miller, the commando ground commander.

“Look, I’ve got a critical here,” he said. “He needs to get out right now. The others can wait, but he needs to come out.”

Miller didn’t respond. He just gave the medic a look that said, We’re in a bad spot here, what can I say?

WHEN THE SUN had slipped behind the buildings to the west, Stebbins was finally able to get a good look at the Somalis who had been firing at him from windows and doorways. He squeezed off rounds carefully, trying to conserve ammunition. His buddy, Pfc. Brian Heard, tapped him on the shoulder and shouted, “Steb, I just want you to know in case we don’t get out of this, I think you’re doing a great job.”

Stebbins was trying to figure out whether Heard was serious or just goofing when the ground around them shook. Heavy rounds were shattering the wall behind them, taking down their cover.

Three more ear-shattering rounds hit the wall, and Stebbins was knocked backward. It was as if someone had yanked him from behind with a rope. He felt no pain, just a shortness of breath. He was dazed and covered with white powder from the pulverized mortar of the wall.

“You OK, Stebby? You OK?” Heard asked.

“I’m fine, Brian. Good to go.”

Stebbins stood up, infuriated, cursing at full throttle as he stepped back out into the alley and resumed firing at a window down the street. Four other Rangers joined in, shooting at the same window. There came a whoosh and a crackling explosion, and Stebbins and Heard screamed and disappeared in a ball of flame.

Stebbins woke up flat on his back this time. He gasped for air and tasted dust and smoke. Up through the swirl he saw darkening blue sky and two clouds. Then Heard’s face came swimming into view.

“Stebby, you OK? You OK, Stebby?”

“Yup, Brian. I’m OK. Just let me lie here for a couple seconds.”

As Stebbins gathered his thoughts, he heard a voice from behind him. One of the the boys was looking down at him from a window. His voice sounded cool, like a California beach bum’s.