Focus 580; The Battle of Mogadishu: Firsthand Accounts from the Men of Task Force Ranger

In this part of the program we'll be looking back to what has come to be called the Battle of Mogadishu and it took place on October 3rd in 1993 in Somalia. On that day planned 90 minute mission to capture a Somali warlord turned into a firefight that lasted 17 hours. Eighteen Americans were killed 84 wounded and perhaps as many as a thousand Somalis were killed. These are the events that were dramatized in the book and the film Blackhawk Down. So maybe some of the people listening this morning have read the book or have seen the movie. This morning we'll be talking with someone who fought in that battle and is one of the editors to a book that has just come out. It's titled The Battle of Mogadishu that brings together the firsthand accounts of six who fought in that battle. Dan Schilling is one of them. The book is published by Ballantine. It's out now in bookstores if you'd like to take a look at it. Let me tell you a bit more about him. His military career spans 18 years within the Air Force an Army special operations. He has

received many awards for his service including the Bronze Star with Valor. The Joint Service Commendation Medal of the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal. He also in addition to his military experience is a professional demonstration skydiver and BASE JUMPER he now makes his home in Utah where he is co-founder chief executive of Kokopelli Western LLC It's a consulting and development firm specializing in post secondary institutions. He's joining us this morning by telephone as we talk. Of course questions from people who are listening are welcome. All you have to do is pick up the telephone and dial the number here in Champaign Urbana. If you are where we are the number is 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line. And that means no matter where you are listening around Illinois Indiana or in fact anywhere in the United States if you happen to be listening on the Internet you can use that number and that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 questions are welcome at any point the only thing we ask of callers is their brief as can be just so that we can keep

the program moving again and as many different people as possible. But of course anybody who is listening is welcome to call. Mr. Schilling. Hello. How are you this morning. I'm fine thanks and you doing very well. Think good a great morning out here. Well we appreciate very much you giving us some of your time. It's a it's a it's a remarkable book I think. Speaking of someone who has no experience in the military no experience in combat. It is. It's riveting. I think that's a pretty good word to use as I think that it gives you maybe some sense of what that would be like. I don't know what sort of feedback that you've gotten from other people who actually have have found themselves in similar circumstances. Well I think it's it's interesting that you mention that one of the reasons we finally wrote our book which of course comes on the heels of Mark Bowden's book Blackhawk Down was there was just overwhelming interest in our story. And I was initially opposed to actually writing the book with Matt who's a very good friend of mine and he and our agents fight with me for a long time I've done some other writing and they fight with me

to actually put this thing down on paper because I thought well it's actually been chronicled somewhere else and even made a movie of. And what is there to say but it turns out that people are just fascinated by our experience as men who are involved in the actual gunfight. I'm also almost at a loss as to why people are fascinated by that other than the story is compelling it self. Well that's just one of the things that I wonder is and I'm sure that people who have who have been in the military and have been in combat will read it and have one kind of reaction to it and maybe the part of the reaction will be yes I know what that's like because I've been there but I guess I do. I wonder what you think someone who hasn't has not had that experience and has not been anywhere near that who would have no idea what it's like and what it what is it that you hope that someone like that would get out of the book. Well I think I think that's really the value if you distill this book down

the value it has is it contributes to Americans I don't know about overseas but people in America it will help them to understand what it's really like to go through the kinds of. Events or experiences that many people in the military face now this is an extreme example because you know Somalia in 1993 it's a city of a million people and it dropped 200 guys in the middle of downtown Mogadishu where everybody is armed to seize some bad guys from a meeting place in the midst of their stronghold. That's different than the normal military experience. But if you want to understand how we feel what we think how we react and sort of the aftermath that you're left with doing it in a firsthand form actually allows people to get inside your mind a little bit more rather than think about secondhand from from a professional writer. And that's really what we wanted to do is help people to understand. What what these people are what we what makes us tick. Because we're not.

