Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent (34 page)
I propped one boot up on a sandbag, part of a bunker fortifying the Conex so we could use it as a shelter during mortar attacks. I looked at Matt and could see in his eyes that his heart was as broken as mine. Delta had lost so many: Shughart and Gordon. Griz. Dan Busch. Earl Fillmore. Brad Hallings was alive but had lost a leg. Matt and I briefly held each other’s gaze and the thought we shared in that moment was, “What do we say? What
can
we say?”
I had just opened my mouth to speak when a massive explosion shook the ground. The world tilted sideways as I was knocked to the pavement.
I heard Gary, in agony: “My legs! My legs!”
I struggled to my feet and saw Matt lying on the concrete. His skull was split and his eyes were closed. I saw brain matter on the pavement. To his right, I saw Gary writhing on the ground, bright arterial blood pulsing out from beneath him, forming a rapidly spreading pool.
“Find Doc Marsh!” I yelled.
Boots pounded, people running toward us. Another explosion rocked the compound. Two soldiers grabbed me and yanked me over the sandbag bunker into the Conex. One of them accidentally stepped on my right boot, and searing pain shot up through my leg. Until then, I didn’t know I’d been hit. The Conex echoed with the muffled thuds of two more mortar rounds.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the attack was over. I scrambled out of the bunker. Gary was still lying on the ground, now gritting his teeth against consuming pain. I saw one of the 160th pilots on the ground beside him. He had his hand buried in Gary’s thigh up to his wrist, trying to pinch off whichever vessel was steadily pumping blood out onto the pavement.
“Find Doc Marsh!” I yelled again. “Find Rob Marsh!”
Medics ran up with a pair of litters and laid them on the ground. “Sir, we need you to get on here and let us take you for treatment,” one of them said to me urgently.
As more medics encircled Gary, I stared at Matt. Only two days before he had risked himself to save others in one of the most lopsided battles in American history. He had lived through that. Only moments ago, I was looking at the life in his eyes.
How could he be gone?
“I’m fine,” I said numbly, waving the medics off. “I’ll walk over.”
But when I tried to walk, I lurched badly, new pain lancing through my calf and thigh.
Shrapnel
, I thought, realizing at the same time that my foot was in worse shape than I’d thought. I gave up and lay down on one of the litters. And when I looked over at the litter next to me, I was shocked to see the man lying on it was Rob Marsh.
His face had already gone grey. From his waist to his thighs, his fatigues were soaked in blood. I hadn’t even known he was near when the mortars hit.
Not him, too
, I thought.
Not him
. I wasn’t sure how my faith would hold up if God let this African hellhole rob us of another single soul.
Medics hoisted the litters and rushed us over to the same M.A.S.H. tent where I had watched the Air Force medical teams sort out living from dead two days earlier. Inside, they placed me on a gurney and Rob right next to me, on a gurney to my left. A medical team worked furiously on him, cutting away his uniform, inserting IVs, attaching lines to monitor his blood pressure and pulse.
I reached over and grabbed Rob’s hand. It was covered in blood. Blood soaked the gurney, dripped on the floor. “Hold on, Rob. You’re gonna make it,” I said.
Slowly, he turned his head and looked at me. His pupils had dilated to tiny dark holes. His face was vividly white.
A doctor explored the wound in Rob’s belly. “Looks like the renal artery’s been severed.” The doctor barked instructions. Medics ran up holding more IV bags. Instruments flashed in the low-hanging light.
Squeezing Rob’s hand, I began to pray silently,
Lord, spare this man’s life
.
The coppery smell of blood hung in the tent.
Don’t let this man die, God. For his family’s sake, spare him
.
“His pressure’s dropping,” a nurse said. “Ninety over fifty.”
The portable monitor hung on a pole between the gurneys. I could see the red numbers ticking lower, lower.
“
Fight
, Rob!” I stared at him intensely, still squeezing his hand. His eyes were closed now. “Don’t give up.”
God, spare this man. Save his life. I ask it in Jesus’s name
.
“Seventy over forty and falling. Pulse forty.” The nurse looked at me. “Sir, let go of his hand.”
“Hold on, Rob! You’re going to make it.”
“Fifty over thirty, falling rapidly. Pulse is thirty.
