Black Hawk Down

“Phipps?”

The soldier stirred. When he opened his eyes there was red where the whites normally were.

“You're gonna be okay,” Steele said.

Phipps reached up and grabbed hold of the captain's arm. “Sir, I'll be okay in a couple of days. Don't go back out without me.”

Steele nodded and fled the room.

Private David Floyd was struck by how empty the hangar looked. He dragged himself back to his cot and stripped off his gear. But instead of feeling relieved, he felt this great weight and soreness descend. Around him, guys were talking and talking and talking. It was like they were trying to work the whole thing out. They accounted for all of their number. For every one of the killed or scores of injured there was a story to be told about how and when and where and why. Sometimes the stories differed. One thought Joyce was still alive for a time in the back of the truck while another insisted he was killed almost instantly. Somebody thought it was Diemer who had pulled Joyce from the line of fire, but another was sure it was Telscher. Stebbins had gone down four times. No, somebody argued, it was only three. They told of the long futile struggle to keep Jamie Smith alive. They wept openly.

Nelson, one of the last to return to the hangar, found Sergeant Eversmann in tears.

“What's wrong?” Nelson asked. Then, knowing his friend Casey Joyce had been on Eversmann's chalk, he asked, “Where's Joyce?”

Eversmann looked at him with surprise, and then got too choked up to speak. Nelson ran into the hangar and sought out Lieutenant Perino, who gave him the bad news. He also told him Pilla, his partner in the hangar skits, was dead. Nelson broke down.

Joyce's death particularly grieved him. He owed the man an apology. Fed up with the order to stand guard duty in full battle dress a few days earlier, Nelson had told the men on his team it was okay to ignore it. He told them it was okay to wear their body armor and helmet over shorts and T-shirts. If it caused trouble, he said, he'd take the heat. He hadn't really thought that through, however, because when the trouble came it landed not on him but on Joyce, who was nominally his superior. Joyce had been sternly upbraided for not being able to control his men.

Nelson had pulled guard duty early Sunday morning, between three and seven, and Joyce had roused himself to come out to talk. They had been together ever since basic training, and they had a special, almost family connection.

They had actually met each other years before joining the army. It was just a wild coincidence. Nelson's stepbrother had roomed with Joyce's older brother in an apartment in Atlanta, and they had met each other there once or twice as kids. Nelson admired Joyce. He had never seen the man say or do anything unseemly. Just about everybody had tied one on at a local bar or secretly smoked dope or bad-mouthed somebody or tried to get away with something against the rules. Not Casey Joyce. As far as Nelson was concerned, Joyce was the most thoroughly decent guy he'd ever met, genuine to the core. Joyce had gotten his sergeant stripes first, but they both knew Nelson would be getting his soon. It was awkward for Joyce to be Nelson's superior. They were friends. They had made plans with Pilla and a few of the other guys to drive out to Austin and stay with Joyce's sister for a few days when they got back. Nelson felt bad about getting his friend in trouble. Just over twenty-four hours ago they had sat together behind a machine gun surrounded by sandbags under a nearly full moon. The guard post was up on a Conex that had been stacked on another to create a nice high vantage point. It was quiet. The low rooflines of Mogadishu spread before them rolling uphill to the north. In the distance they could hear the steady banging of small generators that kept, here and there, a lightbulb or two burning. Otherwise the city was draped in pale blue moonlight.

“Look, I'm as tired of this chain-of-command shit as you are,” Joyce had told Nelson. “Just do me a favor. Whatever happens, don't do anything that gets First Sergeant Harris and Staff Sergeant Eversmann on my back. Let's do what we need to do so we can get out of here. Don't let this come between you and me.”

Joyce hadn't bitched at him, which he had every right to do and which most guys would have. He was making a plea, man to man, friend to friend. The right thing for Nelson to do was to apologize, and the words were right there on the tip of his tongue, but Nelson didn't say them. He was still angry about the rule, which he thought was pointless and stupid, and he wouldn't swallow his pride. Not even for his friend. The apology had still been there on the tip of his tongue the previous afternoon when he'd helped Joyce pull on his gear. Joyce was squad leader and had to be the first one out to the helicopter, so Nelson always helped him.

He'd been close to saying the apology, but instead just watched his friend walk off. Now he would never have the chance.

