December 7, 1993, Tuesday

Full of Tears and Grief; For elite commandos, operation ended in disaster

SERIES: MISSION IN SOMALIA. A year ago this wee, the first U.S. troops sent by President bush arrived in Soalia. It was to be a humanitarian mission. but htere was a mjor policy change in August, when Presient Clinton sent in a Special Operations force to capture the warlord Aidid. This report looks at the decision and its consquences. THIRD OF 4 PARTS

By Patrick J. Sloyan. WASHINGTON BUREAU. Staff writer Dele Olojede contributed to this story.

DATELINE: Ft. Benning, Ga.

When it came time to remember the 75th Ranger Regiment's men killed in Somalia, Chaplain David Moran sought to compare their sacrifice to the fate of early Christians.

"For your sake, we face death all day long," said Moran's recitation of a letter from the apostle Paul to the Romans. "We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."

The shaved skulls of the Regiment's Third Battalion bowed in prayer for six members of Bravo Company during the Nov. 8 ceremony at Ft. Benning. They were among 18 American soldiers who died Oct. 3 in Mogadishu. Another 77 U.S. Army troops were wounded. An estimated 300 Somalis were killed and 700 wounded during the 12-hour firefight.

Moving among the bereaved families was Gen. Wayne Downing, commander of Special Operations. A covert Delta Force element of Downing's 47,000-soldier command at Ft. Bragg, N.C., had slipped into Somalia unannounced. It was made up of Army Special Forces, the men who wear the Green Beret. From Ft. Campbell, Ky., came the Night Stalkers of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, reputedly the best helicopter pilots in the world.

But their secrecy was shattered when eight Delta Force members were killed Oct. 3. Maj. Gen. William Garrison, who directed Delta's operations in Mogadishu, also expressed condolences to the families of Rangers who had provided the muscle for the mission.

It was Garrison, in a handwritten letter to U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), who claimed the Oct. 3 mission was a "complete success." The Special Operations team had captured 22 supporters of Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aidid captured that day - just as planned.

But in geopolitical terms the operation was a disaster. What the Nov. 8 ceremony showed, more than anything, was the most painful results of President Bill Clinton's shifting policy decisions on Somalia.

All but two of the Aidid supporters rounded up on Oct. 3 were released later after Clinton abandoned the hunt for the warlord as a mistaken policy decision. No one from the administration attended the memorial for the men who died following Clinton's secret Aug. 22 order to capture Aidid and bring him to trial. Clinton considered attending the Fort Benning ceremony, but scheduling conflicts kept him away, a White House official said.

The elite commando force is often disparaged by Army regulars who call them "snake-eaters." The nickname stems from six grueling weeks of Ranger School, including desert and mountain training as well as jungle survival, where snake meat is considered a delicacy.

Their legendary physical toughness and superb military skills have created a force that routinely takes risks that seem to regular soldiers to border on madness. But during the memorial service, the snake-eaters were full of tears and grief.

On the stage of the Gen. George C. Marshall Auditorium, six pairs of desert boots were aligned left to right; an upturned M-16 rifle was bayonetted next to each pair. Each rifle butt held a black beret with the Ranger regimental crest.

Individual soldiers took turns reciting the Ranger Creed. The fifth stanza revealed why most of those who died Oct. 3 did not escape unscathed, as they had during six previous missions:

"I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy," the soldier recited.

The words made Ranger Sgt. Robert Gallagher wince.

On Oct. 3 the whitewashed buildings of Aidid's stronghold were obscured by beige dust from hovering helicopter gunships. The purr and whump of gunfire and grenades echoed everywhere.

Gallagher explained how 142 Rangers had been on the verge of a 12-minute drive to safety with 25 prisoners when a Delta Team helicopter crashed. It was about 4:15 p.m.

Less than an hour earlier the helicopter had been one of six Blackhawks that dropped 90 Rangers and Delta Force soldiers into the middle of Aidid's neighborhood near the Olympic Hotel. The group of Aidid supporters had been captured, and the escape convoy had pulled into place with another 52 Rangers aboard to provide covering fire.

But now rescuing the crew of the downed helicopter became paramount. "We weren't going to leave those guys," Gallagher said. From a defensive position near the hotel, Lt. Tom Di Tomasso saw the Blackhawk crashing four blocks away. With 13 men from his platoon, Di Tomasso immediately began moving to the crash site.

While Di Tomasso was on foot, most of the Rangers were aboard armored jeeps - Humvees with bulletproof windshields, doors and tops - and unarmored trucks. The halting, twisting drive toward the downed helicopter through a maze of narrow Mogadishu streets became a bloodbath.

Five of the six Rangers died en route.

