Original subtitles

So Dave, October 3rd, 1993.

Long time ago.

Long time ago.

But there's not a day goes by I can't-- Something reminds me of Somalia.

Ambulance.

Yeah.

Yeah, I can visualize everything over there that happened to me.

Barber 5-2, there is a large group moving

towards them from the north-south road.

I can see myself shooting.

Certain smells, of course.

The smell of gunpowder.

Blood actually is a very distinct smell.

We're taking heavy small arms fire.

We need relief now!

We're deep in the heart of the bad guy territory.

The heat hits you, you’re sweating, the sand sticks to everything.

You know, everybody’s against us. My attitude was, "We’re the good guys."

"We’re America. We wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t right."

You could tell that something was noticeably different this day.

You could hear gunfire, you could hear RPGs exploding.

And then, all hell breaks loose.

I could see the rocket launcher being fired.

We got a black hawk going down!

We got a black hawk crash in the city. 6-1!

We were ecstatic!

Medic!

Humanitarian mission to Somalia has turned violent and deadly.

Three US helicopters were shot down.

Twelve Americans are dead, 78 wounded.

Everywhere I looked, there's bad guys.

It was just a madhouse. Pandemonium.

One of the worst battlefield tragedies in years.

Somali casualties were put at 312 killed and 814 wounded.

They bombed us and killed my relatives.

We were very angry.

We only wanted a chance to get to them.

Bullet holes everywhere, destruction everywhere.

They are cheering saying, "We have defeated the Americans."

- Americans get out, move. - Move!

It was a small group of Americans fighting a city.

We're trapped.

I'm thinking, "This is it."

"There's no way I'm gonna live through this."

Either we're gonna be overrun,

or we have to fight our way out of this city.

We got the hawk down. We got the black hawk down.

You know, the funny thing when I look back is,

I was shot in combat before I had my first legal beer.

Yes, so tell me that story, then.

-Where does it begin? -Ah.

Sunday, October 3rd.

It was a day off.

That day I'm playing Risk.

It is a board game at a time of world domination.

Something that we played when we had downtime.

And it's… it's a beautiful day.

Sunny, nice breeze coming off the ocean.

And then it occurs to me that,

at that point in my life, I really didn't appreciate nice days.

And it kinda spooked me.

So I'm wondering,

"Why did you notice what kind of day is it gonna be?"

All of a sudden gets yelled out,

"Hey, we've got a mission."

The mission that day was to get a high-ranking lieutenant in the militia.

I was excited.

We load up. And birds take off.

And I'm sitting on the edge,

legs hanging over so I can actually lean out and look in front of the bird.

They'll give us, "A minute out!"

One minute out!

"Thirty seconds out!"

And then, let's get it on.

Let's go! Come on!

The plan is, get down the rope, go in and capture the targets.

We'll be back at base in time for dinner.

I was confident we were the most proficient fighting force in the world.

I did think I was invincible.

But the reality was…

…we were just kids.

Yo.

I was a wild kid, man.

I always rode motorcycles,

driving cars.

Long hair, heavy metal T-shirts.

And I was always into war movies,

like Rambo, First Blood.

Rambo, one man who's been pushed too far.

Jumps off a cliff, cuts his arm, sews himself up.

That was what I wanted to be.

Were you like a very serious, patriotic kid?

No. I was just kind of spinning my wheels.

Lots of beer, smoking pot.

Oh, God.

College was not my, uh…

Hell, high school really wasn't for me either.

In school, I just could care less.

But Desert Storm kicked off.

You know, it just got everybody "rah-rah-rah," and me included.

I wanted to do something with my life,

and staying in the area where I grew up

didn't seem to be a part of that equation.

- Music wasn't working out. - What was the band like?

- Were you good? - Uh… no.

So I went to the recruiter.

He put a VHS tape into a player…

and there's guys creeping around behind enemy lines,

sneaking around in the dark.

It was these guys in this rubber boat

with machine guns, and their faces were painted.

And I said to a recruiter,

"Who are those guys?" He goes, "Oh, those are the Rangers."