Nelson was asked to inventory his friend's gear. He found Joyce's Kevlar vest, the one he had helped him put on the day before. It had a hole in the upper back right at the center. He rooted through the vest pockets-a lot of guys stuffed pictures, love letters, and things in the pockets. In the front of Joyce's vest he found the bullet. It must have passed right through his friend's body and been caught up in the Kevlar in front. He put it in a tin can. In Pilla's belongings he found a bag of the little explosives his friend used to insert in people's cigarettes.

Sergeant Watson walked over to the morgue to see Smith one last time. He unzipped the body bag and gazed at his friend's pinched, pale lifeless face. Then he leaned over and kissed his forehead.

-15-

America awakened Monday morning (it was already late afternoon in Mogadishu) to news reports of an ugly fight in Somalia, a place most people had to consult an atlas to find. It wasn't the biggest news. Russian president Boris Yeltsin was fending off a coup d'etat. Washington was preoccupied with developments in Moscow.

Sandwiched in between the dramatic reports from Russia, however, came increasingly distressing news from Somalia. At least five soldiers had been killed and “several” wounded, the early reports said. Even those numbers indicated the worst single day in Mogadishu since the United States had committed troops ten months before. Then, later in the day, came the grotesque images of dead American soldiers being dragged through the city's busy streets by angry crowds.

President Clinton was in a hotel room in San Francisco when he saw the pictures. He had been informed earlier in the day that there had been a successful raid in Mogadishu, but that the Rangers had gotten in a scrape. The TV images horrified and angered him, according to an account in Elizabeth Drew's book On the Edge.

“How could this happen?” he demanded.

The trickle of news was a peculiarly modern form of torture at the homes of the men serving in Somalia. Stephanie Shughart, the wife of Delta Sergeant Randy Shughart, had gotten a phone call at ten o'clock Sunday night. She was home alone. She and Randy had no children. One of the other Fort Bragg wives left her with a chillingly imprecise bit of bad news.

“One of the guys has been killed,” she said.

One of the guys.

Stephanie had talked on the phone with Randy on Friday night. As usual, he'd said nothing about what was going on, just that it was hot, he was getting enough to eat, and he was getting a great tan. He told her he loved her. He was such a gentle man. It had always seemed so incongruous to her how he made a living. He didn't say anything about his work when they first met. Some of Stephanie's better-connected friends had whispered to her that Randy was “an operator.” She'd figured he worked on the phones.

One of the guys.

In a bedroom in Tennessee, just across the state line from the Night Stalkers' base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Becky Yacone sat with Willi Frank. Both their husbands, Jim Yacone and Ray Frank, were Black Hawk pilots, and they knew two helicopters had gone down over Mogadishu. Willi had been awakened at six AM. by a chaplain and commander from the base. She knew right away why the men were at her door. She'd been through exactly the same thing three years before, when Ray's chopper had crashed on the training mission. She'd met Ray on her birthday twenty-two years earlier, when she was managing a bar in Newport News. Her employees had surprised her with a cake, and everybody ate it except Ray. When she'd asked him why, he'd told her, like it was something everybody in the world with any sense would know, “You don't eat cake when you're drinking beer.” They'd gotten married in Las Vegas that same year.

“Ray is missing in action,” the men said.

“How long will it be before we know?” she asked.

They were startled by the question.

“Last time it only took two hours,” Willi explained.

This time it would take longer. Her support unit showed up, wives of two other men in the unit, and then Becky came over. Becky was a Black Hawk pilot herself. She'd met her husband when they were classmates at West Point. She had no news about Jim yet. They all agreed that if anybody could get out of a mess like this alive, downed in the stress of a hostile African city, it was their husbands.

Then the pictures came on the TV. The first of them came on just after noon. They were images of dead Americans. The pictures were distant and shot from such odd angles it was impossible to tell who the dead men were.

“That one has dirty fingernails,” said one of the women. “He must be a crew chief.”

There was some discussion about that the bodies were in the dirt.

“They're all dirty,” said another woman.

Nobody at Willi's thought to tape the show and rerun it. Maybe it was too ghoulish. Besides, they didn't need to tape it. CNN kept showing the same pictures every half hour. At these short intervals conversation would cease and the women would all crowd anxiously around the screen.

“That's Ray,” said Willi Something about the way the body was lying, the turn of the shoulders and arms...

“No, he's too small,” said Becky. They knew Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon were missing, and they were both much shorter than Ray.

“No,” said Willi. “I just know that's Ray.”

She said she was, but she wasn't sure. She had a bad feeling, but she wasn't giving up hope.

