Black Hawk Down (Paperback)

But, as General of the Army (and later President) Dwight Eisenhower once said, no military plan ever survives intact once the first shots are fired, so instead of a quick in-and-out raid, the 100 men of Task Force Ranger found themselves in the middle of a hostile and anarchic sector of Mogadishu known as the Bukara Market (and also as "the Black Sea"), engaged in what was, until the recent war in Iraq, the most sustained and deadly firefight in American military annals since Vietnam.

Mark Bowden, a long-time reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, chronicles the harrowing "Battle of the Black Sea" in his bestselling book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War with a fine eye for detail, a crisp and gripping narrative, and without bias toward either the Somalis or the Americans involved in the 18-hour firefight that left 18 American soldiers dead, over 70 wounded, and hundreds of Somali casualties. Despite having had no prior military experience or even any expertise on defense issues, Bowden has written a non-fiction work that joins such works as Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far and Lt. Gen. Hal Moore's We Were Soldiers Once...and Young as a true classic of military history.

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It also gives you an insight into the minds and feelings of those on the receiving end. What desperation drove the Somalis to behave and sacrifice as they did.

I tried putting myself in the position of those on both sides of the event to try to understand what they were going through and work out how I may have reacted. Abject fear both ways.

This is on my very short list of books to read a second time.

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On the afternoon of October 3, 1993, in a desperate attempt to capture two top aides of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, a small force of Rangers and Delta Force commandoes stormed into a house in Aidid's stronghold. However, very quickly things began to go wrong. When two of the Black Hawk helicopters (their pilots specially trained and equipped for night operations) were unexpectedly shot down, the American soldiers quickly found themselves surrounded by armed Somalis who were determined to bring the soldiers to battle and destroy them. As the American commander tried to round up support from Pakistani and Malaysian armored units, the American soldiers fought through the afternoon and through the night. When the fight was finally over, there were 18 Americans dead and 73 wounded, plus some 1,000 Somalis dead or wounded.

In this story, author Mark Bowden does an excellent job of taking the reader right into the firefight. This is not a modern Zulu (a 1964 movie of British soldiers fighting against Zulu warriors during the 19th century); this is not a story of heroes and villains. Instead, the author tells the story from both sides, showing the feelings and motivations of both sides, and showing modern combat with all of its horrors and uncertainties. Indeed, what surprised me the most was the profound contempt that the Delta Force "D-Boys" expressed for their Ranger comrades.

No, this is quite a story, one that has to be read to be understood. If you are interested in modern warfare, then I would say that you must read this book. Indeed, I would go as far as to say that this book will probably be long considered a classic of modern American literature.

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