A Fateful Day In Somalia

What happened in Mogadishu in the spring of 1993 has colored the United States' view of events in Africa to this day, making the world's only remaining superpower leery of any involvement that might claim the lives of U.S. soldiers. The events described so brilliantly in Black Hawk Down by journalist Mark Bowden go some ways in explaining the Clinton Administration's mostly hands off approach to conflicts in Rwanda, the Congo and the Horn of Africa. 
 
 --The Editors. 


Black Hawk Down 

  Late in the afternoon of Sunday, October 3, 1993, the soldiers of Task Force Ranger were sent on a mission to capture two top lieutenants of a  renegade warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take them about an hour. 

   Instead, they were pinned down through a long and terrible night in a hostile city, locked in a desperate struggle to kill or be killed. When the unit was finally rescued the following morning, eighteen American 
soldiers were dead and dozens more badly injured. The Somali toll was far worse: more than five hundred killed and over a thousand wounded. 

Award-winning literary journalist Mark Bowden's dramatic narrative 
captures this harrowing ordeal through the eyes of the young men who fought that day. He draws on his extensive interviews of participants from both sides-as well as classified combat video and radio transcripts-to bring their stories to life. A Black Hawk pilot is shot down and besieged by an angry mob, then saved by Somalis who plan to ransom him to the local warlord. A medic desperately tries to keep his grievously wounded friend alive long enough to be evacuated-only to have him bleed to death in his arms. The company clerk, who is the butt of jokes in the barracks, rises to the task and per-forms extraordinary feats of valor. 

Authoritative, gripping, and insightful, Black Hawk Down is a riveting look at the terror and exhilaration of combat, destined to become a classic of war reporting.  

Go to Black Hawk Down Site