At the hangar in Mogadishu, the men watched like everybody else the images of their dead comrades being put on display by the jeering Somali crowds. The men who filled the TV room at the hangar saw it replayed again and again. No one said a word. Some of the men turned and left the room. Captains Jim Yacone and Scott Miller sat together before the screen trying to figure out if the body they were looking at was Randy Shughart's or Ray Frank's. Both men had the same build and gray hair. Ray's had turned gray almost overnight. He had contracted a rare disorder in his early thirties and had become allergic to the pigment of his own hair. It had all fallen out and grown back snowy white. Ray also had scars on his torso from the extensive surgery he'd undergone after the Black Hawk crash in training. The D-boys were convinced the body was Randy's. It was galling to watch the Skinnies strutting around the bodies, poking at them with rifles, dragging them. What kind of animals...?

The pilots wanted to get up over those crowds and mow them down, just mow them all down. Fuck the whole lot of them. Then land and recover the bodies. These were American soldiers. Their brothers.

Garrison and Montgomery said no. There were big crowds around those bodies. it would be a massacre.

Mace, Sergeant Macejunas, went back out into the city. The blond operator had gone out into the fight three times the day and night before. Leading the force on foot to Durant's crash site when the vehicles could go no farther was enough to make his courage legendary. Now he was going out alone, dressed as a civilian, a journalist. The D-boys had arranged with one of the sympathetic local NGOs for help finding the six men still missing from the second crash site, Durant, Frank, Field, Cleveland, Shughart, and Gordon. Mace was going along.

To a man, the task force dreaded the prospect of going back into the city, but they were prepared to do it, with as much weaponry, armor, and ammo as they could carry. Here was Mace heading back out without any of that. He was going to find his brothers, alive or dead. The Rangers who saw him were in awe of the man's courage and cool.

-16-

Mike Durant's captors asked if he would make a videotape.

“No,” said Durant.

He was surprised they'd asked. If they wanted to make a video, they were going to anyway. But, since they'd asked....

Durant had been trained how to handle himself in captivity. How to avoid being helpful without being confrontational. The pilot knew if he got out of this alive, his actions would be scrutinized. It was safer not to be in that position, speaking to the world from captivity.

They showed up with a camera crew that night anyway. It had been more than twenty-four hours since he crashed and was carried off in an angry swarm of Somalis. He was hungry, thirsty, and still terrified. He had a compound fracture of his right leg, a crushed vertebra, and bullet and shrapnel wounds in his shoulder and thigh. His face was bloody and swollen from where he had been clubbed in the face with the butt of a rifle. His dark hair, caked with sweat and dirt and blood, stuck straight up on end like some cartoon depiction of fright.

There were about ten young men in the crew. They set up lights. Only one of the crew spoke to him, a young man with good English. Durant knew the key to getting through something like this was to offer as little pertinent information as possible, to be cagey, not confrontational. There was a code of conduct spelling out what he could say and what he couldn't say, and Durant was determined to abide by it. His interrogators were not skillful. Men had been questioning him on and off all day, trying to get him to tell them more about who he was and what his unit was trying to do in Somalia. When the camera was turned on, the interviewer began pressing him on the same points. The Somalis considered all the Americans with the task force to be Rangers.

“No, I'm not a Ranger,” Durant told him. He explained he was a pilot.

“You kill people innocent,” the interviewer insisted.

“Innocent people being killed is not good,” Durant said.

That was the best they got out of him. Those were the words people all over the world would be seeing on their TV the next day. Somalia had been a back-burner news item in the weeks before this battle. None of the major American newspapers or networks even had a correspondent in Mogadishu. Now this east African coastal city was front and center. The coup d'etat fizzled in Moscow and the images of the Somali crowds humiliating American bodies had drawn the attention of the world, and the outrage of America. Durant's swollen, bloody face, with that wild, frightened look in his eye, lifted off the videotape, would soon be in newspapers and on the covers of newsmagazines worldwide. It was an image of American helplessness. More than one American asked the same question President Clinton had asked, how could this have happened? Didn't we go to Somalia to feed starving people?

Willi Frank got down on her hands and knees and peered closely at the TV. She was trying to see around the corners of the screen. She was sure, if they had Durant, they must have other members of the crew. They probably had Ray, too.

He was probably sitting right next to Mike, just off the frame!