These are these are generally speaking very intelligent young men who are very driven it's hard to get into these types of jobs. It takes a lot of training. The attrition rates tend to be very high. You know 60 80 90 percent even to get into a job like we have as a ranger or a combat controller or a Special Forces soldier. And and we're often misunderstood by the greater public I think. Well I think it's I think it's an important and interesting point because I certainly think that you're right that there are a lot of people who in unless you've been in the military maybe you have family in the military and particularly if you're someone who who rightly I think says we should be we should be very careful about how we decide to send people into combat. You know what we ought to be we ought to be sure we know what we're doing. And as much as possible you know we ought we ought to have a good open discussion about whether or not we're going we're going to do this. But you know if you're particular if you're someone who has real reservations about the use of military force then I think that it is difficult and it is difficult to

understand people who would who would be willing and eager to put themselves in that kind of might well maybe eager is the wrong word. You know I think it's. Good I think that's actually the people who want to get into special operations combat units are. It's like being on a football team in fact I was listening to your show earlier about the Hubble telescope. Astronauts are very eager to get into space. They'll do something if they think it's worthwhile they'll risk their lives and are the people who do this are are have a very similar philosophy. We believe in what we're doing and we're willing to go out and do it and we want to go out and do it because we've I trained for 10 years before I went on a mission like this I've been in other I've been the first Gulf War previously but this is what I've been training for. It was the culmination at the time of my entire 10 year career. So you you want to do what you're going what you've been trained to do what you hope for and don't always get and that's kind of the legacy I'll come to that minute of our. Our mission is the

chance to do something where you are contributing to the greater good. And that's what our mission in Somalia was was in essence to bring stability there was no hidden agenda. There was no you know other interests that the U.S. had in Somalia other than a purely humanitarian effort. But. But of course the legacy of this mission was well a lot of guys got killed and a lot of people on the other side certainly were killed. And what happened in the end was nothing. We we left Somalia within six months never to return no one's ever gone back from the United Nations either. And and that's a very dangerous precedent to set. That's one of the things that's bothered those of us who went there. Well that is one of the one of the things about what happened in Somalia it's sort started out to be one thing it turned into something else. And because of what happened there in the reaction to it then ever ever after really it has influenced the way that people here in the United States particularly people in

government think about where it is we're going to be military and militarily involved where we're going to send troops and certainly in the immediate aftermath some decisions were made here in the United States not to do some things that maybe we should have. Oh because that because of what happened in Somalia and because of the the fact that people were killed and some really disturbing images came out of that and came back to the United States which just can even add to people's hesitancy about the idea of sending American troops into someplace even if the idea was peacekeeping and stabilisation not you know even talking about sending someone someone into a situation where we know we're deliberately going into combat even. Other other kinds of situations where there might be a role for the military. We at least after that we said M.. We're not sure we want to do that. Well I think I think there's I think there's even a bigger point which is as much of an adverse reaction was

had here in America. The bigger problem that we created from our operation there was the public perception around the country around the globe. It's because perception is reality. If people believe something whether it's true or not they're going to act on that. And the perception was if you if America comes and gets engaged in an armed conflict and you kill some Americans you can drive them out. They'll go away. And that was a a lasting impression on people around the world and and many people attribute to our mission that one day's events to the emboldening of al-Qaida you know efforts to do the things that we've seen them do some of which have been pretty successful from their perspective. And that's a dangerous dangerous precedents. And that's and it comes back to the need for people to understand if we're going to commit troops to an effort and there's going to be bloodshed and if you send troops of the nature that would that are in our book there's there's going to be some

bloodshed on both sides. No one owns immune to that. You have to be. Word for the consequences that follow that action. And that's it. And it's a very dirty business it's not it's not a pleasant it's not a pleasant or exciting experience to have. Let me introduce again for anybody who might have tuned in the last few minutes here I guess for this part focus 580 Dan Schilling spent 18 years with the Air Force an Army special operations. He was one of those soldiers who served in Somalia back in the early 90s and took part in this event called the Battle of has come to be called the Battle of Mogadishu the one that was dramatized in the film in the book Blackhawk Down and now the six soldiers who fought and who had different experiences different perspectives on this have put together a collection the firsthand accounts of what they saw and what they experienced and the book is titled The Battle of Mogadishu. It's published by Ballantine Books. Dan Schilling is one of the editors along with Matt Eversmann. And if you're interested you can find the book out there in the bookstore. And of course questions are

