Day of the Rangers by Leigh Neville

Author:Leigh Neville [Neville, Leigh]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781472824288
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2018-09-19T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

“RANGER, RANGER. YOU DIE SOMALIA”

“Every time we stopped, bad shit was happening.”

Sergeant Matt Eversmann, Chalk 4

At the Super 64 crash site, it didn’t take long for Durant to be spotted by the Somali mob. They swarmed over him, mercilessly punching and kicking him, and tearing off his equipment. A militiaman hauntingly declared, “Ranger, Ranger. You die Somalia!” as the mob attacked him. At one horrific point he was clubbed over the head with a dismembered arm, torn from one of his crew mates or from one of the fallen Delta snipers. His nose, cheekbone, and eye socket were all broken in the onslaught. Durant recounted:

It was minute to minute. I think initially, I thought it was over. I mean, we’d been briefed on what they would probably do. When I do talk about this with people, I compare it to what happened to the Blackwater guys at the bridge in Fallujah [in 2004].* I mean, that’s what they did. It’s the same thing. So, I’m thinking that’s what’s gonna happen and I can’t stop them.1

At least two of his compatriots suffered such a grisly fate, torn limb from limb in a macabre display of brutality. All of Task Force Ranger knew that this was the grim likelihood if they fell into Somali hands. Earlier that year, Nigerian peacekeepers had been mutilated and Somali civilians had been reported as playing football with their decapitated heads. Capture was a pilot’s greatest fear.

The mob tried to tear Durant’s uniform off but when they discovered he was not wearing any underwear they inexplicably left his trousers on. He was still being beaten senseless by the mob when gunshots rang out and SNA militiamen stepped forward to stop the crowds. The SNA claimed Durant as the property of Aideed and carried him roughly away to a waiting truck, surrounded by the mobs that still continued to strike him despite the presence of the militia. The women were particularly vicious, Durant noted that they were grabbing his genitals and attempting to castrate him.

“At the crash site, I could only see men, but as I was carried through the streets there were women who attacked me. I couldn’t see much, but caught glimpses of them,” Durant explained. He was later told by his captors that the Somali women were indeed the cruelest when exacting revenge. One wonders if women were involved in the desecration of the flight crew and snipers’ bodies. Nothing, not even the vaunted SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistence, and Escape] School, had prepared Durant for the experience of being surrounded by a violent, baying crowd intent upon his death. “Even if they [SERE] tried, I don’t see how it could come anywhere close to the real experience,” he added.

“They [the Somalis] grab Durant, he’s the last one they find, they strip off all of his equipment, and an elder steps forward and says ‘Let’s keep this one alive for negotiations,’” commented Tom DiTomasso. James Lechner noted an alternative motivation for the capture of Durant:

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