Durant felt okay about the interview. After the camera crew left, a doctor came. He was kind, and he spoke English well. He told Durant he had been trained at the University of Southern California. He apologized for the limited supplies he had with him, just some aspirin, some antiseptic solution, and some gauze. He used forceps and gauze and the solution to gently probe Durant's leg wound, where the broken femur poked through the skin, and he cleaned off the end of the bone and the tissue around it.

It was sharply painful, but the pilot was grateful. He knew enough about wounds to know that a femur infection was relatively common and deadly, even with simple fractures. His was compound, and he had been lying on a dirty floor all night and day. Durant asked about his crew and the D-boys, but the doctor said he knew nothing.

When the doctor left, the pilot was moved from the room where he had awakened that morning to the sounds of birds and children. He was pushed to the floor in the back of a car, and a blanket was placed over him. It was terribly painful. Then two men got in the car and sat on him. His leg was moving all over the place. It had swelled badly, and the slightest move was torture.

They brought him to a little apartment and left him in the care of a gangly, nearsighted man he would come to know well over the next ten days. It was Abdullahi Hassan, a man they called “Firimbi,” the propaganda minister for clan leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

The pilot didn't know it, but the warlord had paid his ransom.

Now, to get Durant back, America would have to negotiate with Aidid.

-17-

Garrison and the task force were willing, but Washington had lost its stomach for the fight.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Somalia Robert Oakley had been attending a party at the Syrian embassy in Washington on Tuesday, October 5, when he got a phone call from the White House. It was Anthony Lake, national security adviser to President Clinton.

“I need to talk to you first thing in the morning,” Lake said.

“Why, Tony?” Oakley said. “I've been home for six months.”

Oakley, a gaunt, plainspoken intellectual with a distinguished career in diplomacy, had been President George Bush's top civilian in Mogadishu during the humanitarian mission that had begun the previous December. With the famine over and a new administration in Washington, Oakley had departed the city in March 1993, at about the same time his old friend Admiral Jonathan Howe had taken over the top UN job in Somalia.

Since his return, Oakley had watched, with dismay the course of events in Somalia. He had frequent conversations with former colleagues in the State Department, but despite his long experience there, no top officials in the administration had consulted with him. He wasn't offended, but he was concerned about prospects for the government-building process he'd help set in motion. He'd watched with growing concern as events and UN resolutions pushed Aidid out of the peace process, and felt the idea of tracking the clan leader down like an outlaw was bound to fail. But no one had asked his opinion.

“Can you come to breakfast tomorrow at seven-thirty?” Lake asked.

Now they were in trouble. The day after the October 3 battle, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and Secretary of State Warren Christopher had been grilled by angry members of Congress. How had this happened? Why were American soldiers dying in far-off Somalia when the humanitarian mission there had supposedly ended mouths before? As many as five hundred Somalis had been killed and over a thousand injured. Durant was still a captive. The public was outraged, and Congress was demanding withdrawal.

Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democratic chairman of the Appropriations Committee, called for an immediate end “to these cops-and-robbers operations.”

“Clinton's got to bring them home,” said Senator John McCain, a Republican member of the Armed Services Committee and former prisoner of war in Vietnam.

There were perceived intelligence failures up and down the line. In Mogadishu, the escalating violence between the Habr Gidr and UN forces had been perceived as individual incidents, not the probing actions of a determined enemy force. In Washington, officials at the Pentagon, White House, and Congress were stunned by the size, scope, and Ferocity of Aidid's counterattack on October 3. In retrospect, Aspin's inaction on General Montgomery's September request for tanks and Bradley armored vehicles seemed indicative of an administration that had fallen asleep on its watch-something Republican legislators could use to batter the Clinton administration.

The battle was also a blow to an administration already unpopular with the military establishment. It made Clinton look uninterested in the welfare of America's soldiers. The president had been getting briefed on Task Force Ranger's missions in advance. This one had been mounted so quickly he had not been informed. Clinton complained bitterly to Lake. He felt he had been blindsided, and he was angry. He wanted answers to a broad range of questions from policy issues to military tactics.

At the breakfast table in the East Wing on Wednesday were Lake and his deputy. Samuel R. Berger, and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine K. Albright. They talked about what had happened informally, and then walked Oakley into the Oval Office, where they joined the president, the vice president, Christopher, Aspin, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and several other advisers.