welcome as well. Before I speck now we're talking about events that happened more than 10 years ago and some people's memories are going to be a little fuzzy. I definitely want to talk about what happened on that on that day on October 3rd but maybe before doing that I should have you talk a little bit about what it was that you all were doing there in the first place. OK. Be happy to I mean you know well and they actually had me give you a very brief background of course in 92 there was a. Extensive famine in Somalia coupled with you know no centralized government it was basically anarchy and the only stability was formed along clan lines which are very very strong in Somalia and in many and many countries it's not uncommon. The U.S. waded into that an attempt to stave off the famine which we did quite successfully. But the question became Or what do you do post famine relief to ensure that they'll be less of a likelihood of that happening again or they'll be greater stability for the population doing what at the time is called nation building. Well into

that vacuum now stepped several of these warlords who are all competing with each other for dominance and one in particular Muhammad fair came to the forefront because he had killed two score Pakistanis about an equal number of Nigerians a smaller number of Americans and was was causing a lot of consternation within the United Nations into that fray. The U.S. introduced a special operations task force which was called Task Force Ranger and that was us it was a joint Army Navy Air Force. Task force that was primarily Army but there was a few Navy SEALs and there was a few Air Force special operations guys of which I was one of those. And our mission that led to the battle on October 3rd was to hunt down and collect not to kill mind you but to collect Muhammad the deed and his key lieutenants that were in his Somali National Alliance militia. And that's was

our intent in the summer and going into the fall of 1980. What happened on October 3rd was we had a mission came down we had we had conducted and this is the effects of time. I think we had done six raids prior to this I think it was our seventh raid. But. Regardless we have done a number of raids to pick up a Somali National Alliance personnel and we had been successfully whittling down that list collecting these people and turning them over to the United Nations. On October 3rd we had intelligence that there was a meeting taking place in the hearts of Deedes stronghold which is an area called the Black Sea in downtown Mogadishu. And the mission in that the It in essence was to go in the middle of the afternoon with a couple hundred American special operations troops and snatch these few leaders from a meeting they were having from within their stronghold in broad daylight and spirit them away take them back to our facilities on

the coast and then turn them over to a seaborne platform. And it but in fact that's what we did what people tend to forget about this is because the gruesome images really tend to overwhelm people become the focus of what happened in the death that occurred around this mission. But the mission itself was a success we went in there to pick these men up and we did just that. And people often forget that it was a very difficult mission and we're all very proud of the fact that we could do that. Well I guess the the the question that everybody always asks and I'm sure that it's a difficult and complicated one is it. That day 3rd of October 1993. What went wrong. Well that's it. It's a it not only is it a good question. It's in a very it's a very appropriate question and I don't mind that question. Part of what is often overlooked especially in this age of technological

technological superiority that the U.S. really does enjoy is we think we have this I'm impotent to do whatever we want and impose even militarily our will on any situation. And nothing is further from the truth. We do have the finest troops I think in the world and they're the most capable the best trained and the best equipped. But the problem is it's it's an equation that's only one half of the equation the other half of the equation is you've got bad guys and these these were some very bad guys. On the other side who are doing their best to kill you. Now they are working very hard at trying to shoot down helicopters which they successfully did kill Americans which they did as well. And confound your efforts to accomplish your mission. You cannot predict what an enemy force is going to do. Anybody who's ever been in combat will tell you they don't do what you think they're going to do. And they're sometimes better at doing things than you might expect. That leads to changes. And no combat plan ever comes out intact. It always

changes. And there's this there's just no way to to do anything. Precisely exactly as you want to have happen. And that's what happened in our event now. One of the reasons it's so extreme is again this is the city of a million people and most of them are armed and a lot of these fighters had 10 years experience in the civil war and anarchy that have been going on in Somalia for a decade. It's a hard force to fight. Well you you were going into a situation here that I'm sure that is extremely difficult. It's in an urban environment. It's not your city so you're strangers and it could be that you could easily get lost and not be sure where you are go on the space is a very tight to negotiate. So there could be as I know from having read your story some streets or some alleyways that you might want to go down that you couldn't because your vehicle was too big it wouldn't fit. You have people all around you shooting at you but then there are also people who are noncombatants and it could be very difficult to tell the difference between the people who were shooting at you and the people who weren't