And I was like, "All right, cool."

I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I had hair about down to here.

Go to the barber…

…zip it all off, and now I'm a soldier.

It was nonstop berating.

Yes, sir!

It's like a million degrees, insane amount of humidity.

Five-mile runs, 12-mile road marches.

They're just breaking you down.

The Ranger Indoctrination Program is exactly the correct phrase.

Fully knowing the hazards of my profession…

The Ranger creed is recited every morning.

"Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger…"

"Fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession,

I will always endeavor…"

"To uphold the prestige and honor of the Ranger Regiment."

I can't remember, but I think they changed a couple of words.

"Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country."

"I shall defeat them on the field of battle."

"Surrender is not a Ranger word. And I would never leave a…"

"Fallen comrade to fall into…"

"The hands of the enemy."

- Rangers! - Rangers lead the way!

We were fanatical.

It was God, country, 75th Ranger Regiment.

We're the most elite light infantry unit in the world.

I was always hoping for war.

I mean, you know, can't sugarcoat it.

When you go into a Ranger battalion, you wanna get into combat.

You know, you really do.

What else are you doing there?

You know?

July 31st, it was my birthday, and I turned 21 years old.

I'd been waiting over two years for a deployment,

and our training comes to a halt.

The sergeant major of the regiment turns up.

And I said, "Holy shit, boys, this is something legit."

And that's when they informed us that

there's a UN peacekeeping mission

that's run into trouble and needs our help.

We were going to Somalia.

I was like, "What the fuck is Somalia? Let me look that up."

Army assets are being rushed to Somalia

in an effort to beef up the US troops on the ground.

The country's still wracked by anarchy and civil war.

President Clinton authorized additional troops

following violent attacks in the port city of Mogadishu.

I was nervous.

We had been told that we might have to tactically move off of the plane,

that we might be under gunfire or mortar fire.

It's my third time into Mogadishu.

It's the shooting that I'm worried about. I don't like getting shot at.

Keep in mind, this is the first time we've ever been deployed

to an actual combat site.

We're going in with the worst-case scenario in mind.

I didn't know what to expect.

First time I saw the hangar, I…

I thought, "Are we really staying in that?"

Pigeon infested, there were probably rats in there.

You know, we're crammed in cots,

one against the next, almost.

That first night,

sitting on the bunk,

and we hear this crack out on the airfield.

And it takes me a moment to realize what it is.

It's a mortar round.

And then you look up at the hangar roof,

and it's just this shitty tin roof.

And I remember laying there in my cot wondering,

is the mortar round gonna come through the roof,

hit the cement floor and explode,

or is it gonna explode when it hits the roof and then rain down on us?

That happened basically within a couple of hours of us landing in Mogadishu.

And it was almost like, "Hey, welcome to shit-ville."

And the next morning, we got the situation update.

We've been providing aid through the UN.

And the aid is getting, you know, stolen by these warlords.

Then they're making money off of it on the black market.

The bad guy was identified as Mohammed Farah Aidid.

He was in charge of the most powerful clan.

We Somalis need to resolve our own issues, without foreign involvement!

They told us that he was a warlord

and that he had killed 330,000 of his own people.

But he had a huge army of fanatical supporters.

Yeah, bad guy.

The UN had had issues dealing with him

and in fact, had taken some severe casualties.

Aidid's forces were responsible for the worst attack

on UN peacekeepers in three decades.

Clinton's administration decided, well, that's it,

the mission's definitely changed.

It's not a humanitarian mission anymore.

They needed a more definitive intervention and that was us.

For me, it was very exciting.

Our whole purpose for being there was to get in a fight.

It was a young group of guys there, all very, very motivated.

Confidence wasn't an issue.

The Rangers were the best of the best.

But we weren't even the lead on the operation.

That would be another unit.

A unit that doesn't exist.

Some guys called them D-Boys.

We referred to them as the Varsity Team.

Go!

Their real name is Delta Force.

I was one of those cocky, you know, "I can do anything" kind of kids,

and wanted to be in the best unit.

Nobody really references that it's the Delta Force, to keep its secrecy.

