Inside the Deadly 1993 Firefight in Somalia | Ambush in Mogadishu (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

Tonight on Frontline, the real story behind Blackhawk Down. >> You hear the bullets bouncing off of the RPGs would smack it. Bam. Bam. It's >> just crazy. We were getting shot from all over the place. You just hear people saying, "I'm hit. I'm hit." And it just kept going. Rangers with blood on their uniforms. There were bodies everywhere. This is a story of how decisions made at the highest level in Washington became a test of courage on the streets of Somalia. What happened on the streets of Moadishu is heroism by any definition. It's one of the great feats of arms of the United States Army in modern times. What really happened in the ambush in Mogadishu? So that's our pitch.

>> But if AI can't explain itself, who's liable when it's wrong? >> Well, of course, >> a processal interesting thing about that is >> we're in uncharted territory. >> Humans have less and less understanding of what it's actually doing. recognize that, you know, everyone everyone has a different piece of the puzzle. >> I think what Michael's trying to say is >> support provided by the Economist newspaper limited Today, the soldiers of USA will demonstrate just some of the army's special operations capabilities which we employ throughout the world.

Formed before the War of Independence to scout and skirmish in the French and Indian Wars, US Army Rangers were the first to land on D-Day and have been involved in every major conflict before and since. In 1993, the Rangers were deployed in support of a United Nations peacekeeping operation in Somalia on the east coast of Africa. Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, was the most dangerous city in the world. >> 14 armed factions, each led by its own warlord, were fighting to dominate Somalia. Teenage gunmen high on a local narcotic called Cot spread terror in their so-called technicals. Pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns.

There was total anarchy. Mass killing, mass looting. It was awful. The armed groups would overran and had a free range to kill, destroy, and rape whom they want. On August 26th, 1993, a US Army task force flew into Mogadishu. 440 elite troops from Delta Force and the US Rangers. Mogadishu's main airport is on the seafront. Quartered in a now deserted hanger on the perimeter of the main airirstrip, the Rangers could be ready to go within minutes of the order to move out. The hanger echoes and I'd scream out loud, "Get it on." And it just echoed in about one minute. You'd see everybody just putting all their stuff on and I'm I'm taking my weapon, the weapon that I know I can use. Make sure your gun's ready. Put another coat of oil on it if you have to. Get your ammo.

>> Got our ammunition, Lce KOT. >> Each person had their own assigned weapons and some people carried uh explosives, some people carried laws. You know, everybody had their little thing. You know, I check my radio, make sure the batter is good and so forth, check weapons, make sure everything's good to go. >> Right at that point, that's when you lock and load. And you just click that chamber back and you know, you feel that round going in that chamber. Like, wow, I'm ready. You know, you hear the rotary, you smell that fuel. There's this huge sense of urgency anytime a helicopter flies. Uh, it's such a violent machine. It shakes and it screams and you're going someplace and you see these guns hanging off the side and all these men with weapons. A total sense of power being in that helicopter over that city. You know, I don't like to to come across like that, but I'll tell you what, it was like all business.

The Rangers mission was to capture a local warlord named Muhammad Adid. Adid had been the most successful general in the vicious civil war that had torn Somalia apart. His ambition now was to unite the country under his own rule. Adid's authority was absolute and feudal within his main power base in South Moadishu. We were told that there's a lot of clan fighting and the ring leader was a deed. He was doing most of it, you know, cuz he was the main clan leader causing all the disturbances. And we were told if we apprehended him, then everything would subside and everything would be much better. October 3rd, 1993 was a Sunday. 17 helicopters take off from their base at the airport. This raid will take the Rangers into the heart of Adid's territory. According to an intelligence tip, Adid is meeting with 20 of his top lieutenants next door to the Olympic Hotel. As they fly to the target, military cameras record the action.

115 men leave on an operation planned to last 90 minutes, but they will not return for 17 hours. >> We were coming into the objective. We were usually pretty low and flying fast. >> After the rotor wash from the helicopter kicked up so much sand that there was zero visibility, you lose a lot of sight of the ground because of the immense brown outer. The dust and trash is kicked up. You couldn't see a foot outside the bird, but the pilots were still navigating. Put us right in the middle of the block. >> And Sergeant Watson is hearing him talking into the I'm looking at him talking into the radio and and he he's trying to tell us that they spotted men with heavy weapons going into the building directly across from the target building. We heard a loud explosion and the the whole helicopter shook and the two door gunners just started screaming, "Go, go, go. We're taking fire. Get out of the bird. They they kick the ropes and then guys start going down the ropes.