The meeting lasted six hours. The thrust of the discussion was: What do we do now? Staying in Mogadishu to pursue Aidid was out of the question, even though Admiral Howe and General Garrison were eager to do so. They believed Aidid had been struck a mortal blow and that it wouldn't take much more to finish the job. If the reports from local spies were correct, some of Aidid's strongest clan allies had fled the city fearing the inevitable American counterattack. The clan's arsenals of RPGs were severely depleted. Others were sending peace feelers, offering to dump Aidid to ward off more bloodshed. But it was clear listening to the discussion that morning in the White House that America had no intention of initiating any further military action in Somalia.

America was pulling out. The meeting ended with a decision to reinforce Task Force Ranger, make a show of Military resolve, but call off any further efforts to apprehend Aidid or his top aides. After enough tanks, men, planes, and ships poured into Mogadishu to level the city, the forces were to simply stay put for a while. Renewed efforts would be made to negotiate a stable Somali government that would include Aidid, but the United States would make a dignified withdrawal by March 1994. The Somali warlord didn't know it yet, but his clan had scored a major victory. Without U.S. muscle, there was no way the UN could impose a government on Somalia without Aidid's cooperation.

Oakley was dispatched to Mogadishu to deliver this message and to try to secure the release of Durant.

There would be no negotiating with Aidid over Durant. Oakley was instructed to deliver a stern message: The president of the United States wanted the pilot released. Now.

-18-

Firimbi was a big man for a Somali, tall with long arms and big hands. He had a potbelly, and squinted through thick, cloudy black-framed glasses. He was extremely proud of his position in the SNA. Once Aidid had purchased Durant back from the bandits who had kidnapped him, Firimbi was told, “Anything bad that happens to the pilot will also happen to you.”

When Durant arrived that night, Firimbi found him angry, frightened, and in pain. He met the pilot's sullen demeanor with his own earnest hostility. America had just caused a bloodbath in Firimbi's clan, and he held men like this pilot accountable. It was hard not to be angry.

Durant had no idea where he'd been taken. In the drive through the city he had been under a blanket in the backseat. They might have been taking him out to kill him. The men who brought him carried him up steps and along a walkway and set him down in a room.

Firimbi greeted him, but the pilot at first didn't answer.

Durant could speak a little Spanish, and Firimbi, like most educated Somalis, could speak Italian. The languages were similar enough for them to communicate somewhat. After they had been alone together for a time they spoke enough to establish this basis for limited conversation. Durant complained about his wounds. Despite the efforts of the doctor who visited him at the other place, they had become swollen, tender, and infected. Firimbi sullenly helped wash him again and rebandaged them. He passed word along that Durant needed a doctor.

That night, Monday, October 4, Durant and Firimbi heard American helicopters flying overhead, broadcasting haunting calls:

“Mike Durant, we will not leave you.”

“Mike Durant, we are with you always.”

“Do not think we have left you, Mike.”

“What are they saying?” Firimbi asked.

Durant told him that his friends were worried about him, and would be looking for him.

“And we treat you so nicely,” said his captor. “It is a Somali tradition never to hurt a prisoner.”

Durant smiled at him through his battered, swollen face.

-19-

For Jim Smith, the father of Corporal Jamie Smith, the nightmare had begun during a Monday afternoon meeting in the conference room of the bank where he worked in Long Valley, New Jersey. The meeting was interrupted when his boss's wife opened the door and stepped in. She said she was sorry to interrupt, then turned to Smith.

“I just got a call from Carol,” she said. “Call home.”

Obviously, Smith's wife, Carol, had felt this was urgent. They'd been ignoring the office phones during the meeting, so Carol had called the boss's home number, looking for a way to track him down.

Smith called his wife from an adjoining office.

“What's the matter?” he asked.

He will always remember her next words.

“There are two officers here. Jamie has been killed. You have to come home.”

When he opened the door at home, Carol said, “Maybe they're wrong, Jim. Maybe Jamie is just missing.”

But Smith knew. He had been a Ranger captain in Vietnam, and lost a leg in combat. He knew that in a tight unit like the Rangers, death notification wouldn't go out unless they had the body.

“No,” he told his wife quietly, trying to make the words sink in. “If they say he's dead, they know.”

Camera crews began to arrive within hours. When everyone in his immediate family had been given the news, Smith walked out to the front yard to answer questions.

He was repulsed by the attitude of the reporters and the kinds of questions they asked. How did he feel? How did they think he felt? He told them he was proud of his son and deeply saddened. Did he think his son had been properly trained and led? Yes, his son was superbly trained and led. Whom did he blame? What was he supposed to say: The U.S. Army? Somalia? Himself for encouraging his son's interest in the Rangers? God?