ever you know at all those things up and it's a pretty impressive list of negatives the kind of things that probably if you had your choice you'd say no I don't want to I don't want to fight in that kind of circumstance but you had no choice when they're there. And on top of that there were difficulties with communication and perhaps here and there there were problems with you know who it is that was supposed to be in control who it was was supposed to be giving orders and you know battles are huge. However as you say you do everything that you can to plan it but then when the battle starts the plan kind of goes out the window. You know you know it's hard to know what's going on and given all that would there have been anything that could have been done that would have changed the outcome. Well yes the end in retrospect the answer is always yes. But I think you touched on something that I'd just like to reinforce for people who are listening and that is to execute a mission like this is an incredibly incredibly complex endeavor. It has many

moving parts all of which have to be precisely coordinated and the communication process is critical. And it's a very unglamorous aspect of this the coordination and the and the communication. But it's absolutely critical to success. And of course I would say we were successful in that event as to having you know more either equipment or troops. That's a very it's a very easy thing to do to talk about in in a armchair quarterback sort of manner. But we had everything that we felt we needed to execute the mission because of the fact this the facts will bear that out. It would have been better had we had as backup some U.S. heavy armor in the event that we needed to extract people in the manner that we did. We did not expect to do that. And one of the secrets to our successes and even on this mission typically is we are so light in armor and in number and so fast and so violent in

action that that's what allows you to send 200 men into a city of a million people and do a mission like this is you don't have a large cumbersome force. It's very easy and spite of the anarchy that people have read into our situation. It's your ability to react quickly and think about it and then act on that reaction and then execute a modified plan that allows you to come out successful. And and we did that. But it's but of course it's still a very terrible terrifying experience because people get killed. And that's the unfortunate part of this. We leave behind these. You know they're almost always younger families and young men get killed in this line of work and it happens every year. And there's not much you can do to prevent that but that is what you struggle your whole career to try and manage. We are at our midpoint here we have several callers and we'll start to get people into the conversation here again let me just introduce our guest Dan Schilling he is the editor of a book titled The Battle of Mogadishu firsthand accounts from the

men of Task Force Ranger about the first person accounts of six soldiers who fought in this battle October 3rd 1903 in Somalia the book published by Ballantine. It's the events if you have read the book or seen the movie Blackhawk Down that's the battle here that we're talking about. Dan Schilling was in the military for 18 years with the Air Force and Army Special Operations. Questions welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5 again I would just ask people to be brief so that we can keep moving along here through the remain. King 25 minutes of the show. First up here we have a caller in Champaign County line number one. Hello. Point taken outright. I keep trying to recollect if Bush won introduced this humanitarian mission as he called it in the last days it was a lame duck or before that but it's pretty clear that it wasn't. I don't think entirely motivated as just a

humanitarian mission if you look at you know the U.S. force protection projection into the Middle East. It had to the US had to rely on Diego Garcia which had its at a British base or a base there I guess. And you putting yourself back in the time of the last days of the Bush administration you know this decade of the Cold War it wasn't clear that Britain would have been entirely reliable ally for a project of force projection into the so I really think that it's a grand area strategy and Somalia is close to the Horn of Africa there is the other part of it which was that said Bahrain who was the head warlord had flipped from being allied with the so-called Eastern Bloc and was a U.S. ally and in the last days cold war maybe into something that the CIA wasn't didn't know and changed its bets that it had had some. Maybe

they would call it lily lily pad Now operations there so it did. I just don't accept on the face of it that this was some kind of a humanitarian gesture at the end of Bush on some occasions but I think that's a very good question. Syd Barrett was actually out of the equation. He had been deposed already by this time. He was no longer a factor at all. Clearly I did and it was of course started by the first Bush presidency. I will tell you as a military guy not a lot just Titian somebody who you know does all the support for this that Somalia is an incredibly poor choice for a staging area. It is it is in fact that the Horn of Africa but there is no never any plans for the US to introduce a large force there to sustain operations even as a lily pad in fact one of the reasons we did not have all of the equipment that so many people had made a big issue over and in fact lead to Les Aspen's resignation was the desire to keep a very minimal footprint in

