On Oct. 3, 1993, 140 elite U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into a crowded market district of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their goal was to capture two lieutenants of Habr Gidr clan leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The Americans, however, had underestimated the popularity of Aidid and the Somalis' growing resentment for the peacekeeping efforts of the NATO force. The mission, expected to last about an hour, turned into America's most ferocious firefight since the Vietnam War.
Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down vividly re-creates this brutal battle which claimed the lives of 18 American soldiers and wounded 75 others. Although he was not present during the action, Bowden was able to reconstruct the combat experience of soldiers both living and dead through interviews, videotapes and radio transcripts of the battle. While the book is a triumph of research and an undeniably compelling read, Bowden spends too little time on contextual information and even less on analysis.
Instead, he recounts the battle in a series of violent and gory highlights, with the breathless pacing of a Hollywood action film. Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but Black Hawk Down will eventually be hogging screens at a multiplex near you, as the movie rights have already been sold to mega-action blockbuster producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who made Top Gun, Armageddon and other dumb and expensive motion pictures.
Although this nearly forgotten chapter in American military history deserves a more thoughtful retelling than this non-fiction novel provides, Bowden does an admirable job of presenting the combat from a variety of perspectives. He describes the downing of two Black Hawk helicopters, re-creating the experiences of the pilots as well as the ground troops, who watched, stunned, as their high-tech helicopters fell to the relatively primitive weaponry of the Somalis. Bowden recounts, often in graphic detail, the shock of recognition as soldiers discover that they have been shot, and the numbness and adrenaline which allows them to tend to their fallen comrades as well as their own wounds. Particularly harrowing are the scenes in which the wounded wait with diminishing hope for the rescue teams. Sadly for some of the soldiers, help would not arrive in time.
For the most part, the book focuses on the besieged U.S. soldiers, but Bowden devotes a few chapters to the Somali perspective. Many of the Somalis felt harassed by the American military presence, particularly by the Rangers and their Black Hawk helicopters: "They flew in groups, at all hours of day and night, swooping down so low they destroyed whole neighborhoods, blew down market stalls and terrorized cattle. Women walking the streets would have their colorful robes blown off. Some had infants torn from their arms by the powerful updraft."
Bowden doesn't directly comment on these events or any others until the epilogue -- even the Americans' sometime indiscriminate killing of Somali townspeople is recounted without authorial comment. Bowden instead prefers to let the cocky, gung-ho attitude of the soldiers carry the narrative voice for many of the chapters.
"They were predators," he writes, "heavy metal avengers, unstoppable, invincible. The feeling was after six weeks of diddling around they were finally going in to kick some serious Somali ass." All of this chest-beating makes for tedious reading, although Bowden's decision to let the narrative reflect the general attitude of the soldiers immerses the reader in the military mindset. Unfortunately, the "Be all that you can be" sloganeering doesn't make for very distinguished prose.
Bowden, however, is not out to write recruitment propaganda for the U.S. military, and once the fighting begins and the blood begins to flow, the soldiers' fearless bravado is revealed as hopelessly naive. Despite the soldiers' elite training (most of them were either Rangers or Delta Force operatives), it seems there is nothing that could have prepared them for the horrors of combat.
Black Hawk Down is a remarkable piece of war reporting. However, nearly six years after the event, one hopes for a more ambitious approach to the material. Still, Black Hawk Down is an engaging book. Tragic and thrilling in its way, it should make quite a blockbuster. ©