>> Yeah, it was fast. You get on the rope and you're just down in a heartbeat. >> We hit the ground. Um, everybody goes to their respective positions around the objective building and we pretty much just keep a perimeter. Nobody in, nobody out. >> You had fire coming from every direction basically from every intersection. It wasn't well aimed marksmanship. It was stick that AK-47 out around the wall. Let it go and come back, you know, and you're just and and bullets do make a very distinct sound when they go by your head. And I can just remember Sergeant Eversman telling me, you know, more find some cover more, you know, cuz I was out in the open. And it it still didn't register, you know, what was going on until people started getting hit. Uh Scott Gallentine. I remember he was just shooting and one minute I just for some reason I looked and saw him and at that moment I just saw red just like explosion just like a tomato just popped and I'm thinking, "Oh my god, he just got hit." As he's running, you can see his thumb like flipping back and forth all the way up his arm because it was almost severed. And so it was still attached but just by a small portion. So you could see it just flopping as he ran across the road. 1542 hours after roping down from their helicopters, the Rangers seal off all the streets around the Olympic Hotel. A convoy of 12 trucks arrives to drive them and any prisoners

back to base. Delta special forces lead 20 of ID's lieutenants out of the target building. Adid himself is not among them. smallies were brought out um single file kind of hurried and rushed to the trucks. >> And I just remembered thinking, uh, all right, that was quick and we're done. Let's go home. >> And then all of a sudden, this guy that was out in front of me started pointing saying one of the birds went down. One of the one of the choppers went down. >> The Blackhawk Super 61 was flying overhead giving cover and fire. And that's when I noticed that the RPG or saw the RPG hit him in the tail boom. >> It's like it never came out of the turn. It just continued to go go and go and it was like slow motion. I just remember that bird just spinning out of control. >> So since I had the radio, I called, you know, let everybody know. I go, "Be advised. We have a bird down." We got a bird down.

>> We got black on the ground. >> We got a black cross. We got black on the contract. >> Seeing that get shot down, it was like, wait a minute, you know, this isn't it's not supposed to work like this. You know, we're Americans. I mean, you know, we're the ones dictating the game here. >> The next morning, Somali celebrated the downing of not one but two American helicopters. 18 Americans were dead. More than 80 were wounded. >> One was a prisoner. US troops had come to help feed a starving Somalia. Now Somali's dragged an American soldier's body through the streets. When the American people tuned in through their medium and they saw these poor starving kids and they saw GIS throwing bags of wheat off the back of C130s and they sort of tune back out again.

The next time they tune into Somalia, they are seeing the dead bodies of our soldiers being dragged down the street and they ask themselves, "What happened here? What's wrong with this picture?" >> The story of what happened that brutal Sunday began one year earlier when the civil war in Somalia led to famine on a biblical scale. I was overwhelmed. I'd never seen anything like it. There were bodies, people who had died of starvation. There were people with gunshot wounds. There were young children, women just lying waiting to die, really emaciated. There would be mounds of dead bodies waiting to be buried. We were doing three or 400 a day. I remember one child coming sobbing and crying, pleading with us not to let her grandmother die because the grandmother was the only surviving member of her family.

Every American has seen the shocking images from Somalia. The scope of suffering there is hard to imagine. Only the United States has the global reach to place a large security force on the ground in such a distant place quickly and efficiently and thus save thousands of innocents from death. The Marines hit the beach. Operation Restore Hope was the last harrah for George Bush, who had only 6 weeks left in office. In a show of force, President Bush ordered 25,000 troops into Somalia. >> Can you tell me what it was like coming in today? >> A little bit scared, sir. >> Describe what was happening when you were coming in and how you feel now about being in Somalia. >> I feel great being in Somalia. I'm trying to help the people, sir. >> What was important to us and what we had learned from previous uh involvement in peacekeeping, humanitarian operations is to make sure that we stayed within the framework of the mission. uh it was limited uh in duration and limited in terms of scope.