Somalia so that we could actually extract ourselves from the country and make it less of an international sticking point. That was a very big concern. As one of the people who helped plan this mission from the early stages not the humanitarian effort but the effort to actually stabilize things and and work on combating that. Some people would call a terrorist element there. That was a major concern because they did not want to establish a permanent or large presence in Somalia. I hope that answers your question and I don't believe that it was. I don't accept that because Diego Garcia was quite pivotal in in the long range flights and those sort of things everything could been done otherwise but I think it was part of the contingency plan. And you know since the Horn of Africa you know so close to the Persian Gulf etc. etc. Now as far as the bad men you were fighting I mean it was a failed state in the cold worse. I think a lot to do with why

that happened but. The Member people that were killed as you say it was the whole city was armed and it wasn't a situation where you were a small light force fighting a concentrated or a you know top down controlled warlord one of them the whole city was against the US. President spotted a time and that's why so many of them were killed and that's why you weren't really in the position of finding a small group. It seems to me. Well I can and I can assure you it has as much of a knot. It's it's divided Mogadishu is divided along clan lines very clearly delineated geographical clan lines. We were operating within the harbor getter clan which is where this operation took place. Now they have a very strong top down organization as far as their ability to mobilize forces. But you have to introduce to that into that. All of these

variables that aren't controlled and of course there was a lot of hostility towards the U.S. I would tell you that's misplaced because again we moved there. And this isn't subjective. We stopped several hundred thousand people from starving to death. That's a very honorable thing to do. I don't think anybody would refute that. And I do really disagree with your belief that this was going to be a long term staging area for the U.S. if it was we'd still be there now. But. Diego Garcia was never under threat. We still use Diego Garcia to this day and will continue to do that for the long term. As for the sheer numbers of people it doesn't matter how well they're controlled if in a street fight which is what this was. At a basic level this is a street gunfight. Just having sheer numbers of people and I tell you it was there were countless makes it almost impossible to do what you think you need to do.

And it's it's a very very challenging situation to walk into. But in fact there was a lot of organized resistance. And they had a very strong infrastructure because it's along clan lines these people are all related to each other. And it's very effective. It's more effective in some respects than a traditional military made up of people who don't know each other when they first come into the military because it's all family. I'm going to jump in again I hope the gullible forgive me we do have some other folks I want to get to. Go next to another caller this is someone at Urbana. Number two. Hello hello. My comment is more in the nature of a quibble. You use the term and it's frequently used bad guys. And I object to this as an oversimplification and one that tends to get us into lots of trouble. It's a shorthand and I'm sure you're using it that way for our enemy and our enemy may very well and usually does intend to do is great harm. However they may not necessarily be bad or

evil. And this shorthand tends to create a situation in which people see things as black and white and good and evil. And it makes it very difficult for us to deal with these situations. Witness in North Korea today and perhaps Sadr in Iraq we may in time have to deal with this man. But if we've convinced everyone he's evil it may be very difficult to do. Well I actually that's a great point. I don't view anybody in Somalia as evil. I did I view them as bad guys. I do that. And you're right it's an oversimplification that helps with brevity and conversation but in fact the people who were running the harbor get it. Greater objectives which were they were using starvation as a weapon. I will tell you that's not that is also a fact. And they killed they didn't just kill they ambushed a very

unsuspecting Nigerian force on one occasion and killed. I think the numbers about 18 on another occasion they ambushed and killed an unsuspecting Pakistani force and killed two dozen people. Those are bad people who do those sorts of things are which was unprecedented at the time in the country are bad people and we were sent there to collect those folks. I wouldn't characterize them as evil though you are correct in fact I have a as a as a man whose profession has been armed con bat. I have a great deal of respect for Somalis because it turns out they're very good fighters. Now many people would misunderstand that just like you would say people misunderstand you say Bad and The equate that with evil. When I say I respect them as fighters that's is one person who is bent on a certain objective in my perspective on their end to them equally important bent on their objective. But one of the great

strengths of US forces is we have a very American American mighty fighting forces have a very strong. Sense of what is right and wrong. Ask anyone who survived World War 2 when U.S. troops came into an area that was previously occupied by foreign forces Nazis or whomever. Americans brought chocolate they didn't bring rape and torture as a general rule. There's always exceptions to everything. But Americans have a very strong belief in supporting other humans. And that's and people in the military almost universally feel that that's part of their responsibility. And it wasn't quite your question but I just sort of threw that in there. All right let's go to another caller here Chicago. Number four. Hello. I'm sorry I have to follow up on the bad guy question because I find it very distressing when people are brought in to explain things and then they start talking about bad guys mainly because it's a childish expression. And I feel like they're talking down to the public. And as you talk more and more it's really clear you know the

