Mark Bowden: Black Hawk Down

“Bless you, my son,” said Stebbins. “Got any cigarettes?”

Weaver didn’t. Stebbins began asking everyone who walked past. A Malaysian soldier gave him one, bent over to light it for him, and then gave Stebbins the pack.

Sgt. First Class Sean Watson found him.

“Stebby, I hear you did your job. Good work,” he said. He reached down and took a two-inch flap of cloth from Stebbins’ shredded trousers and tried to place it over his genitals. They both laughed.

The first person Spec. Dale Sizemore found from his Chalk was Staff Sgt. Chuck Elliott. They both burst into tears when they saw each other, glad to find each other alive. Then Sizemore started telling Elliott about the dead and wounded Rangers from the lost convoy. They sat and cried and talked, watching as the dead were loaded onto helicopters.

“There’s Smitty,” said Elliott.

“What?”

“That’s Smith.”

Sizemore saw two feet hanging out from under a sheet. One was booted, the other bare. Elliott told him how he and others had taken turns for hours putting their fingers up inside Spec. Jamie Smith’s pelvic wound, pinching the femoral artery. They had cut off the one pants leg and boot. That’s how he knew it was Smith.

Steele was badly shaken when he learned that more of his men were dead. Until reaching the stadium, Smith was the only fatality Steele had known about for certain. His staff sergeant had told him there were others, but he wasn’t sure yet how many. Steele found a bottle of water and sat drinking it, alone with his thoughts, overwhelmed with grief but unwilling to show much emotion before his men.

Some of his men were in tears, others were chattering away as if they couldn’t talk fast enough to get all their stories out. The captain found a place to sit at the edge of a mortar pit and laid his rifle across his lap and just breathed deeply and swished the cool water in his mouth and tried to review all that had happened. Had he made the right decisions? Had he done everything he could?

One by one the wounded were loaded up and flown back to the hospital and hangar.

Riding in the helicopter on the way back was very calming for Sizemore. The wind through the open doors and the view of city and sky and ocean felt safe and familiar. All of the men on the bird sat silently.

Spec. Shawn Nelson looked out over the blue ocean at a U.S. Navy ship in the distance. It was as if he were seeing things through someone else’s eyes. Colors seemed brighter to him, smells more vivid. He felt the experience had changed him in some fundamental way. He wondered if other guys were feeling this, but it was so weird … he didn’t know how to ask.

Steele felt strange looking down at the city where they had just fought. His whole world had been so tightly focused for so long on two blocks of Mogadishu. To suddenly lift up and see the whole city stretching under him, to see the beach and the ocean in morning sunlight, it was almost too much, a reminder of how small Mogadishu was in the larger scheme of things.

When Ramaglia was loaded onto a bird, a medic leaned over him and said: “Man, I feel sorry for you all.”

“You should feel sorry for them,” Ramaglia said, “ ’cause we whipped ass.”

The D-boys had gotten an early chopper lift back to the hangar. They were already at work, cleaning their weapons, checking their gear, restocking ammo. They were ready to go right back out.

Capt. Steele finally got the accurate casualty list when he returned to the hangar. Sgt. First Class Glenn Harris was waiting for him at the door. He saluted.

“Rangers lead the way, sir.”

“All the way,” Steele said, returning the salute.

“Sir, here’s what it looks like,” Harris said, handing over a green sheet of paper.

Steele was aghast. One list of names ran the entire length of the page, and Harris had started a second column at the top. This one ran almost to the bottom. One-third of his company had either been killed or injured.

“Where are they?” Steele asked.

“Most are at the hospital, sir.”

Steele stripped off his gear and walked across to the field hospital. The captain put a great store on maintaining at least a facade of emotional resilience, but the scene in the hospital nearly reduced him to tears. Guys were lying everywhere, on cots, on the floor. Some were still bandaged in the haphazard wraps given them during the fight. He choked out a few words of encouragement to each. Saying more would have tapped the well of grief deep in his throat. The last soldier he saw was Cpl. Rob Phipps, the youngest of the Rangers on the search-and-rescue helicopter. Phipps looked as if he’d been beaten with a baseball bat. His face was swollen twice its normal size and was black and blue. His back and leg were heavily bandaged, and there were stains from his oozing wounds. Steele laid his hand on him.

“Phipps?”

The soldier stirred. When he opened his eyes, there was red where the whites normally were.

“You’re going to be OK.”

Phipps reached up and grabbed the captain’s arm.

“Sir, I’ll be OK in a couple of days. Don’t go back out without me.”

Steele nodded and fled the room.

The Rangers all wandered back into the hangar, amazed by the sudden emptiness of it. Many of the men talked, sharing stories, compiling an oral history of the previous 18 hours.

Spec. Shawn Nelson, who had helped his friend Casey Joyce into his flak vest the previous afternoon, now examined the bloody thing. It had a clean hole in the upper back. He rooted through the pockets. Guys sometimes stuffed pictures or love letters inside. In the front of Sgt. Joyce’s vest he found the bullet. It must have passed right through his friend’s body and been stopped by the plate in front. He put it in a tin can.

Sgt. Watson walked over to the morgue to see Smith one last time. He unzipped the body bag and gazed for a long time at his friend’s pinched, pale, lifeless face. Then he leaned over and kissed his forehead.

December 12, 1997

MICHAEL DURANT heard birds singing and the voices of children at play. He had no idea where he was in Mogadishu, but the sounds and the sunlight beaming through holes in the concrete walls seemed at stark odds with everything that had happened hours before.

The injured, captive Blackhawk pilot was flat on his back on a cool tile floor in a small octagonal room with no windows. Air, sunlight and sounds filtered in through crosses cut into the concrete of the walls. There was a dusty odor. He smelled of blood and powder and sweat. The room had no furniture and only one door, which was closed.

It was Monday, Oct. 4, the morning of a day Durant thought he would never see. He had not slept. The previous evening, he had been attacked and carried off by angry Somalis who had overrun his downed helicopter crew and two Commando sergeants who had fought to protect them. The others were all dead, but Durant did not know this.

His right leg ached where the femur was broken, and he could feel the ooze of blood inside his pants where the bone had poked through his flesh in the manhandling he’d endured. It did not hurt that badly. He didn’t know if that was good or bad. He was still alive, so clearly the severed bone had not punctured an artery. His back was what really bothered him. He figured he’d crushed a vertebra in the crash.

The Somalis had bound him with a metal dog chain. They had wrapped it around his hands, which were pulled together on his stomach. During the long night he had worked one hand free. He was sweating so that when he relaxed his hand it slid easily from the chain. It had given him his first sense of triumph. He had fought back in some small way. He could wipe the dirt from his nose and eyes and straighten his broken leg somewhat and get a little more comfortable. Then he wrapped his hand back into the chain so his captors wouldn’t know.