We were quite wary about uh confrontations. Uh we'd seen what happened in Lebanon when you confronted someone directly. You became inadvertently a party to a civil war. Therefore, you became their enemy. And even though they might appear to be primitive and not have sophisticated weapons, they could do you a lot of damage. And we wanted to avoid that sort of problem. You have to be very very scrupulous. uh in trying to uh balance out everything you were doing. >> In the beginning, it was US policy to avoid taking sides in the civil war or picking fights with Somali warlords. The Somali believed the US troops were neutral and welcomed them everywhere. >> The majority of the Somali people um thought that they were going to save they were going to be a saviors. >> I felt they were going to save what was left of Somalia. Food aid had been flooding into Somalia, but getting the food to the starving was difficult and dangerous.

Food convoys needed armed guards. Almost every day, food convoys were being looted. Our warehouse was attacked at one point almost every night. I lost a colleague um he was on his first mission with the Red Cross and they pulled the trigger and blew his head off. >> They could use the food to buy weapons and also the some of the factional leaders could use the food to pay their fighters and so food literally was power. With the injection of food, you irretrievably began to affect the power balance in Somalia. That led to the second phase of the operation in which you could not begin to distribute the food and the relief supplies unless you could also deal with a deteriorating security situation. Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States of America, William Jefferson.

>> In January, the new president was sworn into office. >> The Clinton administration gave virtually no attention publicly to Somalia. the the the president and the widely celebrated statements that is the economy stupid uh meant that in other words it's domestic agenda Somalia was not only on the back burner it was off the spectrum Somalia got caught up in the basic problems uh of the poor relationship between our people in uniform and uh the new Clinton administration >> the Clinton administration was not comfortable with the use of military power and simply hoped it wouldn't have to be used or if it did it would be shared in responsibility with others and that there might be some overall legitimacy through the United Nations or some international command. President Clinton, like President Bush, was anxious to scale down the American military presence in Somalia and let the United Nations take charge.

By March 1993, 21 different nations had sent their contingents to Somalia. And the whole nature of the mission was to change. From Pakistani bagpipers to Italian tank drivers, the new watch word was nation building. General Thomas Montgomery, who commanded the US contingent, soon found that nation building brought the UN into conflict with Adid. I did wanted to control Somalia. He did not want another you he did not want the United Nations uh there and and the the approach that the United Nations took towards nation building was uh to build from the bottom up. Not not working with the warlords and this was threatening stuff for uh ID ID didn't want any part of that. Despite his efforts, life was beginning to look more normal in Moadishia. And if you're a warlord, perhaps uncertain of what your real popularity is, uh, normaly is the enemy.

>> I guess a warlord needs war. Years later, evidence would surface that at this moment, Hadid's forces were getting help from the al-Qaeda terror network led by Osama bin Laden. >> Friends, yes, we are friends. >> In 1993, Bin Laden was living nearby in the Sudan. He and other Islamic extremists were reportedly deeply upset by the US military presence in Somalia and determined to do something about it. 5 years later, based on evidence developed in its investigation of the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Africa, the Justice Department would indict bin Laden and al-Qaeda's military commander Muhammad Afiding support to the Somali fighters. The defendant Aif traveled to Somalia on behalf of al Qaeda to determine how best to cause violence to the United States and the UN military forces stationed there and provided military training and assistance to Somali tribes opposed to the UN presence in Somalia.

Yama bin Laden and his military commander Muhammad Aif are trying. >> The charge that al-Qaeda members were involved in Somalia was confirmed by bin Laden himself in several public statements. >> Describe the situation when your men took on American forces in Somalia. In this 1998 interview, he said, "Our young men went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war." Despite those statements and the US indictments, many observers discount bin Laden's impact on what happened in Moadishu. then >> I think that was a local conflict and I think that uh from all the evidence that I've seen or in fact not seen much more to the point um I think he is simply claiming credit in retrospect for something that he really didn't have very much to do with whatever the truth of bin Laden's involvement in Somalia in the summer of 1993 the increasing pressure on Muhammad Adid was about to explode into violence against the UN forces.