Smith told them that he didn't know enough about what had happened yet to blame anybody, that his son was a soldier, and that he died serving his country.

A Mailgram arrived two days later with a stark message signed by a colonel he didn't know. It resonated powerfully with Smith, even though he knew its contents before reading the words. It joined him in a sad ritual as old as war itself, with every person who had ever lost someone beloved in battle:

“THIS CONFIRMS PERSONAL NOTIFICATION MADE TO YOU BY A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE SECRETARY OF THE ARMY, THAT YOUR SON, SPC JAMES E. SMITH, DIED AT MOGADISHU, SOMALIA, ON OCTOBER 3, 1993. ANY QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO YOUR CASUALTY ASSISTANCE OFFICER. PLEASE ACCEPT MY DEEPEST SYMPATHY IN YOUR BEREAVEMENT.”

-20-

Stephanie Shughart got word about her husband, Randy, that same Monday morning. She had been up all night after getting the word that “one of the guys” had been killed.

Anticipating further news, she had called her boss to say she wouldn't be in for work-a family emergency. The families at Bragg braced themselves. At least one family was going to take a hit.

Stephanie's boss knew that Randy was in the army, and he sometimes did dangerous work. She also knew how uncharacteristic it was for Stephanie to stay home from work. She drove straight over to the Shughart's' house.

The two women drank coffee and watched CNN. Stephanie was in a perfect agony of suspense as the first TV reports aired about what had happened in Mogadishu. She and her boss were talking when two silhouettes appeared outside

the door.

Stephanie opened it to two men from her husband's unit.

One was a close friend. This is it. He's dead.

“Randy is missing in action,” he said.

So it was better news than she expected. Stephanie was determined not to despair. Randy would be okay. He was the most competent man alive. Her mental image of Somalia was of a jungle. She pictured her husband in some clearing, signaling for a chopper. When her friend told her that Randy had gone in with Gary Gordon, she felt even better.

They're hiding somewhere. If anybody could come through it alive, it was those two.

News came rapid-fire over the next few days, all of it bad. Families learned of the deaths of Earl Fillmore and Griz Martin. Then there were the horrible images of a dead soldier being dragged through the streets. Then word came that Gary's body had been recovered. Stephanie despaired.

When proof came that Durant was alive and being held captive, her hopes soared. Surely they had Randy, too. They just weren't showing him on camera. She prayed and prayed. First she prayed for Randy to be alive, but as the days went by and her hopes dimmed, she began to pray that he not be someplace suffering, and that if he were dead, that he died quickly. Over the next week she went to several funerals. She sat and grieved with the other wives. Eventually all the missing men except Shughart had been accounted for. All were dead, their bodies horribly mutilated.

Stephanie asked her father to stay with her. Her friends took turns keeping her company. This went on for days. It was hell.

When she saw a car pull into her driveway with several officers and a priest inside, she knew.

'They're here, Dad," she said.

“The Somalis have returned a body, and it's been identified as Randy,” one of the officers said.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “We're sure.”

She was discouraged from viewing Randy's body-and, being a nurse, Stephanie could imagine why better than most. She sent a friend to Dover, Delaware, where the body had been flown. When he came back, she asked, “Could you tell it was him?”

He shook his head sadly. He hadn't been able to tell.

-21-

DeAnna Joyce had been feeling lucky. On Friday night, two nights back, they'd held a lottery over at the lieutenant's house on post at Fort Benning to see when the wives would get to talk to their husbands. They hadn't seen the men for months, ever since they'd left to train at Fort Bliss earlier that summer. Eighteen of the women would get to take phone calls Saturday night, eighteen more Sunday night, and two on Monday. DeAnna had gotten stuck with one of the Mondays, but as she was leaving another of the wives had wanted to switch, so she'd gotten to speak to Casey Saturday night. Then all the calls for Sunday and Monday were canceled.

There had always been that good fortune in Casey's smile. She'd met him at a mall in Texas. DeAnna was working as a saleswoman for a clothing store chain, The Limited, and this guy she knew stopped in to ask her a question about a girl. He'd introduced her to Casey. They must have said all of two words to each other.

“Hey.”

“Howyadoin'?”

Like that. Only, she learned later, on his way out of the store Casey had informed his friend, “I'm going to marry that girl.”

