Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War

Rating:
Summary: Just Short!
Review: I enjoyed reading Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down immensely. It is a very well researched, fast paced account of the United States military's doomed battle in Somalia. Bowden is a great story- teller and a meticulous researcher and I enjoy his books very much. However, I feel that in his recreation he left two very important points out of the story.

I might be nit-picking, but I think that these two details are pretty important to the story. I do not claim to be a military or world affairs expert, but I read Black Hawk Down, watched the movie, and watched the documentary about the battle on the History Channel. In the documentary on the History channel, they raised these two points I am talking about.

First of all, Bowden makes it seem like the raid on Aidide's compound came about because of one specific event, the capture of Aidide's money man by the United States. The truth of the matter is that the tensions between the US and Aidide built for several months before they exploded into this battle in Mogadishu. Originally, there was a terrible famine in Somalia and the UN was sent in to bring food and supplies to help the citizens of Somalia. Somalia's most notorious war-lord, Mohammed Farah Aidide, and his men began to intercept UN food shipments at gun point and take them for themselves, leaving the people of Somalia to die of starvation. This is where the US involvement came into play. The US committed troops to track down Aidide and after a series of raids they managed to capture a few of his top men, but not him. Over the course of several weeks tensions mounted while the raids were taking place. Aidide had the Somalis whipped into a frenzy with his diatribes against the United States. After the UN leveled a building in which several of Aidide's top generals were meeting killing them and several innocent civilians without any questions asked, the Somalis wanted American blood. I do not think that Bowden did as good a job as he could have in explaining the background events that led up to the battle in "Mog." After seeing the documentary on the history channel I had a better idea of what actually happened.

Secondly, Bowden fails to mention one very interesting tidbit of information. Aidide's own son was part of the peacekeeping force sent to Somalia by the United States. He task, as assigned by the government, was to hunt and kill his own father. After Aidide's assassination, a few years after the "Black Hawk Down" incident, his son returned to Somalia to take his father's place in leading his band of Somali thugs. Personally, I thought this would have made for a very interesting subplot.

On the whole, Black Hawk Down is a fantastic book that I would recommend to anyone that likes a fast-paced real life drama.

Rating:
Summary: A Gripping Book
Review: Mark Bowden did a great job with this, the movie doesnt even compare to the true to life book. This book should live a long life with the rest of the war novels.Hearing the bravery, the heroism and the gore of the catastrophe that happened on that day.The movie doesnt even scratch the surface of how bad it went wrong. I have two words for the prospective buyer BUY IT you will never put it down.

Rating:
Summary: A Modern War Classic
Review: Black Hawk Down is the story of the events in Somalia on October 3rd, 1993.
The books details a raid that the stationed U.S. Army Rangers staged against Mohamed Farah Aidid, a warlord who declared himself president of Somalia, and was hampering U.N. efforts to feed the starving country.
During the midafternoon, about 180 elite Amry Rangers and Delta Force troops dropped into Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, where they were to capture two lieutenants of the warlord.
Right as the mission began, things went wrong. One Ranger fell eighty feet from the Black Hawk that he was in to the ground. The Somalis, who were excited due to the raid, and due to the drugs that are common among the population began to attack the soldiers who also opened fire. Before too long, a fierce fire-fight began. After the prisoners were loaded onto the convoy of humvees and flatbeds, the convoy began to move out.
Then disaster struck. Using RPGs, (Rocket Propelled Granades) a Somali managed to hit on of the Black Hawk helicopters that was flying over head, causing it to crash to the ground, killing the crew. The soldier's mission changed from a raid to a rescue mission, and they had to fight their way to the crash site. The convoy was turned around, and proceeded to the crash site, but the trucks got lost, resulting in the deaths of a couple soldiers riding back.
Soon, another helicopter was also hit, and crashed, killing several of the crew, and this time, there was no rescue for the survivors.
By the end of the mission, which was supposed to last for an hour, but dragged on into the night, 18 soldiers, of the Rangers and Delta Force were killed, and 73 were seriously wounded. Three more Black Hawks were shot up and forced down, but they returned to the base where they were stationed.

This story is among the most horrifying and realistic that I have read. Bowden pulled this story off spectacularly, and I felt that I was in the action while reading it. It flows quickly, making the book about a 1-3 day read. The book divides cleanly into thirds. Right off the bat, he drags us in with the troops going into battle, then backs up and described the base life, and the mission backrounds. Then he moves onto the attack, and then onto the aftermath and rescue of the only surviving pilot, Mike Durant.
Bowden's description of the battle is as realistic as can be. As the soldiers landed, he describes their reactions and thoughts, and accuratly shows the tensions between the Delta Force and Rangers. As the fight escalated, he also describes the Ranger's need to get to the crash sites, with problems between them and the air and the Somalis fighting them.
This is a true war classic.