On Saturday, June 5th, the UN commander sent a Pakistani patrol into ID's part of town. ID's radio station, which had been pumping out anti-UN invective, was inside the Pakistani sector. The Pakistanis were to inspect an IDE arms dump inside the same compound as the radio station. >> The whole city blew up at the same time. 12 of the Pakistanis were killed at the radio station and 12 others at the feeding site. Uh this was a particularly bloody planned series of ambushes. It was meant to be a message in my view and unfortunately for I thought that the message was not to the Pakistani government so much as it was to my government. >> The United Nations and United States other governments were worried. There was a feeling that if uh peacekeepers were allowed to be shot down like this, they'd be fair game everywhere. So, one had to respond very forcefully.

>> The next day, Sunday, Mattaline Albbright, America's UN ambassador, helped push through an emergency resolution. The security council ordered that those responsible for the massacre of the Pakistanis must be apprehended. They meant General Ided. Uh General Powell tells people that the first thing he saw about the resolution was when he read about it in the newspaper Monday morning. Uh therefore he the Pentagon was not properly brought into the loop in terms of measuring the consequences of this resolution which declared uh those responsible to be the enemy in in Somalia. >> Neither Mrs. Albbright nor any other member of the Clinton administration was willing to be interviewed about decision-making in Somalia. The UN resolution meant that Muhammad Adid became a wanted man with a price on his head. >> I think that that the resolution to declare Adid a a criminal. First of all, I think it was ridiculous. Second of all, I think uh you were no longer in in peace enforcement or peacekeeping. I mean, you were now in uh uh a counterinsurgency operation or in some form of war.

And so the UN went on the offensive. American gunships blasted ID's radio station and his weapons storage sites. Once the the fighting began, several of us who' been involved during the first phase of the operation felt that this was going the wrong way. Uh and certainly was not going the way in which we tried to push it. So we were quite worried but uh the administration and the United Nations were making its policy and uh that was the way it was. >> The UN peacekeepers had crossed a line. Attacks on Adid had dragged the United Nations into Somalia's civil war. We realized for the first time that they had not come here as a neutral force to rebuild Somalia.

They were following their own aims and taking sides between the waring factions. Adid concentrated his attacks on the Americans. So the US decided to deploy an elite unit capable of locating and seizing the warlord. In August, Task Force Ranger commenced operations over Moadishu. >> In the city, they didn't care for us. And I guess their culture, the biggest way of insulting somebody is showing them the bottom of their shoe. And people would take off their shoe and show it to us. And we always wondered if it if we were they were doing that to us because they didn't like us or they because when we were hanging our legs out so of course we're showing them the bottoms of our shoes. I always thought well maybe they're we're giving the wrong signal out. >> Accurate intelligence was vital if the rangers were to hunt down IDed in the teeming streets of Moadishu.

The code name for our intelligence source, I believe, was Lincoln. >> Basically, what he was going to do was when he was in proximity to a deed, he was going to alert us somehow. >> People were wondering, okay, is he giving us the correct information, you know, or is he, you know, giving us bogus information? We're not really sure. I mean, that's what I was thinking, you know, I wasn't sure. They did not have good intelligence for locating General ID. They never came close to him. The Somali they use for intelligence, we used them. We used the same Somali informers that they used. We knew who they were. We knew where they were. We knew them. Uh, negative, cheetah, but it looks like we're going to have no choice but to go port road given what we've run into on the other apps. >> This video was shot by a team of CIA operatives in Mogadishu. The CIA station chief believed his intelligence was so accurate that he had been the first to urge Washington to send what he called a SWAT team to snatch ID. But in practice, the CIA bureaucracy didn't work so smoothly.

the tactical intelligence that we were developing on uh on an hourly basis over there. Uh we were not able to directly feed it to the the uh particular ranger unit that was conducting its operations over there. And what we were forced to do was transmit all this information back to uh headquarters and then let headquarters determine what would be disseminated and what what would not be disseminated. And sometimes this would take anywhere from 12 to 72 hours. In the midst of the manhunt, the Clinton administration opened a secret initiative to negotiate with ID. Former President Jimmy Carter, who had a previous relationship with Adid volunteered to act as intermediary, but nobody told US commanders in Moadishu. Nothing had ever been communicated to the field. I mean, we had no idea about that. I mean, I wish that if that if that is the case that somebody 3 weeks before that when then whenever they just made that somebody had made that decision back there had uh told uh the military chain of command to cease and desist in the this effort to bring uh uh to justice.