Sir
, please let go of his hand.”
I ask you in the name of Jesus to save him. Do not let this man die
.
The nurse reached down to pry my fingers away, but I hung on desperately,
willing
Rob to hold on. Somehow, I thought that if I didn’t let go, if I just prayed hard enough, God wouldn’t take this good man with all the rest.
“Pulse twenty, pressure’s bottoming out!”
At that moment, Rob opened his eyes wide and stared into mine, his pupils only pinpoints. “Tell Barbara I love her,” he whispered.
Then Rob Marsh’s eyes rolled back in his head.
I WAS MEDEVACED TO THE UN COMPOUND and into surgery, where doctors removed shrapnel from my legs and foot. When I awoke in recovery, my first thought was Rob. Was he dead? I asked a nurse about him.
“He’s been in surgery,” she said. “He’s still critical. They’re going to medevac him to Germany.” I asked her to take me down to see him. He lay sedated in a bed at the other end of the ward, his face still pale and gray. Sitting in a wheelchair beside his bed, I laid my hand on Rob’s arm and prayed.
The next morning I asked to return to the airfield so I could be with the rest of the troops. I had to use crutches to get around, and spent most of that day on my bunk trying to recuperate. As I lay there, I began to pray.
God, I need You to give me something to help me accept what has happened here. And I really need to come to closure on why this turned out so badly
.
As I was praying, one of the communicators came to my bunk and handed me a fax. It came from a dear friend in Loveland, Colorado, Yale King. There was no message, only a Scripture verse, Isaiah 40:31: “For they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up on wings of eagles, they shall run and not be weary and they shall walk and not faint.”
I can’t explain why Yale sent that fax halfway around the world when he did, but I felt it was exactly the message God wanted me to hear.
While trying to stay off my feet, I also wrote letters to each of the Delta families who lost sons, husbands, and fathers: Shughart, Gordon, Fillmore, Rierson, and Martin. I prayed and asked God to help me put into words how much each man meant to me personally, and to their Delta brothers. I explained their bravery, their commitment and their sacrifice. I paged through my Bible and tried to include Scripture I felt might comfort the families. As I penned each letter, I pictured each man in life and my heart broke again and again. Tears came, blurring the words as I wrote them.
ON OCTOBER 14, 1993, Aidid released Mike Durant. We got word one day in advance, which gave us time to prepare a little ceremony. After a thorough medical checkup at the UN compound, Durant would be coming to the airfield to board a C-141 for home.
The following day, a Black Hawk airlifted Durant and his medical team to the field. By then, the Pentagon had authorized reinforcements—another Ranger battalion and another Delta squadron—bringing our force strength to around six hundred. Under a blue sky, all of us formed two lines flanking the path from the Black Hawk to the Starlifter. Garrison, Tom Matthews and I stood at the end of the line, near the door of the big jet. Somebody got hold of a fifth of Jack Daniels, Durant’s favorite, mixed it with water in a five-gallon jug, and poured a tiny shot of the weak brew for every person in Durant’s receiving line.
The medical team lifted Durant’s litter off the helo and carried him through our welcome committee. On cue, we all toasted him, downed our highballs, and broke into a chorus of “God Bless America.” Then Durant got on the Starlifter and headed home.
By the time Durant flew out of Mogadishu, the Pentagon had supplied us with all the things we asked for before we went in. Now that these assets had rolled in, I wondered how many men would still be alive had we received what we’d asked for to begin with.
And the more I contemplated that question, the more my resentment grew.
I wasn’t blame-shifting. I’m not suggesting our Bakara operation was perfect. Still, I recognize that we executed a completely successful mission. We were outnumbered by thousands, yet completed our mission and achieved an overwhelming victory. But even today I wonder if we could have achieved that at considerably less cost if the Clinton administration had listened to the commanders on the ground.
A couple of days after Durant left I was standing in the JOC when Garrison walked in from the back room. I could tell by his face he wasn’t pleased with what he had to tell me. But his delivery was matter-of-fact, as was his style.
“Just got off the phone with the CINC,” he said around his cigar. “We’ve been directed to start wrapping it up and redeploy.”
Translation: Bill Clinton had caved.
“How quickly do they want us to leave?” I said.