Its legacy missions are hostage rescue

or capture or kill missions for high-level leaders.

They dabble into everything, things that we can't go into, really.

You get that rock star mentality, "I'm in the Super Bowl every day."

We're the best, right? We're untouchable.

You are an ultimate warrior.

You know, I don't know if you'd say you're in awe.

Oh, I was in awe.

But you're definitely, uh, impressed by them.

The unit's main mission was just kill or capture Aidid,

kill or capture as many of his people as we could.

Our strategy was to typically go in at night.

We had the technology that they didn't have.

Night vision devices, we call 'em NODs. We always carried those.

Then we had the black hawks or little birds.

We used the helicopters to look down on the whole battlefield,

to have the advantage above.

I thought, "This is gonna be easy."

"You guys aren't trained. You have old, broken AK-47s, if you're lucky."

To have that advantage…

And I was itching, itching and raring to go.

It was the unit's mission, but we were there as their bodyguards.

We got intelligence as to where Aidid might be hiding out.

It's like an apartment complex.

So, they load us up in the helicopters.

Little birds, black hawks.

There's a different sheriff in town.

We were all about speed and surprise.

In the vehicle package, everyone was amped up,

you know, hearts racing, it's dark out.

We know we're gonna get into something.

We're hovering over the target.

Threw the fast rope, up in the air.

If you're not hooked to it,

it slows you down on the way to the ground, where your hands catch fire.

Take off running, I'm looking for people, the bad guys, you know.

The Ranger units were protecting the exterior of a house

while the units went in and cleared the house, looking for Aidid.

- Set up a perimeter. - Copy.

Clear.

I hear this crack.

I'm thinking, "Okay, I heard that, but I'm not quite sure what that is."

It's the second round that flew by my head before I realized

they were actually shooting at me.

The Rangers light up, they just start firing.

Fifty cals going off.

We made it quite clear that if you shoot at any of us,

we're going to respond with an overwhelming amount of firepower.

You know, you're only supposed to do, like, six- to nine-round bursts.

I must have put, like, 20 rounds into that guy, but,

you know, I was nervous.

First time.

It was terrifying as well as exciting.

We… we narrowly missed Aidid that night.

Well, I was just like, "Oof, okay."

There was so much metal flying through the air.

We had lost antennas off of vehicles.

Uh, one guy got hit in his helmet.

This isn't maybe going to be as easy as what we thought.

You know, bullets go two ways.

One guy with an AK-47 can fuck your day up.

That was the start of it.

We knew there was an element out there

that desperately did not want us to be there.

All I could think of was, "Why?"

"What the hell would make anyone try to take on America?"

Word spread around the city.

A helicopter dropped soldiers over there.

And another one dropped more right here.

Everybody knows,

even the small children,

the American Rangers had come.

There were lots of Somalis

curious to see what is going on.

I'm one of them…

with the camera.

I was 19 years old when I picked my first camera.

Now I'm an elder, my hair is white, but before…

I'm very beautiful, wearing, you know, very beautiful shoes,

tight shirts.

I used to film parties…

…celebrations,

weddings, all of this.

It was a great time.

But then everything changed.

Then the civil war started.

Then everybody had a gun…

even young children.

One side of Mogadishu is under Ali Mahdi,

and the other side of Mogadishu

was under General Aidid.

Because I am not a fighter, I tried to avoid any danger.

But the situation needed to be recorded.

So I became a war cameraman.

The civil war led to a famine.

The whole country, there's no food to eat.

A whole generation was growing up knowing nothing but war and hunger.

As a child, I grew up in a poor family.

We didn't have three meals a day.

But I was happy and I was always playing.

I was the only girl in the team.

I liked to play just like the boys.

They would push me off the ball and I would go after them and play rough,

and that would lead to a fight.

One day at around 11:00 a.m.,

some of the children who lived in the neighborhood came to us.

The children were carrying a lot of sweets and chocolates.

So, I asked them where they got them from.

They told me the people they got them from were not Somalis.

They were white men in a vehicle.

I was not aware of the existence of people called Americans.