Rating:
Summary: Best Book Out There
Review: Wow, this book will be the standard for combat reporting for maybe the next 20 years. If the author gets royalties from each book that has on its dust jacket "just like Black Hawk Down", he will make a good living just from that. If you are reading this review you probably have either heard about or seen the movie and now want to buy the book. I have done both and the movie is very good, but it pails in comparison to this book. The author has just done the most complete, detailed, tension filled true-life combat book there has been. I can not say enough good things about this book nor do I have the skill to truly convey to you how excellent this book is. Do yourself two favors - first buy the book, next lock yourself in a room and clear your calendar because you will not want to put the book down.

Rating:
Summary: Does not get any better than this.....
Review: What can I say? I first read Blackhawk Down when it came out years ago. Right before I went to see the movie I reread it and was blown away even more than the first tims I read it. It is a clear, consise story told for and by members of Task Force Ranger so that their story will not be forgotten. It is told so vividly that it is hard to believe Bowden was not there with these guys, running through buildings, up and down those streets, dodging bullets coming from every direction. This needs to be a standard in every histroy and military history class in the country.

Rating:
Summary: "Black Hawk Down" a story of mordern war
Review: "Black Hawk Down" written by acclaimed author Mark Bauden is a riveting story of young men risking their lives on a mission that has gone wrong. The excitement and adventure starts from page one and will keep the reader flipping pages until the end.

Forced to take part in a UN peacekeeping mission, Task force Ranger and Elite Delta force members (America's anti-terrorist organization) fight side by side when they are deceived by there allies and discover that their mission, to capture several top lieutenants of a Somali warlord, was a setup. Allies turn into enemies, and all hell breaks loose in this haunting story of modern war.

Bullets fly, friends are lost, and tensions grow when the Somalis begin to destroy the Rangers and Delta force members "god like power" the helicopter. Based on a true story and on real life heroes such as Gary Gordon, the Delta force sniper, and Mike Durrent, the black hawk "super six four" pilot, "Black Hawk Down" will make you laugh, cry, and shake with fear, as no one knows who will live or die.

This book is suitable for people from the age of thirteen and up because of the graphic violence and language that is in the book. Many readers that" if this was fantasy we would rate it up there with some of the best war novels such as the naked and the dead by Norman Mailer, or "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'brian."

By Joey

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Phenomenal
Review: Best piece of military history I have read. Reads like a novel. Great character development and detail of the sounds, smells, and sights of battle. Maps in book are helpful to follow the action.

Rating:
Summary: MAN, THIS IS AWESOME!!!
Review: I'm not a war buff. But, after watching Ridley Scott's picture, which kept me glue to the chair, I decided to go for the original, so I bought the book.
Man, this is awesome writing!! Fast-paced, dramatic, neither cheap nor overly patriotic.
It's already a classic, I'm sure. And the adaptation for the screen was remarkably accurate.

Rating:
Summary: The Danger of Operations Other Than War (OOTW)
Review: Black Hawk Down (Signet 1999), written by Mark Bowden (a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer), is excellent reporting on the strategy and tactics of modern warfare. The book covers an intense firefight, known as the "Battle of the Black Sea," which took place on Sunday, October 3, 1993, in the middle of a marketplace in Mogadishu, Somalia. On that afternoon, a combined force of Army Rangers and Delta Force were assigned the duty of kidnapping two top lieutenants of Mohamed Farrah Aidid (a warlord who headed the Habr Gidr clan) who systematically were robbing the starving populace of food delivered by the international community. The daylight mission was supposed to take one hour. Instead, two Black Hawks were downed by Somali fire and the American soldiers spent the night fighting thousands of armed Somalis. The world awoke the next day to grotesque images of a Somali mob defiling and dragging the corpses of American soldiers through the city streets. Eighteen Americans had died, over seventy were badly injured and one had been captured. Black Hawk Down reports on the terrifying night spent by the American soldiers between the time they were dropped by the Black Hawks in the marketplace and their rescue.