“He didn’t say, but he did tell us to cease operations. The only thing we’re supposed to do at this point is force protection.”
“You know this is going to hit everybody pretty hard. We haven’t completed the mission here.”
“Yeah, I know. I tried to explain to the CINC how we felt, but I think this is coming from above him.”
Garrison and I both knew the men of Task Force Ranger would not want to appear to tuck tail and run. They had been bloodied but victorious in a battle that would now go down in history as a defeat. We knew the men would want to see the mission through, and make sure their brothers had not died for nothing.
Later that afternoon, I called a meeting of the element leaders, and Garrison delivered the news. Around the JOC, the reaction was the same: Resigned silence. I think everyone anticipated it, but they still resented it. Most of us knew the Clinton administration didn’t have the stomach for anything other than an antiseptic war. Our view was just the opposite: If you’re going to commit the military to combat, go all the way. Make the full commitment, and be prepared to accept the cost in human lives.
If the men doing the dying were prepared to accept it, then the men in air-conditioned meetings ought to accept it, too.
WE ARRIVED HOME ON OCTOBER 24TH, 1993. Ten days later, Rob Marsh walked into my office, leaning on a cane. The Task Force Delta medical team had medevaced him to the UN compound and then to Germany, where he’d undergone extensive surgeries. The doctors did a miraculous job on Rob: through them, God gave him a second chance at life.
Within weeks of our return, Aidid would attend new U.S.-brokered peace negotiations, and the UN would release every man Task Force Ranger captured. In June 1995, Aidid would declare himself President of Somalia, but continue to fight for control with rival clans. On August 2, 1996, he would die of gunshot wounds sustained a week earlier in a fight with competing factions. Word was, Osman Atto was involved in his death.
On December 2, 1993, my guys in Bogota called me on my secure telephone at Bragg. “Sir, we wanted to report to you that Pablo Escobar was killed this morning.” It had been just under seventeen months after his escape from “prison.”
Excitement surged through me. I needed some good news. “Tell me what happened,” I said.
“You know the SIGINT equipment we provided to the Colombians? They were out running a patrol in Escobar’s mother’s neighborhood, when Hugo Martinez’s son tracked a signal to Escobar’s safe house. Hugo, Jr. drove by and
saw
Escobar standing by a window.
Saw
him!”
Our trainers back at Medellin had helped the Colombians launch a quick op. A Search Bloc strike team went in, busted down Escobar’s door, chased him out onto a rooftop and killed him: one shot in the butt, and one in each temple.
I called Garrison. “They got Pablo this morning. It’s been a long haul, but it was worth it.”
“That’s good news,” Garrison said. “Congratulations on the good work.”
“Well, thank you, but the Colombians did it,” I said. “We helped them a lot, but they did it.”
Afterward, there was a lot of talk about the headshots. As with Waco, shadowy Delta rumors surfaced again. Even today, people still want to know whether Delta snipers were in on the kill.
I can answer that: no.
The official report from the Colombians was that Escobar was caught in a cross-fire. But that’s a fairly miraculous story given the straight-on nature of the headshot wounds. I’d say it’s more likely the Colombians downed him with a shot in the ass, then walked up and put a
coup de grace
bullet in each side of his head. There you go, Pablo, payback for two decades of murder.
Washington, D.C. and the Balkans 1995–1999
THE FALLOUT FROM SOMALIA provoked Bill Clinton to retreat even further into his philosophy of bloodless war. Because he feared another Mogadishu, Clinton kept American troops from intervening in the Rwandan genocide that resulted in the massacre of as many as a million men, women, and children. America’s commander-in-chief also decided the use of infantry was too dangerous, and as a result, U.S. forces would rely almost exclusively on air power during our activities in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, and later in Kosovo.
Mogadishu produced fallout for me personally, even beyond the pain of losing so many good men. In June 1994, I joined the Joint Chiefs staff as director of the Special Operations Division under General John Shalikashvili, the JCS chairman. I hadn’t been on the Beltway for more than two weeks when an anonymous letter arrived in the hands of every member of the Senate Armed Service Committee. The writer attacked me as incompetent. I had fostered a tense and unlivable atmosphere at Delta, the letter said, and my poor leadership was the reason so many men died in Somalia. The letter triggered an Inspector General investigation into the command climate at Delta.
