There are woefully few (Stephen Ambrose’s work on World War II may come close) nonfiction books about combat with which to compare it. What´s not to say that this provided a hotbed for anti-Western sentiments that the radical islamist have fed on since? A mission, that was believed to be over in a couple hours turned into a long and bloody night battle right in the middle of an urban market teeming with thousands of armed Somalis and civilians. There is a chapter or two setting the geopolitical context, and perhaps another chapter introducing us to all the men we will be following in battle.

Public spaces displayed the hulking stone platforms that once held statuary from the heroic old days of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, the national memory stripped bare not out of revolutionary fervor, but to sell the bronze and copper for scrap. Although the Somalis died by the thousands in this battle, it was not viewed as a victory for American forces. I remember when this actually happened, but being a freshman in high school, I had bigger things going on.It added that Bowden rapidly shifts viewpoints after US ground forces enter the city, trying to extract a couple of Aidid leaders and then, when things go wrong, rescue US forces. US soldiers are assigned to arrest and bring to justice a Somali warlord who has been stealing food shipped by the United Nations to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths by starvation. In 1993, the world watched as cable news endlessly replayed the bodies of Americans being hauled through the streets by jubilant Somalis.

This after-action report is an admirable effort to record the skill and heroism ‘of ninety-nine American soldiers trapped in an ancient African city and fighting for their lives. I had an Army friend who was there in Mogadishu at the time and said that the book was good journalism whereas the film was ridiculous. The feeling was, after six weeks of diddling around they were finally going in to kick some serious Somali ass.The Humvees were filled with Rangers, Delta operators, and four members of SEAL (Sea, Air, Land) Team Six, part of the navy’s special forces branch. One sad note: He was killed when the Medivac helicopter taking him to his cancer checkup in Baghdad was shot down in November 2003.

Stebbins who's foot has a golf ball size piece of metal in it is given a pain killer and a gun to protect out the window.On page after page, in vignette after vignette, he reminds us that war is about breaking things and killing people. Black Hawk helicopters were flown by the elite pilots of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, also known as the Night Stalkers. This has obvious lessons for the Balkans, where ethnic hatred has been a participation sport for centuries,and many other areas in which ancient tensions bubble beneath the surface. In Black Hawk Down, author Mark Bowden presents a riveting, minute-by-minute account of the battle, told from the perspective of the soldiers who fought for their lives in the narrow, dusty streets.

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.S. to pick that particular fight, and of their misjudgement of conflict in failed states in general: “In the end, the Battle of the Black Sea is another lesson in the limits of what force can accomplish. As the D-boys did their work and the Rangers kept the curious at bay, the ground convoy of trucks and Humvees would roll in through the city, right up to the target house. In the afterword, Bowden speaks movingly of his intent to honor the men he met, and the families of those men who died. And in my reading of the book, the people in charge of the operation were paralysed by the unforeseen events and overwhelming information. The men had girded themselves with extra ammo, stuffing magazines and grenades into every available pocket and pouch of their load-bearing harnesses, leaving behind canteens, bayonets, night-vision goggles, and any other gear they felt would be deadweight on a fast daylight raid.