"It was like riding around in a shooting gallery," said Gallagher, who was wounded while directing his jeep. From building windows, rooftops, behind walls, Somalis showered them with automatic gunfire and grenades. With 50-cal. machine guns and grenade launchers mounted on their jeeps, the Rangers fired back.

Bands of Somalis filled the streets. A point-blank barrage of 40-mm grenades was fired into one group by a Ranger jeep commander. Somali men, women and children were left in a bloody sprawl.

But the withering fire from the Somalis was proving too much. Even three of the Somali captives aboard one Ranger truck were killed. The Ranger commander, Lt. Col. Danny McKnight, ordered the rescue convoy to retreat to its base at the airport. More casualties were suffered en route. But Di Tomasso's foot patrol pressed on

Two snipers aboard the Blackhawk were knocked senseless by the crash. When they came to, one of them, Delta Team Sgt. Daniel Busch, 25, of Portage, Wis., began firing at attacking Somalis. Di Tomasso, whose platoon had reached the crash site, reported that Busch killed at least 10 before being mortally wounded.

As Di Tomasso's ground force arrived, one of the gunships, an MH-6 Little Bird helicopter, squeezed into the crash site.

Pilot Karl Maier held the controls with one hand while firing a submachine gun with the other. His co-pilot, Keith Jones, scrambled to the downed Blackhawk while firing a pistol. The wounded Busch and another Blackhawk survivor were loaded on the Little Bird, and Maier lifted off, guns blazing.

A search and rescue helicopter arrived next, dropping off 15 more Rangers and rescue equipment. That chopper also was hit by Somali fire but managed to limp back to base.

Inside the downed Blackhawk, the pilot and co-pilot were dead. They were Chief Warrant Officer Donovan Briley, 33, from North Little Rock, Ark., and Chief Warrant Officer Clifton Wolcott, 36, from Cuba, N.Y.

They had crashed nose-first into a low wall after Somali rocket-propelled grenades hit the chopper. Now 29 Rangers set up a defensive perimeter and began trying to free Briley and Wolcott.

The force of the crash had wrapped the fuselage around the two men. Circular blades of two rescue power saws failed to cut through the twisted metal.

Six hours later a relief convoy finally fought its way through to the crash site. A confused effort to get Malaysian armored vehicles to carry the relief force had caused the delay. The U.S. commander, Army Maj. Gen. Thomas Montgomery, had requested armored vehicles nearly a month earlier, but his request had been rejected by Defense Secretary Les Aspin.

On Oct. 3, as reports of the mounting casualties came in, Montgomery bit his lips and cursed under his breath, said aides who overheard him. "He clearly felt that this could have been prevented if he had his own armor," a top aide said.

Running the Somali gauntlet was costly to the relief column. Three 10th Mountain Division soldiers were killed. More than 30 were wounded.

After the relief convoy arrived, the Rangers attached truck cables to the wrecked Blackhawk.

"The trucks pulled the helicopter apart, and we got their bodies," Gallagher said.

A second Blackhawk helicopter had crashed beyond the reach of the Ranger force and relief convoys. The pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Michael Durant, later recounted how two Special Forces sergeants jumped from a hovering helicopter to save him.

They were Master Sgt. Gary Gordon, 33, of Lincoln, Maine, and SFC Randall Shugart, 35, of Newville, Pa. They were killed along with three of Durant's crew in fighting around the chopper.

"Without a doubt, I owe my life to these two men and their bravery," said Durant, who was captured and later released by the Somalis. Gordon and Shugart have been nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor. There will be a shower of Silver Stars, the third-highest award, for the Rangers.

The memorial ceremony in Marshall Auditorium was coming to an end. Before three volleys of rifle fire and Taps, Bravo Company First Sgt. Glenn Harris conducted the Last Roll Call.

"Sergeant Joyce?"

There was no answer.

"Sergeant James Joyce?"

Silence.

"Sergeant James Casey Joyce?"

Finally a friend answered. "Not present, First Sergeant."

The litany continued through five more names. Glenn concluded: "These men were all killed in combat operations in Somalia."

The ceremony intensified the grief and anger of Larry Joyce over the loss of his son. Joyce, a retired Army officer who spent two tours in Vietnam, voted for Clinton and said he had rationalized away the president's efforts to avoid the draft and his role as Vietnam War protester.

"My son opposed my support for Bill Clinton," Joyce said in a letter to Congress. "His death in Somalia - brought about by weak and indecisive amateurs in the Clinton administration - confirms my son's wisdom and my naivete."

Along with some of the families of 26 other Americans killed there since last December, Joyce wants Congress to find out what went wrong and why Aspin refused to provide armor for the relief force.

"Those reinforcements might not have helped my son because he apparently was one of the first killed," Joyce said in the letter. "But they certainly would have helped many of the other soldiers who were killed and wounded. To put them into combat with no way to reinforce them is criminal."

NEXT: The Aftermath

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