Then on Sunday, October 3rd, at 13:50 hours, the Rangers received a piece of urgent intelligence. >> Suddenly, we have information from reliable sources indicating a big meeting going on in a hotel with all of Adid's advisers and with Adid himself, the prize of prizes. >> That type of information had never been communicated to us before. And it was almost like they were holding this little carrot out in front of us. >> We We bite. We believe it. Uh, and then we send the Rangers into action and we got snooking. >> October 3rd, 1993 was a Sunday, a day off. By now, the Rangers had spent 39 days in Somalia and had launched several unsuccessful raids in their hunt for Adid whom they cnamed Elvis. >> The call came down that, you know, Elvis Elvis has been spotted. You know, another Elvis sighting. And I remember walking out and it was such a nice day.

I mean, it was a classic. I mean, sunny, it was beautiful. We had a nice breeze coming in off the sea and it it spooked me. 50 minutes later, flying low over the target area, the Blackhawk helicopter is shot down by a rocket propelled grenade. 1620 hours. The Blackhawk has crashed in a rat's nest of alleys five blocks from the Olympic Hotel. It is the Rangers code never to abandon a fallen comrade. >> I know that if I go down in combat that these guys are going to bring my body out at all costs, and they know the same. If they go down, I will bring their body out at all costs. You know, all of us will. >> I knew if Smiley's got there first, it was just just going to be ugly. And you didn't want you don't want fellow soldiers to to go through that. It's one thing to die in battle. It's another thing to be defaced and mutilated by savages. I mean, or we get the call that we're going to move, start making way down to the crash site. That's when the fire was probably at its height right there when we started to pick up and move.

>> There's a guy across the street, one of the Delta operators start screaming and he was he was hit in the head. I I just remember seeing Filmore's head just snap back. Bam. >> Somebody snaps the only photograph of the battle. Rangers and Delta operators take cover from increasingly heavy fire. Minutes later, they reach the crash site. >> Well, I ran I round the corner and the first thing I see is the helicopter sort of lying on its side. There's no fire. It's not burning. It just sort of almost it just looks really out of place almost. So now we got people in the immediate area helping out. A Little Bird pilot had even come in and landed. You know, if you can picture landing a helicopter in the middle of an alleyway and the rotors are just barely missing the buildings. The co-pilot had grabbed one of the bodies and put them in the uh back of Little Bird. At the same time, you know, the other pilots got his foot on the pedals and his hands on the collective holding the bird steady on the ground with his hand out the window with MP5 shooting down at the crowd coming at him.

>> Then he takes off with um one soldier in the back, takes him back to the hospital, but the Rangers on the ground are now cut off and surrounded by Somali gunmen. Weeks later, General Adid was to boast that this situation was exactly what he had foreseen and planned for. >> I talked to Adid at at great length about the day of the battle in Moadishu and and the tactics involved. And he made the determination that the helicopters were the vulnerability or the or the center of gravity. And so when they held the meeting, he put uh uh people on the roofs of the houses around the meeting place with machine guns and rocket launchers and they were to concentrate all their fire on the helicopters. He really believed if he shot a helicopter down that would cause him to gather around the helicopters, they could fix them and pimp pin them in one area. >> Late afternoon, the rangers are still pinned down at the crash site. >> I look up in the air and I see the grenade come over the wall and brown, gray, yellow letters. And I just watch it fly through the air. I watch it hit the ground. I see the spoon pop off. and a grenade landed right in front of Klet's head like in like about probably about six eight inches in front of his head.

>> Your average like grenade probably has like a time of about five seconds. I remember yelling as much as I could and I remember looking at Colette thinking this is oh this is bad. This is the probably the last time I'm going to see him in one piece. And that thing went off. Boom. I just remember you know sitting up and and yelling Colette Colette. And there's all this dust and dirt and you know I'm thinking I'm thinking he's he's smoked. >> I started calling people's names. Alex Strauss, you okay? He's like yeah, Nether, are you all right? I'm good. Erica, are you okay? And I yelled for Klet. I was like, Klet Klet. And he was like, yeah, dude. I was like, okay, Klette, you know, you're you're still alive. Um, right here. I'm I'm all right, Sergeant. I mean, it was just that dull like Ben Stein voice, you know? It was just so It was so out of place, you know? I mean, I I was just like screaming, wigging out, and all a sudden I'm freaking And cool.