1,800 US Marines are poised to step in to try to help

the people who are starving to death in Somalia.

They are going to lead a United Nations effort.

They came from the port.

They are wearing, you know, sunglasses.

It looks like they are carrying their whole life.

You know Americans are heavyweight people.

People are waving the American flags.

We are happy.

I felt hope.

Maybe something will change for the better.

But only a few months later, the whole situation had changed.

As children, we were told

Americans are civilized and advanced people.

When the UN came,

I got a good job from them and made good money.

I was a driver of technical vehicles and other luxury vehicles.

I was the breadwinner for 22 people.

I used to pay their bills from that car during the famine.

But the work we were doing in and around Mogadishu was very difficult.

There were people who wanted to take our lives, wealth, and the car.

So, we had to carry guns and protect ourselves.

One day, I went to the airport with my brother.

The Americans stopped me on the road.

They searched the car.

They took our only gun and asked, "What is this gun?"

We said this car is hired by an NGO. We are security and protecting it.

He said, "You are part of Aidid's army."

"That's why you are carrying guns."

My brother tried to raise his hand to them.

They kicked his hand and hit him with the back of the gun.

Crunch, crunch!

He ran around to the window next to me and opened it.

Then he slapped me hard and threw me to the ground.

Another man also put my brother on the ground in the same way.

My nose and mouth were swollen from the slap. My nose was bleeding.

I had not hurt or harmed anyone.

I was treated badly, harassed and humiliated.

The US are risking everything in targeting General Aidid.

Going on the offensive like this

is going to totally alienate large groups of Somalis.

This is international aggression.

This is a colonial occupation.

God is great! God is great!

There's a lot of anger even if they're not on Aidid's side.

Pressure is high. Everybody is unhappy. "What's going on?"

The Americans had us by the throat and they were strangling us.

Me, I feel something bad will happen next.

That day was business as usual,

charging batteries, developing photos.

Suddenly, I heard a commotion going on.

I come out and see ten to fifteen helicopter gunships.

There's something serious going on.

So I went back to get my camera.

I go to where the shooting is going on.

I saw the house. It was a bombardment.

The helicopters are passing and coming again,

bombing and shooting.

You know, it's a gunship. It's…

My heart is pumping, saying go away from this area.

Maybe I can die.

But camera says you have to stay here,

to do some documentation of what is going on.

I saw people come out of the house wounded.

People are trying to help, but the helicopter started shooting,

and killing.

The bombardment finished.

I go inside and see what's going on.

A lot of bodies are around.

The people are trying to remove the rubble from the injured and dying.

I saw in front of my eyes somebody dying.

I realize

they are elders!

Elders!

Not youth.

Not, you know, armed people.

Old men.

Old men, you know…

You saw no guns.

Meeting peacefully.

There's no reason I can say why this happened.

There's no reason.

I become sick when I'm recording.

I always become sick when I'm looking again.

You saw the whole area, the people standing like this.

Young children…

their faces, they are not happy.

America came to help them,

but they are killing.

You can see.

Another UN attack on a Somali warlord's command center.

UN gunships poured missiles and cannon fire into the area.

Once again, the target was Aidid,

and once again, he escaped.

In there, they killed 73 Somali dignitaries.

We started this thing out as a humanitarian effort in Somalia.

Something has gone tragically wrong. What went wrong? What happened?

It was a precision-directed attack

designed to continue the pressure on the Aidid faction.

I was there, watching.

That day I decided that as long as I live,

I won't rest.

I will fight America with all my might!

That day we went and joined up with Aidid.

United Nations says it's still seeking Aidid's arrest.

Here, on the streets of Mogadishu,

where General Aidid is still in control,

the United States is the villain and the renegade warlord a hero.

As time went on and the more missions went on,

it's fair to say there was frustration.

The soldiers conducted six raids, three of which went wrong.

The wrong house, or that guy's not it, or,

you know, in between we captured some bad guys.

Tensions seemed to be rising every time we interacted with the Somalis.

We were using the black hawks to come in and kind of dust off the crowd,

to help with crowd control.

