Amid Disaster, Amazing Valor

By Kevin Fedarko

The Mogadishu street where Cliff Wolcott died on Oct. 3 last year doesn't even have a name. For Wolcott, one of 15 helicopter pilots who took part in the ill-fated operation aimed at capturing warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid, luck ran out when he spotted several armed Somalis firing rocket-propelled grenades at his Black Hawk attack helicopter. Turning the craft broadside to give his gunners a bet- ter shot, Wolcott became a perfect target. A grenade exploded into the side of the chopper. "Super six-one is going down," he yelled into his headset, "Six-one is going in." Those would be his last words. The crash of Wolcott's Black Hawk transformed what had been planned as a textbook operation to decapitate Somalia's most powerful warlord into the longest sustained fire fight American soldiers have endured since the Vietnam War. The human costs of that raid, which took the life of 18 Americans and wounded more than 75 others, altered the very nature of the U.S. peacekeeping mission in Somalia, shocking the American public and forcing from the President a promise to remove all U.S. troops by the end of March.

Many of the details of that debacle are well known: the aborted mission to rein in Aidid, the desperate efforts of several relief convoys to reach and extricate the trapped Task Force Rangers and -- above all, the capture, beating and humiliation of helicopter pilot Michael Durant. One part of the story has gone largely unreported, however: the 15-hour pitched battle that took place around the wreckage of Wolcott's chopper, an extraordinary display of valor by 99 men under calamitous circumstances. TIME has been told that two of those men who gave their life to protect Durant -- Sergeant First Class Randall Shugart and Master Sergeant Gary Gordon -- have been recommended to receive the nation's highest award for valor, the Congressional Medal of Honor. In addition, more than a dozen other Rangers and airmen will soon be given special awards. During the past six weeks, more than 19 of these soldiers agreed to be interviewed, some for the first time. This is their story.

At 3:40 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 3, six MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and eight MH-6 and AH-6 "Little Birds" headed for a building in southeastern Mogadishu where Aidid's henchmen were reported to be meeting. Within minutes, nearly 50 commandos from Delta Force, the premier U.S. counterterrorism unit, and several hundred Army Rangers had captured 24 of Aidid's closest colleagues. While helicopters from Task Force 160, the Army's special-operations air wing, fluttered overhead, the Rangers herded the prisoners into a nearby courtyard and awaited a ground convoy to take them away. Then came the radio report that would change everything: "One of the birds is down."

Karl Maier, 37, was at the controls of an unarmed MH-6 Little Bird helicopter when he spotted Wolcott's Black Hawk heeling over nose first. The stricken craft smashed into an alley about 500 yds. northeast of the target site the Rangers had first assaulted, its rotors chewing off the corner of a one-story building. Maier's decision was instantaneous. "I'm going in," he announced into his headset, and swung his aircraft toward the street corner. The space was so narrow that his blades barely cleared the houses on both sides as he set his bird on the ground.

The intersection was already filled with Somali fighters bombarding Wolcott's wreckage with AK-47 assault rifles and grenades. Facing directly into the enfilade, Maier's only defense was a light submachine gun, which he fired from the cockpit with his right hand. That left the pilot only his left hand to steady the chopper, while copilot Keith Jones struggled to load two injured Rangers aboard, then yelled at Maier to take off. Left behind were a handful of wounded Rangers, plus the bodies of Wolcott and his copilot, Donovan Briley, 33, of Little Rock, Arkansas.

As he ascended, Maier waved to a small detachment of Rangers led by First Lieut. Tom DiTomasso, 26, that had just fought its way from the original target near the Olympic Hotel. Surveying the scene, one of DiTomasso's younger infantrymen, Sergeant Anton Berendsen, 19, thought to himself, "For sure we are going to die."

Not far from the wreckage of Wolcott's chopper, pilot Dan Jollota was struggling to hold his aircraft steady while 15 Rangers "fast-roped" to the ground by sliding down a 40-ft. line at a rate only slightly more controlled than a free fall. In the cockpit, Jollota could hear the thunk-thunk-thunk of his rotors punctuated by the deadly whoosh of rocket-propelled grenades. With two Rangers still on the ropes, the chopper took a direct hit that chewed holes in a main rotor blade. The steel-nerved pilot bit off the impulse to flee. "It was remarkable," said a crewman aboard a nearby helicopter. "They just sat there as the RPGS whistled around them." Only when his men had slid to safety did Jollota begin limping back to base.

On the ground, the Rangers saw that Wolcott could not have crashed in a worse position. Smashed like a broken eggshell, the cockpit had hopelessly entangled the body of the pilot. To make matters worse, the craft had come to rest on a slight rise in the street, exposing anyone near it to the Somalis' devastating cross fire. "Dust got in my eyes from so many bullets popping off the walls," recalled Specialist John Waddell, 20.