They started dating, and then Casey transferred from the University of Texas to North Texas University in order to attend the same school as DeAnna. He was studying journalism. But he didn't like going to class and wasn't doing that well and told her one day in 1990 that he was going to leave school and join the army. Actually, he asked her. She'd said, “Do what you want” So he'd gone through basic, then airborne school, where he'd gotten this horrible fist-sized tattoo on the back of his right shoulder. It was supposed to be a Rottweiler, but it looked more like a wildcat. It sported an airborne unit maroon beret. Then he decided to push on through the Ranger Indoctrination Program.

Casey's father, a retired lieutenant colonel, had never won a Ranger tab, so it was something Casey was bound and determined to do. It wasn't easy. He and his buddy Dom Pills had both just about decided to quit-Casey called and asked DeAnna if she'd think less of him, and she'd said no-but then Casey and Dom had talked each other into staying. They'd both made it. He returned home a Ranger, making plans to get the maroon beret on his tattoo recolored with the black beret of the Rangers. They were married on May 25, 1991.

DeAnna started crying when she got on the phone with him Saturday night, and couldn't stop. It upset Casey, too. They both just sobbed back and forth how much they loved each other. She was desperate for him to come home.

All the wives were invited over to the lieutenant's house that Sunday, where they learned that the company had been involved in a firefight. All of them, even the cooks. All the women were panicky, but DeAnna was feeling lucky. The more experienced wives explained that for guys who got injured, there would be a phone call. For those who were dead, there would be a knock at the door. DeAnna lay awake that night thinking about that.

There was a knock on the door at 6:30 A.M. DeAnna threw on her robe, and ran down to the door. He's dead. Casey is dead. She opened the door, but instead of finding soldiers there were two neighbor children.

“Our mother's father died last night and we have to leave, and we wanted to know if you'd take care of our dog.”

As DeAnna dressed to go next door, she kicked herself for having even had such a morbid, terrible thought about Casey. How could you even think that? She was next door, getting instructions for minding the dog and consoling her friend, whose father had died in another state, when one of the other neighbors present mentioned that she'd heard eleven Rangers had been killed in Somalia.

When DeAnna got home there was a message on the machine from Larry Joyce, Casey's dad, asking her to call. Larry knew DeAnna would get word first if anything had happened, and he'd phoned her when he'd seen the TV

report. She called him.

“President Clinton has already been on TV expressing condolences to the families,” her father-in-law said. The president had used the expression “unfortunate losses,” and voiced continued, determined support for the mission. DeAnna said she'd heard nothing. They agreed that this was probably good news.

She was about to make another call when there was a new knock on the door.

She started down the stairs again, figuring it was the next-door kids with more dog instructions, only this time it was three men in uniform.

“Are you Dina?” one asked.

“No, I'm not,” she said, and shut the door.

The men pushed the door open gently.

“Are you Mrs. Joyce?”

Sometime in the first week of shock and grief, DeAnna received Casey's effects. With them was a letter he had been writing her just before leaving on the fatal mission. DeAnna knew that the experience in Somalia had shaken Casey, and that in the months he was away he had brooded over minor problems in their relationship.

“I miss you so much,” the letter said, speaking now from beyond the grave. “I've said it probably a thousand times, but I want things to be different, and I know they will be. I love you so much! 1 can't say it stronger. I want you to love me with all your heart. I think you already do, but just in case I want to prove to you that I'm worth it. I'm not going to come home and be a total nerd slush, if you know what I mean, but I'm going to be myself. I'm going to make you into the most important person in my life. I'm not going to lose sight of this ever again. I want you to know that I want to grow old with you. I want you to realize this because I can't do it all by myself. I know most of the problems are me and I want to change. I want to go to church. I want us to be happy. Anyways, I can't say it enough, but I want to start doing things about it. I can't do anything until I get home.... By the time you get this letter I might be on my way home, or real close to it”

-22-

Durant's fear of being executed or tortured eased after several days in captivity. After being at the center of that enraged mob on the day he crashed, he mostly feared being discovered by the Somali public. it was a fear shared by Firimbi.

The propaganda minister had grown fond of him. It was something Durant worked at, part of his survival training.

He made an effort to be polite. He learned the Somali words for “please,” pil les an, and “thank you,” ma hat san-e. The two men were together day and night for a while. They shared what appeared to be a small apartment. There was a small balcony out the front door, which reminded Durant of an American motel.

The woman who owned the house where Durant was staying insisted on fixing the pilot a special meal, as is the custom for guests in Somalia. She slaughtered a goat and made a meal of goat meat and pasta. The meal was delicious, and huge. Durant thought the chunk of meat and bone in his bowl could feed five people. But the next day both the pilot and his captor had diarrhea. Firimbi helped keep the bedridden pilot clean, which was uncomfortable and embarrassing for both men.