The book provides the reader a chilling view of battle as it reports sequences of scenes through the eyes of those who fought it. In a description of a medic's efforts to save a young Ranger, Bowden writes:

"Give me some morphine for the pain! Smith demanded.... I can't, Schmid told him. In his state, morphine could kill him.... The young Ranger bellowed as the medic reached with both hands and tore open the entrance wound. Schmid tried to shut out the fact that there were live nerve endings beneath his fingers.... He continued to root for the artery. Every time he reached into the wound Smith lost more blood. Schmid and Perino were covered with it. Blood was everywhere. It was hard to believe Smith had anymore to lose....

"We need medevac NOW. We have [ ] critical who is not going to make it....

"Roger, understand. We are pressing the QRF to get there as quickly as they can. I doubt that we can get a Hawk in there to get anybody out, over....

"We are going to have to hold on the best we can with those casualties and hope the ground reaction force gets there on time."

By interviewing the soldiers for their recollection of the events and juxtaposing it with transcriptions of radio tapes of the desperate calls for help, Bowden succeeds in conveying the sense of the horror of war in a manner that is more unsettling than most authors are able to do in their fictional or non-fictional books about war. In that regard, Black Hawk Down is similar to "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young," a book about infantry combat in Ia Drang, Vietnam, written by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (Ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway (Random House, 1992).

Bowden provides such an in-depth account of the battle and so vividly relates the memories and opinions of the soldiers that it's hard to believe that he, himself, was not at the battle. The author's skill in piecing together important sequences of events, his addition of ordinary details (for example, the soldier who wished he had made a restroom stop before the mission) and his description of the surrealism experienced by the soldiers ("this cannot be real!") give the reader a sense of the realism of war. This is an impressive achievement given Bowden's lack of any military background.

One criticism I have of the book is the author's failure to follow up on President Clinton's abrupt cancellation of the mission within days of the battle. While Bowden briefly touches on this issue in the Epilogue, he could have elaborated on this stage of events by addressing the soldiers' feelings and opinions concerning this issue. There must have been a tremendous sense of frustration and a sense of "all this for nothing" for those who fought in the mission. Perhaps there was no easy way to address this issue given that the soldiers were still active members of the military and their comments would have been too circumscribed.

Another criticism I have of the book is the author's reluctance to address the wisdom of the policymakers who authorized the mission. To the extent he addresses it, he, personally, does not appear to find as much fault as one would think his book warrants. He acknowledges, however, that the rest of the country may be of a different view, especially with respect to the President's role. Bowden reported:

"At the Medal of Honor ceremony for the two Delta soldiers killed in action, [the author] read that the father of posthumous honoree Sergeant Randy Shughart insulted the president, telling him he was not fit to be Commander-in-Chief."

Despite these minor shortcomings, I found the book to be a raw, gut-wrenching account that vividly captures the ferociousness of urban warfare. Black Hawk Down is written like an action novel; it's gripping and very easy to read.

The Battle of the Black Sea was the worst firefight since Vietnam, and is a battle that America has preferred to forget. But, so long as America engages in police action missions and OOTW, we must not forget October 13. In an article in the New York Times (11/2/01), Somalia's president pleaded for America to re-establish relations with his country. He urged American officials to end the cold shoulder treatment "and to realize that Somalia, although not perfect, could be much worse." I would highly recommend that everyone reads Black Hawk Down before America allows its leaders to re-engage with Somalia or to expand its peacekeeping role in places like Bosnia. After reading Black Hawk Down, this reviewer has an indelible image of young Americans going to a distant country to feed starving stangers and returning home in body bags.

Rating:
Summary: Intense and Relentless
Review: What a story!! I had no idea what awaited me before I read this book. But now, I have to read it again, slower this time, and see if what I read is really there.

I can't remember being so quickly propelled through a book as I was by this one. The story telling is remarkable (hats off to you Mark Bowden), and the content of the story is even more remarkable. How can everything that possibly can go wrong go wrong, and yet how can the men involved be so emotionally (& pysically) strong enough to deal with it all. Amazing is all that can be said.

Mr. Bowden lets lose with some direct writing. I had my doubts before hand that this would be a newspaper colume, but no way. I got the feeling that he was there. The style lead me to believe that there is no question in his facts, and that he is the authority on the subject, simple as that. His story telling is cold, raw, hard, and in your face. You are there, with the sounds, smells, sights and feelings. I couldn't stop reading once I started.

I haven't seen the movie, kinda of don't want to, but if Hollywood tells this story the way the book does, the look out. The military and political powers-that-be will go bonkers.

Good for you Mark Bowden. Well done. I look forward to more and more and more...