Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War

Product Information

Last weekend I also watched the movie (directed by Ridley Scott) and there's a couple of disconcerting differences, the main being that the movie strips out most of the uncomfortable parts of the book. As the story proceeded, these often indispensable details were inserted piecemeal, in a fractured, at times seemingly haphazard fashion. He draws on his extensive interviews of participants from both sides’as well as classified combat video and radio transcripts’to bring their stories to life.

The feeling was, after six weeks of diddling around they were finally going in to kick some serious Somali ass. 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. As the helicopter force swept in over it, gliding back in from the ocean and then banking right and sprinting northeast along the city’s western edge, Mogadishu spread beneath them in its awful reality, a catastrophe, the world capital of things-gone-completely-to-hell. Bowden has succeeded in writing what will doubtless soon be considered one of the most important works on military combat in the post Cold War era.At the end of the book the author looks at many of the issues and dedicates it to the people who fought the good fight. Bowden's narrative was generally praised, particularly his efforts at contextualizing the local and international politics and explaining how the peacekeeping mission devolved into armed conflict, later termed the " Mogadishu Line".

To look at them today, few show any outward sign that one day not too long ago they risked their lives in an ancient African city, killed for their country, took a bullet, or saw their best friend shot dead.

The reader can visualize the action, smell the dust and sweat and the reek of explosives, and even enter into the exultation, fear, rage, pain, confusion, and exhaustion of the combatants. They are creatures of pop culture who grew up singing along with Sesame Street shuttling to day care, and navigating today's hyper adolescence through the pitfalls of drugs and unsafe sex. Authoritative, gripping, and insightful, Black Hawk Down is destined to become a classic of war reporting. 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. In a tight corner the elite troops are unwilling to take casualties to do what is necessary to fulfill their primary mission: protect civilians.

Bowden's style puts the reader right next to the heart of the action, maintaining momentum by inter-cutting between the individual situations of the various characters as they try to get through the mayhem. A medic desperately tries to keep his grievously wounded friend alive long enough to be evacuated”only to have him bleed to death in his arms. He looks into the justifications and internal survival strategies that soldiers need to do what they do.Für Freunde und Kritiker des Hollywood-Films "Black Hawk Down" von Ridley Scott gleichermaßen ein "Muß": Das Buch liest sich wie ein Roman, ist allerdings die authentische Darstellung der Geschehnisse aus Sicht der Beteiligten Einsatzkräfte, die der Author anhand unzähliger Interviews und original Tonband- und Videoaufnahmen zusammengestellt hat. Uninterested in sharing power, Mohamed Farrah Aidid began to regard the ongoing UN mission as hostile and ambushed a peacekeeping convoy in June 1993, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers. In the end a number of their MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters had been shot down and they were surrounded in a hostile city on the verge of being overrun. In the afterword, Bowden speaks movingly of his intent to honor the men he met, and the families of those men who died. I enjoyed reading this book and it's nice to see an honest appraisal of a stuffed-up mission, which was no fault of the men on the ground.