intricacies of this so I don't understand why you're using the term bad guy. What the group that we don't need a cold We need an explanation. And I'm wondering in my mind if this is partially what went wrong that when you went over there the planners were still thinking in terms of bad guys and not in terms of the real intricacies of the political situation and perhaps couldn't really plan and strategize Well it just baffled me why. You would use the term bad guy when you are obviously on a mission to explain things and you obviously know the explanations are really clearly a very intelligent man. Well my job in Somalia this is where this may be challenging for you but I'll tell you exactly what I think. My job in Somalia as a member of a special operations task force was to remove an element from the equation that was causing the greater United Nations effort

a great bit of frustration and when people were actively planning to kill you a bit in the Trust me I will. You don't have to trust me this is my opinion. When people are trying to kill you and they have slaughtered other people and they have used starvation as a weapon against their own people some of those people are in fact bad people. Yes how do you not a disagreement there I mean this to us and you are no longer in that situation. It's 10 years ago you thought over the whole situation and you're explaining it to the general public who needs to know exactly who you're talking about. Not this universal bad. No. Oh I'm sorry but I don't my problem with that not the fact that in battle you use the term bad guy. My problem is that 10 years later you're talking to a general public and you're on a mission to explain what happened. But you're using a term. That is confusing rather than explanatory and I just really would ask you to

reflect on the continued use of that. But my question is why were the Americans so hated. I know the Canadian Forces the Canadian government had to do an inquiry after the Somalia incident because there were charges of racism and abuse of the Somalis. The American forces were clearly hated and. Do you think that there was the same problem of racism towards the Somalis. Or let's go back to that bad guy thing. Perhaps that term was used too broadly and perhaps too many of the general population was hurt and therefore they began to hate the Americans as well. But do you have a an idea now. Why have you thought about why you were so hated by the general population. If you introduce If you are trying to stabilize the situation and this is a complex issue but I will do my best. If you're trying to stabilize a situation where there are people opposed to what you are trying to

establish you're going to start to build some resistance and if you do anything any longer you stay in a country and continue to try and interject either some stability or another perspective into the situation. You will begin to build resistance and it could have been if you had if you removed America from the equation and inserted Great Britain or Australia or some other country that has similar views on democracy and human rights which we really do. The longer you stay involved in somebody else's mess the greater the likelihood that resistance will build against you. I think it's almost an inevitable thing. It's a very very difficult situation to go into and the longer you're there and do not come up with any resolution the greater the resistance is going to be until it doesn't matter who you are from what country representing what agenda even if it's been helping even if it

stopped just a short few months previously. Mass starvation people will come to resent you. Well and that's the one of the challenges with doing this nation building is something there's a reason you don't hear the term nation building anymore. And the writ that reason is it doesn't work that way. When you insert Canada in the equation the chart the reason the Canadians were hated was because there were charges of racism against them. So I mean you can't say that in this case there was a with the CITIC charge and I'm just wondering given the American History and American presence if this was often a problem with your troops. No it wasn't a problem with our troops. But I don't think but then I would say to you also in response to that it was not a problem with Canadian troops. It may have been a problem with some Canadian individuals maybe even some of the. Military leaders who are involved and I don't recall the details of that but so I don't think just as you say to me this broad term about bad guys. I don't think you can say

bad Canadians because you're talking about a few individuals and the greater effort when a lot of their Indian but they're not going to Indians were there to help Somalia as well were they not. I'm not talking about that Canadians I'm talking about a charge that required an inquiry by the Canadian government. And those are people who certainly are not doing it because they consider their own citizens bad guys. I'm talking about specific charges. That's right you are in doubt why Americans are so hated. I mean there was true hatred in the reaction to that incident. And that doesn't happen overnight. No and the others might want it for it. It builds the longer you were there and you were trying and you were and you step in between fighting factions. It's one of the problems with any United Nations operation when you step in between two fighting factions both sides are going to come to hate you. That's human nature. And that's one of the difficulties of trying to do things like this successfully. Well thank you for attempting to answer my question. Well I think hopefully it helps.

