Black Hawk Down epilogue

Robert E. Lee remarked that it's good that war is so terrible otherwise men would grow fond of it. The kind of warfare Lee was commenting on -- massed ranks of soldiers attacking each other on a battlefield where combatant and non-combatant are clearly distinguished -- is far from the type chronicled in Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden. On 3 October 1993 it seemed the entire population of Mogadishu came out for "Kill an American Day" including old women carting baskets of RPG's and children firing AK-47's. I can't imagine anyone growing fond of this type of urban carnage. Through a series of fortunate accidents Bowden was able to get access to many participants of the Battle of Mogadishu as well as reams of documentary material from Pentagon vaults. The result is an unprecedented real-time depiction of combat as it was experienced by the men on the ground and those flying the "birds" overhead. It's not an easy read. There are some incidents described that I wouldn't post here. Exploding steel does awful things to flesh and bone. Respect for the incredible bravery displayed by the Army Rangers and Delta Force is the main thing I took away from the book. Because their mission was deemed a failure back home they never got their rightful due. Bowden wrote the book to rectify that, and he closes with this eloquent epilogue.

Many of the young Americans who fought in the Battle of Mogadishu are civilians again. They are beginning families and careers, no different outwardly than the millions of other twenty-something members of their generation. They are creatures of pop culture who grew up singing along with Sesame Street, shuttling to day care, and navigating today's hyper-adolescence through the pitfalls of drugs and unsafe sex. Their experience of battle, unlike that of any generation of American soldiers, was colored by a lifetime of watching the vivid gore of Hollywood action movies. In my interviews with those who were in the thick of the battle, they remarked again and again how much they felt like they were in a movie, and had to remind themselves that this horror, the blood, the deaths, was real. They describe feeling weirdly out of place, as though they did not belong here, fighting feelings of disbelief, anger, and ill-defined betrayal. This cannot be real. Many wear black metal bracelets inscribed with the names of their friends who died, as if to remind themselves daily that it was real. To look at them today, few show any outward sign that one day not too long ago they risked their lives in an ancient African city, killed for their country, took a bullet, or saw their best friend shot dead. They returned to a country that didn't care or remember. Their fight was neither triumph nor defeat; it just didn't matter. It's as though their firefight was a bizarre two-day adventure, like some extreme Outward Bound experience where things got out of hand and some guys got killed.

I wrote this book for them. (pp. 345-346)

Below is the only known photo from during the battle. If you look closely you can see Rangers taking cover.