>> Unfortunately, the way grenades work is they they're on the ground and they blow up and out. And since we were so close, it blew right over us. I mean, nobody was hit. Meanwhile, five blocks away at the Olympic Hotel, the ground convoy is ordered to fight its way to the crash site. >> We started to drive our vehicles and it it was like good for 20 seconds. cuz we're doing about 30 mph turning down that driveway and all of a sudden we turned that first right from the alley adjacent to the target building and we were like the brakes went on and then it just I mean we got ambushed right there on that intersection. Kavako got killed, Breeze got shot to the chest, I was shot in the back, Williamson got shot in the leg. While we were fighting the Americans who had come down in the helicopters, we were told that there were reinforcements coming for the Americans. We then immediately started to build barricades to stop the convoys.

The Somali would put out burning tires with gasoline on them, wrecked hulks of vehicles. That was a perfect sight for an ambush. They they figured we're going to stop and they're just going to have their day with us. >> Our driver just drove right through this huge wall of flame. >> You just feel the flame just just engulfs. You feel that heat and I was praying to God like it wasn't a leak in a gas tank or something that you would just blow up. >> As we would go from block to block to block, you could look down to the the side streets and see a group of of Somali with weapons running to set up an ambush a block ahead of you. You could hear a lot of small arms. Um, then the RPGs started exploding >> and the volume of fire was just so intense that I don't know how any of us made it out alive. I really don't. >> 1640 hours on the far side of town. A second Blackhawk is shot down half a mile away from the first crash site. The ground convoy is ordered to turn around and go to its aid.

The alleyways and streets just became a maze. They were literally it was completely confusing. The colonel was trying to talk with the helicopters to find out which way he needed to go. Roger. >> There was a Ford observer up on the top of a helicopter that was telling us to go right and go left and and we started getting lost. >> And I jumped out and I went running to the front of the convoy to ask, you know, you know, what are we doing? And I got about halfway up to the front of the convoy and uh Sergeant Teler was uh carrying Joyce's body. Joyce had been hit. I could tell that he didn't get shot in the leg or the arm or something. His body just dropped like a rock. He had been shot in the back and I ran over and I helped him pick Joyce up and we loaded him on the uh cargo Humvey and at that point he was already you know extremely pale. Um eyes rolled back in his head just you know to me he looked dead already. I just remember the stretcher getting getting above and and and it it lift and it just came down crashing down on me. I almost broke my leg, but I didn't care. And at that point, um it was uh it was Serge and Joyce. And what did you see? I didn't

I didn't see what was going on. I just heard uh Sarman say, "Uh, he's going into shock. We got to get him out of here." In the alley when Joyce got killed, that's where I saw the first child with a a weapon. I mean, he couldn't have been 4 foot five, 4 foot six. I would guess they were no older than 12. Very young kids. The weapons almost dwarfed them. And I was surprised, you know, they could handle the recoil of the weapons. >> This guy was firing from the corner of this building and they shot him with a 50 caliber machine gun. The kid and the guy. It seemed to me it was just like a moving target range and you could just, you know, hit the target and watch it fall and hit the target and watch it fall and it wasn't real. It was too easy. I mean, it that's upsets me more than anything else is how easy it was to pull the trigger over and over again.

>> 1740 hours. The ground convoy has now been under continuous fire for almost 2 hours. >> Our vehicle that we're on was like smoking. and three tires were flat. I mean, it's just what we were doing like 10 miles an hour. Wasn't like it was even moving. It was like a Most of the floors of the vehicles were covered with blood just because people who were still alive but were just kind of bleeding. >> You just hear people saying, "I'm hit. I'm hit." And it just kept going. It kept People were saying, "I'm hit." 1800 hours. The bullet riddled ground convoy limps back to the airfield. But 90 rangers are left at the first crash site, cut off and surrounded. Things were starting to look look looking kind of grim because, you know, the convo that we were supposed to get out on initially was just decimated. So, how are we going to get out? This this is where it got really, you know, um scary. And meanwhile, I'm just like shaking my head going, man, we'll be lucky to get out of here. We really will.