I want to ask you in in your section in the book you tell a story about an earlier mission that you were on where you were out and you were in your Humvee and on the vehicle there's a 50 caliber machine gun mounted and there's a guy in this case his name is Mike Pringle whose job it was to shoot that gun and who was very. And if anybody was going to be shooting at you this guy was going to be very exposed. Yes. So you tell the story about the fact that you're after you were in a fight there was some shooting and you were coming out of this and the guy calls out to you Mike says I think I got shot in the head. And you said do you want me to look. And he said No I think I'll be ok till we get back to the base so you get back and you took a look at the guy and apparently what happened was a bullet had come straight at him. Had hit the edge of his helmet had splintered a piece of it flew off in a piece grazed the side of his head and it turned out he was OK and afterwards

you said you kind of made a joke out of it. You called him one inch because you figured an inch one way or the other way the guy would have been dead. So here's my question. And if that happens to you I guess I'm not in yours or much of you but I'm thinking about this guy Mike Pringle. Something like Hedda happens to you. How do you go out again the next day. Well part of the mechanism you used to continue to do is things you've already touched on it. You take on the sense of humor that can be a bit bizarre to people not involved in the situation it seems very bizarre but to us you're in a bizarre situation. And so the attempt to find humor is a very good coping that mechanism. You know gallows humor is very common in any kind of situation like this. It actually helps you to adjust because you you wrote you know when you have an experience like that you recognize how very little control you have

over your own fate. But this the desire to not let your teammates down these people who mean as much or in some cases more to you than people your have blood relations with. Drives you to do things that you would not otherwise do. But so many of these people who are in this line of work have already demonstrated that ability. It almost becomes because by the nature of our training just to get where we are it's. This need to make sure that you don't let the people down who are relying on you is more powerful than self-preservation. And that's not something I say lightly. I just well I guess one of the things I wonder is having had that kind of brush with death when you then go out into your next fight do you feel more vulnerable because you know how close a call you had. Or do you somehow feel less vulnerable because you would live to tell the story I think.

I think it's both. And I think it changes from sometimes hour to hour and sometimes moment to moment depending on what's going on because again it's not all sheer action. There are laws in their abs and in that in the flow. And there are certainly peaks where it is just you know the volume of fire and what you're doing is is is all. Consuming so that you do what you have to focus on is that important task at the time everybody has a job to do. And you're you're trained well enough it's kind of Pavlovian to people who don't appreciate what we do they think well you're just mindless automatons. But there's some truth in that in that you can you can overcome the strong urge for self-preservation to do what you have to focus on whether that's to fight or a gun whether it's to talk on the radio whether it's to give someone medical treatment or run out into the street and pick them up in five in the face of withering fire which several guys have done. It's it's this need to make sure that you can take care of these people who are so important to you. And it's

it takes a certain amount of of experience and training to get to that point. But it's that but beneath that at the basic level it's your this overpowering urge to not let anybody down. Well I think I think that's probably an important thing for people to to understand. Again for people who. Have Not and I have not. For people who haven't been in the military and haven't been in combat you ask why it is that soldiers fight well they fight for what they believe in and they fight for their country and they fight for whatever the mission is and they fight to achieve whatever the objectives are yeah all that's true. But at the end of the day what they're doing is they're fighting for each other. That's absolutely true and it's it's a universal human experience. It transcends race it transcends nationality it transcends gender. It comes down to being human. And it's it's a very important aspect of being human. We have maybe about 10 minutes left actually little bit less. And our guest is Dan Schilling

he is in the military for 18 years with the Air Force Army Special Operations he served in Somalia and was part of Task Force Ranger and that was the group that took part in this battle the Battle of Mogadishu and that's the title of the book that he has edited and also contributed to a set of first person accounts of soldiers who fought in that battle October 3rd 1993 that the battle that was dramatized in the book and the film Blackhawk Down is published this book that we're talking about here that Dan chilling is an involvement in the battle of Mogadishu that was published by Ballantine a data book. If you want take a look at it 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 is the number for here for champagne Urbana toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5. Can a guess of what you talked about the fact that when you had gone to Somalia that you had been training maybe not specifically for that mission but that you had been training to be able to do that for 10 years. Can you ever though really train and once you get