As the fusillade increased, the Rangers ripped up the bulletproof Kevlar mats from the floor of Wolcott's Black Hawk to fashion a makeshift bunker. The shield, however, provided only the barest protection, as Master Sergeant Scott Fales, 36, swiftly discovered. An Army special-forces medic who has saved 88 lives during his career, Fales was working on several wounded men when he felt himself slammed to the street. A bullet had ripped through his leg. Hunkering down next to the wreckage, he quickly bandaged the wound and then resumed tending his comrades.

While Fales divided his attention between saving lives and fighting off the Somalis -- "I'd fire a few rounds to push them back, then put my rifle across my lap and turn around to do my medical duties" -- several Rangers pulled at the crumpled wreckage to free Wolcott and the copilot. To no avail: it would eventually take a humvee with a towrope to pry the bodies free. Meanwhile, Somalis pressed ever closer, poking their weapons around doorways and firing blindly into the street.

By then the Rangers could hear radio reports that a relief force led by Lieut. Colonel Danny McKnight, 42, was trying to smash its way through to them. They listened anxiously as a column of humvees and lightly armored trucks came within several blocks of their position -- and was forced to turn back because of repeated ambushes and heavy casualties.

As bullets ricocheted murderously off the alley walls, the men decided it would be suicidal to remain on the street. Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Bray, 27, kicked in the door of a house, one of several buildings the soldiers would eventually occupy. For the next 12 hours, the pilots of Task Force 160 would provide the only lifeline keeping these besieged Rangers and Delta Force troops alive. Dropping to rooftop level in the face of intense fire, the Little Birds repeatedly emptied their rotating machine guns, then flitted back to the airport. Several pilots flew as many as nine missions; not one could recall a fight so ferocious that the fuel lasted longer than the ammunition.

The audacity of the Task Force 160 pilots astounded the men trapped below. Despite the fact that the airmen had already seen two Black Hawks destroyed and one damaged so badly that it barely made it back to the airport, the pilots refused to back off. Waddell, whose platoon suffered 70% casualties, described the airmen's performance as "breathtaking, an incredible display of heroism. Those guys knew that without their help, we weren't going to make it out."

When the Rangers radioed for gun support, the pilots would zoom in to plant a tracer round or two in the street. Then the Rangers would call back a correction in aim, sometimes directing fire as close as 15 ft. from their positions, and the gunships would return for a serious pass. As one Little Bird whizzed by, its guns blazing, Bray felt dozens of hot projectiles * striking his body. "I thought I'd had it," he recalled. It took Bray several seconds to realize it was not bullets raining down on him but the brass casings pouring out of the chopper's twin Gatling guns.

Sheltered in a warren of houses and courtyards, Bray and his men now faced another complication: more than a dozen Somali women and children who were huddling, terrified, against the walls. Fearing that if the civilians were released they would either be killed in the street or serve as spotters for Somali sharpshooters, the Rangers corralled the Somalis in a back room. Somalis would later charge that the Americans were using women and children as hostages. In fact, say the soldiers, the reverse was true: "We were under such tight rules of engagement that we couldn't effectively return fire," said Black Hawk pilot Mike Goffena. "Even when we knew there were bad guys, we wouldn't shoot if civilians were in the way."

As casualties rose, the medics were forced to dart from one stricken soldier to another. Crouched near the wreckage of Wolcott's chopper, Fales suddenly spotted five grenades sailing over a wall in his direction. Yelling to warn his comrades, he threw his body over two wounded soldiers to shield them from shrapnel. Meanwhile, Technical Sergeant Tim Wilkinson, 36, a Special Forces medic, also nestled next to the downed helicopter, heard a call from the other side of the street. It was Bray; his men needed medical attention. Yelling across the street for them to "lay down some cover," Wilkinson grabbed his medic's bag, put his head down and ran. He didn't even bother to bring his rifle. "It's just like stealing a base in baseball," he said of the 45 yds. of open street raked by enemy fire through which he sprinted. "Once you make the decision to go, you just go." In the next several hours, he would dodge death in this manner two more times.

It was nearly dawn when the U.N. armored relief column finally punched its way through to the cornered troops. One by one, the Rangers and Delta Force men slipped from doorway to doorway to reach the comparative safety of the rescue vehicles. As Black Hawk pilot Jerry Izzo headed for his bunk in the room he had shared with Cliff Wolcott, he glanced at his fallen friend's bed. The blankets were turned down, and on the pillow lay a paperback novel, still open at the page Wolcott had been reading the previous afternoon. "I closed my eyes," Izzo remembers, "and I could hear Cliff's voice."

With reporting by Bruce van Voorst/Washington