>> Our M60 gunner went down. That was Pete Nethery. Uh Ero tried to take over the machine gun and he immediately got shot also from the same location. Um we were starting to pile them up then. >> It's starting to get dark now. And so we're just hanging out still heavy firing. We were trying to get people into a series of rooms that would provide us some protection. Uh and as we would attempt to move wounded through this kind of small hole, uh people would get shot. As soon as you walked into that room, it was just like it was overwhelming. Um and if you've ever heard anybody like they'll talk about the smell of death, I mean that's I imagine that's what it is. It's It's just the blood and the floor like reflected light, just pools of blood. >> It was a long wait, but you felt better inside the house because you had walls around you and you had your buddies next to you, but you still heard the firing going on. You were just wondering when you're going to leave and hopefully soon.

As Little Bird helicopters fly in fresh ammunition and strafe Somali gunmen, the deputy UN commander is making plans to send a relief column to the crash site and transport the Rangers to a sports stadium where helicopters can land and evacuate them. 23 23 hours 70 vehicles including Pakistani tanks and Malaysian armored personnel carriers move out at last. The radio operator was relatively close to me. So I could hear his radio >> and I could I could hear the convoys coming out. Hey, we're coming to get you. We're coming to get you. And then I hear him. The road's blocked. We can't come in. We got to turn around. And this is probably I'm thinking 3:30 or so in the morning. >> You could hear them coming. You can hear them leaving. You could hear them coming in again. You could hear them leaving. It's like, well, when are they actually going to make it here? We got casualties in here that need more medical attention than are getting right now. We're running low on IVs. You know, we need to get out of here.

>> 0550 hours, the first Malaysian armored personnel carrier pulls up outside the house. >> The APC's got there. They pulled up to the front side and they just started shuttleing the wounded into the APC. As many as they could get in there. >> I remember being in the back room. It was pretty dark in there. I remember walking out to get ready to go and it was daylight. >> The uh 30 or so of us, I guess, that weren't wounded. There was no room for so now we're going to we're going to leave out on foot. >> That's I got a sinking feeling there. I was just like, "This is going to be worse than yesterday cuz they know exactly where we're at. They know exactly where we want to go." We got all lined up uh inside our little courtyard there and just went out into the street and essentially was this long column of people running out on either side of the road beside these uh Malaysian armored cars. When one of those things was in the alleyway, it sound like somebody picked up a handful of rocks, you know, and thrown them and you could just the tank the tink tink tink tink. You hear the bullets bouncing off of it. The RPGs would smack it. Bam. Bam. By a block into it, the vehicles are already gone and we're basically by ourselves running out.

It >> It's like, how in the hell has it come to the point where we have got to run out of this city on our own? >> We were just guns ablazing on the way out, just a foot race out. And um on the way back to the objective building, that's when Randy got hit. It felt like somebody had walked up behind me and just hit me with a ball bat in the shoulder, you know, just I mean, it slung me forward and it it was just violent. I was like, I'm sitting here waiting to start gurgling. You know, here I am in a street of a city, some foreign country, been shot out all night. I'm bleeding now and I can't even get on a damn APC, you And I'm just laying back here going, "God, something's got to give. Something has got to give." >> And when we finally got to where they said someone was going to pick us up, we get there and there's about two or three Humvees from the 10th Mountain and a Pakistani tank. This thing's made for like eight people and we are shoving 15 guys in there.

And there's still gunfire going off. You know, people are shooting at us from windows and everything. And I look across the street and there's this old Somalian guy. must have been like six foot six foot or or more with a robe on just walking and he's got a kid slung over his shoulders. Maybe it was his grandson or something dead just walking through the street oblivious to everything. There was a couple bodies on the ground next to him just stepping over him like he had walked around the city and found his son who died in this or something. And I thought about it. I said, you know, there's something I'll always remember. And it and that was when I thought about Jesus, man. How many casualties did did we inflict on their side? >> The Red Cross would later estimate Somali casualties at a thousand. The Somali themselves say 350 of them were killed. After a short drive through the dangerous streets of Moadishu, the armored car arrives at the stadium 17 hours after the Rangers had roped into South Mogadishu.