into it it can be what you thought it was going to be I mean is any amount of training really going to prepare you for what it's like when people are shooting at you. You know me at that. I mean it's a very quick answer but the answer is no because it's like saying you know you can talk about a car accident all your life and prepare for how to handle a wet slick road but are you ever prepared for the aftermath of having been in a car accident. I use this analogy because it helps people understand if you've been in a cracksman which many people have been nothing you have prepared for actually. None of your preparation actually is adequate enough to to get you through that experience and you're you're stuck with the aftermath of what you have done. It's not an easy thing to have been involved in combat. You live with the consequences the rest of your life. I certainly do. Now I think what I I did very honorable service but it's it's hard to deal with having been you know better and of of a conflict that has cost people lives and even friends of yours. But

but you do it the best that you can buy by practicing things as as realistically and as often as possible in order to be prepared as prepared for pasta. As for that first engagement in top have been said it's easy to get people to go into combat for the first time because of so much has been written or the perception whether real or imagined. But to get them to go back a second time is really the challenge because it's not a pleasant experience. Let's talk with someone else. Champagne here line number one. Hello. Hello. Yes something that our speaker disturbs me greatly and that is why like so I accept that it is very human to be able to band together in this fashion and to put

rational thought aside. I don't see that as actually one of the better at being human. The idea is that you are able to brainwash people into sacrificing themselves to murder other people. It strikes me as one of the most horrifying aspects of our species. Well it's a survival instinct as well. If you are if your species is under threat from a if you are part of a small clan of people and you're under threat from a pack of wolves your ability to band together and fend off those walls and kill them and eliminate the threat to the rest of your which you assume to be humanity is an honorable thing. But I'm confident I would say I am versus whorls. Yes but if it's one clan versus another clan your arguments fall on deaf ears.

I don't think so. What if it's my clan versus your clan and you are very aggressively trying to kill me if I'm trying to defend myself my ability to band together with other members of my clan to defend myself. And I would say if you want to put it in the confines of the ability to introduce stability for there is a greater number of other mollies is a great thing to do there's nothing wrong with that and I'm kind of not exactly what the other clan is saying as well. Yes it is and guess what. I'm conflict is part of the human experience if you go back throughout all of archaeology and you dig up the earliest tools of man if you substitute the word tool for weapon you'd be correct 100 percent of the time. It's a natural part of existence. There is conflict and sometimes when conflict comes you have to introduce people who will try and stand up and will engage in combat. And it's not a pleasant experience but sometimes it's necessary. I would say then you can disagree with me and that's one of the great things about being in this country is this country defends democracy and your ability to

disagree with me even though I'm in them was in the military and many countries you don't have that right. I'm very proud to have been somebody who's defended your right to disagree with me. I take great pride in that where you defended my right that so many thousands of miles away. Well I don't have that. Here's the problem with being in the military. I don't get to choose where I fight my leaders that you have elected for me have to make that decision and hopefully you as a voter have chosen wisely to not put my life at risk but I will still risk my life for you. We're at the point where I'm sorry to say we're going to have to finish another we're getting maybe at some of the most difficult. And interesting things we might discuss. We're simply going to have to stop. I want to so though say thank you very much for giving us some of your time today and we appreciate you and I know you did want to say real quick about what you were doing with the proceeds from the book. Yeah if I could David thank you so much. One of the one of the reasons we wrote this book is so many guys

get killed doing this line of work that they leave behind children who are not likely to go to college. We provide college educations for children who have lost their parents in special operations. Any readers who are injured or listeners who are interested they can go to special ops dot org and they can see it's a five in one C3 organization or it's also in the index of the book and it really makes a difference for these kids to get a college degree. But I thank you so much for the interesting questions and for having me on the show as well have our guest Dan shilling he is the co editor and one of the contributors to this book we mentioned his title the battle of Mogadishu firsthand accounts from the men of Task Force Ranger published by Ballantine Books describing that battle in Somalia October 1993. And if you have seen the film Blackhawk down that's the battle there that's dramatized here but this are people who were in the battle talking about what it was like firsthand accounts. And again it's out there in the bookstore if you'd like take a look at it.