Mogadishu 30 Years On
I was a freshly minted Infantryman in the fall of 1993. I had graduated from basic training and infantry training in August of that year and already had my eyes on becoming an officer. I had fallen in love with the Army and planned to make serving my country my immediate goal with no predetermined end date. I had bought in.
I grew up in a family that served; two grandfathers, my dad, some uncles and great uncles. Even a great aunt. I spent my teen years at a shooting club that was filled with Veterans, including my dad and one grandfather, along with a number of World War II, Korea, and Viet Nam Veterans. I had heard countless stories from pilots, artillerymen, air crew, and even some grunts. I watched the invasion of Panama in 1989 and Desert Shield/Desert Storm in 1990-91 very intently. I was no dummy. I had plenty of data and had a pretty good idea what I was getting myself into.
At least I thought I did.
On October 5th, 1993 there was news footage all over the place. We didn’t know many of the details, except that Americans had been in a pretty significant fight in a place called Mogadishu, Somalia. Then we saw reports and even some footage of American bodies being drug through the streets. Details emerged slowly, as they did back then. There was no social media and there wasn’t anyone reporting from the scene as it happened. It was clear that Army Rangers and Special Operations were the ones in the fight. The famed Delta Force I had read about as a kid lost some of their highly trained operators, along with some of the Rangers.
It was a gunfight. A real one. This wasn’t smartbombs and tanks like Kuwait and Iraq. And it wasn’t thousands of Paratroopers overwhelming the Panamanians. These guys were fighting, hard, in the streets of Mogadishu. My perspective on what I had signed up to do immediately changed.
I never considered myself prophetic in any sense, but somewhere deep inside me I could feel fights like the one in Somalia weren’t going away. The last two or three times the US had deployed troops, it was in overwhelming numbers, and we had come away victorious in days, if not hours. The world had been put on notice not to go toe to toe with the US military. The fight in Somalia changed that. A militia had put up a good fight and taken tons of casualties for their trouble, but they also dealt a blow to the United States, and it was on international news.
Over the years and throughout my career, the details of 3-4 October 1993 became much clearer. The book, and following movie, “Blackhawk Down” outlined things well. I read the book and watched the movie countless times. I met a number the heroes who were in Somalia and fought the militia in the fall of 1993. Rangers, Delta Operators, and 10th Mountain Division. Some of them became men I consider friends and mentors. To a man, even through all of Afghanistan and Iraq, that time in Mogadishu was something they never forgot. When the majority of the Army was trying to learn from the fight we were in, I would always take time to listen to these men when they spoke about “The Mog”.
In the fall of 2016, my daughter had started at her last high school. It was orientation night and the family was all there getting to know the new school. My son was young at the time and had one of those “Dad, I really need to pee” moments that parents are all familiar with. I pulled him out of the auditorium in search of a bathroom.
In the hallway, there was a small alcove cut out and I could see an oil painting hanging on the wall. I was a painting and a face I recognized immediately. Sergeant First Class Randy Shugart, Delta Force Operator and Medal of Honor Recipient for his actions in Mogadishu was an alumni of my daughter’s new school. He had come from this small, rural, farming community in central Pennsylvania. That feeling came rushing back. I felt angry and upset. My son still needed to go to the bathroom, so I had to break away, but over the next three years of my daughter’s time at Big Spring High School I visited that small memorial a number of times.
It’s been 30 years since the “Blackhawk Down” fight in Somalia. I’ve read and reread the book, along with others associated with those two days, and watched the movie a number of times. It is hard to say that a fight I was never in changed me, but that one did. The heroes of that fight should never be forgotten, even as difficult as that may be with two decades of heroism in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That’s why I kept stopping at Shugart’s memorial. That’s why I keep reading the book. That’s why I keep watching the movie.
It’s not much, but it’s what I can do to not lose sight of those brave men who fought in Mogadishu 30 Years On.