Those pilots don't care what's going on,

just there to terrorize the people.

On one occasion I remember looking down and seeing a Somali woman

looking up at us.

I think what I saw in her eyes was hate.

We are not afraid of Americans!

With this gun, I'm going to bring down their helicopters.

Before, it was flag to welcome, but now, shoos.

It's like at some point, that match is gonna get lit,

and this thing is gonna explode.

America, America, no!

October 2nd,

they decide that they're going to let us make phone calls home.

They divided it by alphabetical order, and I was going on the first night.

And my buddy, Casey Joyce, had sort of been having some issues at home.

And he said, you know, "Hey, man, I really need to call home."

You know, "Is there any way I can use your slot?"

And I said, "Absolutely, you can take my slot."

He was just so happy.

"Hey, I got in touch with my wife, and we worked everything out,

and smoothed everything over, and thank you so much."

You know, "I can't thank you enough."

I felt pretty good.

I assumed that I'd get my phone call the next night, on October 3rd.

Hey, bring some tea.

We were veterans who participated in many battles.

We burned vehicles and killed people.

Back then my men and I had a place where we used to drink tea and chewed khat.

We were hardened fighters for 20 years.

When we were bombarded by helicopters, that enraged us.

We saw it as a sign of weakness.

A coward or weak person will attack you from afar.

We wanted to fight them face-to-face.

We were saying, "How can we get to them?"

We wanted to teach them what Mogadishu really is.

It's my home.

This is not New York here.

Ah.

October 3rd was a Sunday and is a day off.

We played volleyball. Guys could go to the beach.

That day I'm playing Risk, and it's… it's a beautiful day.

Me and Casey Joyce and Don Pilla took a trip over to the beach,

walking in the water and hanging out.

Out of nowhere, we've gotta get back.

Something's going on.

The mission that day was to get a high-ranking lieutenant.

I was excited.

The task had gone from capturing Aidid himself

to capturing his lieutenants.

They're in a meeting. So we were going for one of those guys.

We were shown exactly where we were supposed to land.

In the Bakara Market, which is where they sell all the weapons.

Deep in the heart of bad guy territory,

the target building.

It was near the Olympic Hotel.

The unit was gonna be fast-roping on top of the building.

The unit would have some people going on the roof,

and some people come in from the ground, then they collapse and clear it that way.

My team were not landing on the target

but landing away from the target and then walking in.

While they're simultaneously going in the building,

we are setting up blocking positions around it.

The Rangers were gonna fast-rope into the intersections.

So nobody can come in and nobody can go out.

We would have a perfect trap set up.

The vehicle convoy would take the unit guys,

the Rangers, and the prisoners back to base.

As usual, my mom headed to the market to sell vegetables.

On our way to school, my brother and I were joking and teasing each other.

I'd get frustrated and fight him on the way.

I'm part of the vehicle convoy.

And we got the launch call sign over the radio.

And everybody locks and loads.

Machine guns are ready, guns are ready, we're ready to go.

We start rolling out.

So we load up.

We didn't bring water, didn't bring extra ammo.

We didn't bring night vision.

It's a daytime mission. I don't need night vision.

We'll be back hours before dark.

As usual there was a demonstration for supporters of General Aidid.

So I'm recording.

Then I see people are running towards Bakara.

So I go and see.

About seven black hawk helicopters were going towards Bakara.

And they'll always give us, "One minute out!"

I woke up late, performed a prayer.

While I was sitting, I heard a scream and loud noise and then I stepped out,

and I saw hovering helicopters.

I looped back to my house, took my jacket, gun, and ran.

"Thirty seconds out!"

The teacher arrived and the students were preparing

to read the assignment aloud.

It was a total sense of power.

I did think I was invincible.

My rifle was already loaded with bullets.

And they said, "Let's get it on."

Victory or death.

The first of the helicopters came in and browned it out.

The sand just came up and blew up in the air.

The visibility was almost zero.

Then you start hearing the cracking of the bullets.

And there's RPGs already flying.

"Whoa, okay, this is different." There's already bullets and RPGs flying.