Now it was time for the Rangers to count their own dead and wounded. >> I had no idea that all those guys were killed. I mean, I'd heard one casualty, the pilot, and that was it. Yeah, people were wounded, but I'm thinking everybody made it out. Okay. And then that just sunk. I couldn't believe it. I I couldn't believe that they were gone. I mean, both Pillow and Joyce, I mean, we we did everything together and um they weren't there anymore, but I mean, I just couldn't I mean, he told me I just couldn't believe it. I just I just wanted to go back home. I just wanted to go home. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to do anything anymore. My fellow Americans, let me express my thanks and my gratitude and my profound sympathy to the families of the young Americans who were killed in Somalia.

My message to you is your country is grateful and so is the rest of the world and so are the vast majority of the Somali people. Our mission from this day forward is to increase our strength, do our job, bring our soldiers out, and bring them home. Thank you, and God bless America. >> Within days, President Clinton made the decision to cut his losses. American troops were to be withdrawn from Somalia. The hunt for ID was abandoned, and US representatives were sent to resume negotiations with the warlord. when General Jenny and I were sent to Somalia and uh we told them I told them specifically uh how brave they'd been uh how unfortunate it was that they'd been put in an impossible situation. They've been put out there because of faulty policy decisions. And I said, "This is very unfortunate. It's a real tragedy. You all have behaved heroically, but you were pawns in a sense uh something much bigger that was beyond your control." After Somalia, Washington was even more reluctant to be drawn into foreign conflicts. The United States held back in Bosnia and stood aside while a million people were massacred in Rwanda.

The the ghosts of Somalia continued to haunt US policy. Our our lack of response in Rwanda was a fear of getting involved in something like a Somalia all over again. The quick departure of the Americans after the shootout in Mugadishu also had a big impact on Islamic extremists. In recent years, Osama bin Laden has commented repeatedly on the fragility of US troops. Our young men, he said, realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army. And so he fled. I think one of the things that it proves is the fact that enemies can learn lessons. And anyone that has watched the United States in its approach to war, particularly over the last 10 years, has learned that if you can defeat the technology, if you can defeat the American will, then you have a chance.

The great tragedy of Somalia is that it was, given what those Rangers did, one of the great feats of arms in American military history. guys that laid down their lives willingly, 82 more that were wounded. That is a classic definition of American courage. Unfortunately, because we withdrew those troops under pressure, the lesson that was given to the rest of the world was the United States can be had. All you need to do is to shed their blood. And if you do that, they'll cut and run. Many of the families of the soldiers who died were left wondering if their son's lives had been wasted. >> My first concern was did he suffer.

And I found out from reports that came back that apparently he was killed instantly. He wasn't one of the ones that was dragged through the streets. He had told me at one time that if he was ever killed in combat, he wanted to be buried in Arlington. I said, "Well, Casey, you never want to see combat, you know, but he did. >> We were back in the States. We were back in Fort Benning and it was when we when we received our awards. Um, I remember that feeling of um last roll call. What I remember vividly is they said um Sergeant Joyce. Silence. It was not a whisper, not a sound coming out of anybody. And it was silent. And they said, "Sergeant James Joyce for the second time.

Nothing. No answer." And they said, "Sergeant James C. Joyce." and uh they said he's no longer with us. He's killed in action October 3rd, 1993. And the taps were played. I know the Joyices. I love Casey and I've heard his dad say, you know, did my son die in vain? And I I can't accept that he did. No. Absolutely not. Do we really have to have World War II? Do we really have to have Vietnam? Do we really have to have Somalia? I don't think you really have to have any of that. But it happens in this world. He died for what I find important, which is sense of duty. And the man next to you, maybe Todd Blackburn wouldn't be here today if Casey hadn't been there. Maybe that was his purpose. Maybe that was his reason.

But if you say that anybody died over there in vain, you're invalidating everything that we fight for and everything that we believe in. for a VHS. copy of Ambush and Mogadishu, please call PBS home video at 1 800 play PBS. Heat.

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