Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War

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There were many scrub trees, the tallest just over the low rooftops, and between them high stone walls with pale traces of yellow and pink and gray, fading remnants of pre-civil war civility. It follows the battle as it builds,describing the elation at first entering the battle to the fear and hopelessness felt by the american soldiers who felt abandoned and the anger felt by the somalis. One highlight for me: When I finished reading the book, my son, who was in Iraq at the time, told me he had met one of the men who survived this incident. 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. With their buff bodies, distinct crew cuts—sides and back of the head completely shaved—and their grunted Hoo-ah greeting, they saw themselves as the army at its gung ho best.

The individual stories are woven together in such a compelling and expert fashion, the narrative flows so seamlessly, that it’s hard to imagine that this is not fiction. 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. A New York Times piece found he conveyed the battle as a gripping narrative, giving a minute-by-minute account of the United States campaign in Mogadishu, known as the Battle of the Black Sea.

Your account of the events in Mogadishu on October 3, 1993 is an inspirational and evocative retelling of one of the most significant military operations of the past 10 years. They were an all-star football team that had endured bruising, exhausting, dangerous practice sessions twelve hours a day, seven days a week—for years—without ever getting to play a game. After reading this I can understand why a bunch of people would want to turn this into a film, but it`s hard to cram all the action into 2 hrs, all the actors look alike in uniform, it`s difficult to show the trues scale of what happened, and more importantly it`s very hard to draw attention to the key factors. Mark Bowden is a journalist who took an interest in the disastrous 1993 mission to capture the warlord A Black Hawk pilot is shot down and besieged by an angry mob, then saved by Somalis who plan to ransom him to the local warlord.

One sad note: He was killed when the Medivac helicopter taking him to his cancer checkup in Baghdad was shot down in November 2003. 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.But as your health care professional, I feel I should warn you that narcotics and fire arms don't mix. Then they had stewed on the hot tarmac for what seemed an hour, breathing the pungent diesel fumes and oozing sweat under their body armor and gear, fingering their weapons anxiously, every man figuring this mission would probably be scratched before they got off the ground. They are in the soldiers minds dirty, immoral and contemptible, a viewpoint which ultimately makes it easier for them to do what they have to do. Written with such intensity, this military history volume by journalist Mark Bowden, brilliantly captures every minute moments from one of the longest modern day infantry engagements. Perhaps the best book ever written on military special operation forces (SOF) in a combat environment, Black Hawk Down provides unseen view into the world of both overt and covert warfare.