We come in on the target in our helicopter.

We see these guys shooting at us.

Like, "Let's get the fuck out of this bird."

"We're sitting ducks. We wanna get out of this thing."

-There's ropes, so we throw the ropes. -Let's go! Let's go! Go, go, go!

My friend started shooting at the soldiers still on the rope.

I stood beside him and started firing too.

I roped down.

I got down and I see this dude on the ground in a heap of mess.

He's just a mess.

Man down! Medic!

He fucking missed the rope.

The poor guy, he had shit coming out of his eyes, his ears, his nose, everything.

Man down! Man down!

Then I knew that I had to cover down on him.

We were taking rounds from everywhere.

Felt like I got hit with a bat.

And I said, "Oh fuck, man, I just got shot."

But it stuck right in my flag.

Really chaotic.

I was busy there.

It was loud and dust was everywhere

and the noise from the helicopter's rotor was everywhere.

We fast-roped down. Helicopter takes off.

My team realized we're not anywhere near the target.

We're outside the perimeter of the Rangers.

We're all on our own out here.

It's like, what do we do now?

The firefight was overwhelming!

There were bullets from the Somali side.

There were bullets from the helicopters.

And bullets from the Americans on the ground.

The people were streaming down the street.

Behind me, more fighters were coming to reinforce us.

Once we assessed the situation…

…we kind of picked back up and slowly moved toward the target area.

Move! Move!

I hope these Rangers see, you know, American flags

versus guns and dark figures moving towards them.

So we had to be cautious about that.

We didn't get shot, thank goodness.

Passed the Rangers' line and then got into the target area,

and it was pretty much done.

So at this point in the mission,

the unit had cleared the target building,

and they had secured the enemy combatants in the courtyard.

We were still waiting on the convoy to show up.

We can hear why.

We had to fight our way to the target building.

Drop that gun!

And everywhere I looked around me is, you know,

people screaming to try and give commands.

Hold your fire!

But I couldn't hear anything.

It was just gunfire and RPG explosions,

one after the other.

It was nonstop.

The amount of enemy fire on the convoy was ferocious.

But at that time, the spirits were still pretty high.

We had the little birds and two black hawks

providing cover from the air.

Keep it steady.

You know, we still felt like we had the upper hand.

I was still cracking jokes.

"I wonder what they're having for dinner. I'm gonna eat this and that, yeah."

As far as we knew, the mission was still on as originally planned.

At some point, I looked behind me,

and I recognized what is the Olympic Hotel.

Now I know that, okay, we're in and around the target building.

And so we went in with all the detainees and got them loaded up.

Roger, I want to get everybody out of there ASAP.

And we're just waiting, and then…

And then it happened.

I… I remember hearing a sound.

And it was… it was right behind me. It seemed like over my head.

And I remember looking up,

and there's still the black smoke from the detonation of the RPG.

But I could see the smoke that was coming out after it was fired.

I looked up and saw the helicopter smoking a little bit. I was like, "Oh…"

"Hope that lands okay somewhere."

It started to tailspin.

Just slowly… just auto-rotate.

All of a sudden, I just see it.

It's so surreal.

It starts to spin more, and I go,

"Okay, they have to land somewhere right now."

It starts its death spiral.

And I was able to watch

that bird spin over the horizon.

We got a bird down. We got a black hawk shot down!

It sounded just a violent boom.

This thing came in hard, and it crashed into a huge plume of smoke and dust.

That black hawk was down.

And, uh, that's when, um… That's when everything changed, for sure.

The fall of the helicopter was the happiest moment I ever had.

We got a bird down. We got a black hawk shot down!

We got a black hawk crash, Super 6-1.

Hey!

"What now? Like, what happens now?"

We've got survivors climbing out of the wreckage right now.

Now, it's a rescue mission, and it's our people.

If they're dead, or if they're alive, we wanna get them out of here.

This is our land.

If you touch a man's balls,

he will fight you off with his hands and legs.

We were ready to either kill them or be killed.

The survival of that crew

was depending on us getting there before the Somalis got there.

This is going bad, quick.