Firimbi kept trying to cheer up the pilot.

“What do you want?”. he kept asking.

“I want a plane ticket to the United States.”

“Do you want a radio?”

“Sure,” Durant said, and he was given a small black plastic radio with a volume so low he had to hold it up to his ear. That radio became his lifeline. He could hear the BBC World Service, and reports about his captivity. it was wonderful to hear those English voices coming from his own world.

In subsequent days, they laughed and teased each other about the flatulence that followed the worst of the ailment. The mood of his captivity lightened. Durant's leg had been splinted, but was still swollen and painful. Day and night he lay on the small bed. Sometimes it would be silent for hours. Sometimes he and Firimbi would talk. Their pidgin “Italish” got better.

Durant asked Firimbi how many wives he had.

“Four wives.”

“How many children?”

Firimbi lied.

“Twenty-seven,” he said.

“So many?” the pilot asked.

“I'm a businessman,” Firimbi said. “I used to have a flour and pasta factory,” which was true. He also had grown son who had left Somalia and sent money, he said. (Firimbi actually had nine children)

Durant told him he had a wife and a son. Firimbi tried to explain to the pilot why Somalis were so angry at him and the other Rangers. He talked about the Abdi House attack, how the helicopters had killed scores of his friends and clansmen. Firimbi complained about all the innocent people the Americans had killed, women and children. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, he said. He explained that Aidid was an important and brilliant leader in his country, not someone the UN or the Americans could just label an outlaw and carry off. Not without a fight anyway. Firimbi considered Durant a prisoner of war. He believed that by treating the pilot humanely, he would improve the image of Somalis in America upon his release. Durant humored his jailer, asking him questions, indulging in his whims. For instance, Firimbi loved his khat. One day he handed cash to a guard and sent him to purchase more. When the man returned he began dividing the plant into three equal portions, one for himself, Firimbi, and another guard.

“No,” Firimbi said. “Four.”

The guard looked at him quizzically. Firimbi gestured toward Durant. Durant quickly figured out what his jailer was up to. He nodded at the guard, indicating a cut for himself.

When the guard left, Firimbi scooped up the two piles for himself, winking at Durant and flashing an enormous grin.

Firimbi identified so strongly with the pilot that when Durant refused food, he refused food. When Durant couldn't sleep because of his pain, Firimbi couldn't sleep, either. He made Durant promise that when he was released he would tell how well treated he had been. Durant promised he would tell the truth.

After five miserable days in captivity, Durant got visitors.

Suddenly the room was cleaned and the bed sheets were changed. Firimbi helped the pilot wash, redressed his wounds, gave him a clean shirt, and wrapped his midsection and legs in a ma-awis, the loose skirt worn by Somali men. Perfume was sprayed around the room.

Durant thought be was about to be released. Instead, Firimbi ushered in a visitor. She was Suzanne Hofstadter, a Norwegian who worked for the International Red Cross. Durant took her hand and held on tight. All she had been allowed to bring along were forms with which he could write a letter. In the letter Durant described his injuries and noted that he had received some medical treatment. He told his family he was doing okay, and asked them to pray for him and the others. He still didn't know the fate of his crew or D-boys Shughart and Gordon.

He wrote that he was craving a pizza. Then he asked Firimbi if he could write another letter to his buddies at the hangar, and his jailer said yes. He wrote that he was doing okay, and told them not to touch the bottle of Jack Daniel's in his rucksack. Durant didn't have much time to think. He was trying to convey in a lighthearted way that he was okay, to lessen their worry for him. At the bottom of this note he wrote, “NSDQ.”

Later, Red Cross officials, concerned about violating their strict neutrality by passing along what might be a coded message, scratched out the initials.

After Hofstadter left, two reporters were ushered in. Briton Mark Huband of the Guardian and Stephen Smith from the French newspaper Liberation. Huband found the pilot lying flat on his back, bare-chested, obviously injured and in pain. Durant was still choked up from the session with Hofstadter. He had held her hand until the last moment, unwilling to see her leave.

Huband and Smith had brought a recorder. They told him he didn't have to say anything. The reporters pitied Durant, and tried to reassure him. Huband said he'd done a lot of reporting in Somalia, and had developed a sense for when things were bad and when they weren't. He said his sense was that these people meant Durant no harm.