Mark Bowden: Black Hawk Down

“You’ll see for yourself over time that it’s true,” Oakley said. Then he told them that President Clinton wanted Durant released immediately, without conditions. The Somalis were adamant. Task Force Ranger had rounded up 60 or 70 men from their leadership. The top men, including the two most important men taken on Oct. 3, Omar Salad and Mohammed Hassan Awale, were being held in a makeshift prison camp on an island off the coast. Any release of Durant would have to involve a trade. That was the Somalian way.

“I’ll do my best to see that these people are released, but I can’t promise anything,” Oakley said. “I’ll even talk to the President about it, but only after you’ve released Durant.”

Oakley was careful to say, “This is not a threat,” but then he laid out a chilling scenario. He offered it as friendly advice.

“I have no plan for this, and I’ll do everything I can to prevent it, but what will happen if a few weeks go by and Mr. Durant is not released? Not only will you lose any credit you may get now, but we will decide that we have to rescue him. I guarantee you we are not going to pay or trade for him in any way, shape or form….

“So what we’ll decide is we have to rescue him, and whether we have the right place or the wrong place, there’s going to be a fight with your people. The minute the guns start again, all restraint on the U.S. side goes. Just look at the stuff coming in here now. An aircraft carrier, tanks, gunships … the works. Once the fighting starts, all this pent-up anger is going to be released. This whole part of the city will be destroyed, men, women, children, camels, cats, dogs, goats, donkeys, everything… . That would really be tragic for all of us, but that’s what will happen.”

The Somalis delivered his message and “friendly advice” to Aidid, in hiding, who offered to hand the pilot right over. Oakley asked them to delay for a few hours to give him time to leave the country. He told them to turn Durant over to Howe, and he flew back to Washington.

THERE WAS A PARADE of sorts on the day Durant was released. All of the men from Task Force Ranger and everyone else now based at the hangar turned out to salute him.

He was carried on a litter through hundreds of men in desert fatigues, an IV in his arm, clutching his unit’s red beret. It was a day of joy and enormous relief, but also a day of sadness. Durant was the only member of his four-man crew and two Commando defenders to return.

It had been the biggest firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. Eighteen Americans dead and 73 wounded. More than 500 Somalis dead and at least a thousand injured. All for the capture of Omar Salad and Mohammed Hassan Awale, two men who were as little known after the fight as they had been before it.

President Clinton would accept Oakley’s plea on behalf of the Somalian leaders and order the release several weeks later of every Somali captured by Task Force Ranger.

American soldiers had fought valiantly and well, but the price paid that day effectively ended America’s mission to Somalia. Every man who fought was back home within a month.

Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin L. Powell, who had approved sending Task Force Ranger to Mogadishu, said in an interview this year: “Bad things happen in war. Nobody did anything wrong militarily in Mogadishu. They had a bad afternoon. No one expected a large number of soldiers to get killed. Is 18 a large number? People didn’t start noticing in Vietnam until it was 500 a week.”

To this day, many in Mogadishu honor Oct. 3 as Ma-alinti Rangers, or “The Day of the Rangers.” They regard it as a national victory. If a victory for either side, it was certainly a Pyrrhic one.

Mohamed Farrah Aidid, code-named “Yogi the Bear” by the Americans, was killed in factional fighting in 1996. He died on the same day Garrison retired from the Army, a coincidence the general is said to note with a wink.

Most of the wounded men who fought with Durant had already been flown home by Oct. 14, the day he was released. One of them, Pfc. Clay Othic, a turret gunner who had been shot in the right arm, added a final entry to the diary he kept during the mission. He couldn’t write with his right hand, so he scratched out the words with his left hand.

He wrote:

“Sometimes you get the bear. Sometimes the bear gets you!”