On the 30th anniversary of the Black Hawk Down Incident Lieutenant James Lechner talks about his experience of the battle.

Throughout the battle, the gunship pilots stayed overhead above our positions. While I had been calling in the initial fire mission with Wade and Jones in Barber 51, their wingmen in Barber 52 flew behind them. Meanwhile, the other two AH-6 gunships returned to the airfield. In the pilots’ seats of these two gunships were Chuck Harrison and Chris Smith in Barber 53 and Jerry Harp and Paul White in Barber 54. Back at the airfield when the helicopters landed, the 160th soldiers on the ground raced around like a NASCAR pit crew to top off the gunships with fuel and ammunition. As soon as the first two gunships ran out of ammunition, the two gunships at the airfield lifted off and came roaring back up over the battle at the crash site to continue the constant aerial attacks. The two lead aircraft then came off station and rotated back to the airfield for their turn to refuel and rearm. The gunship pilots and crews kept up this fighting relay all through the night and into the next day. At the same time that the gunships began their devastating firing runs, the lead elements of our assault group reached the first Blackhawk crash site and went into position with nearly every man fighting to hold the Somalis back.

Rangers riding inside Black Hawk Super 64 during a mission over Mogadishu. Captain
Mike Steele is pictured in the center. (Author’s collection)

Even as the Little Birds tore into the Somalis approaching the crash site, there were still numerous gunmen all around us. Just seconds after I sent my last transmission to Barber 51, I felt bullets cracking very close to me and watched them punch two holes into the wall of a metal shed just feet away to my rear. Knowing that Sergeant Keni Thomas and some of the Rangers in his squad were just beyond the shed and behind me, I was afraid they may be firing across my position. I called out “Ranger, Ranger,” which was our verbal recognition signal between members of the task force. As I was trying to yell above the growing din, I felt an impact on my right leg like an electric shock followed instantaneously by an explosion of blood and bone. I had been hit by an AK-47 bullet, which shattered my leg and felt like being struck full force by a sledgehammer. The firing came from a Somali gunman who was hidden, unseen behind a stone wall on the other side of the street and just feet away to my left. He had popped up with his AK-47 over the wall and snapped off a ragged burst. As he fired down into our position the third round had struck me in the leg. When the gunman started firing Mike Steele had immediately rolled violently away to his right, then pulled his radio operator with him. His reaction had been automatic to the bullets peppering the streets and walls around us. Both men ran into the immediately adjacent building, which the Delta assaulters had secured just minutes before.

The Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General Gordon Sullivan, pins the Purple Heart on
the author at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in October 1993, as his wife Beth and
sister Amy look on. (Author’s collection)

Now I found myself lying wounded and in agony in the dusty street. In shock, I prayed to be able to get home to see Beth and my unborn daughter. I began to drag myself, trying to follow Captain Steele toward the building to my right. Then Delta medic Bart Bullock came charging out of the doorway toward me. As the firefight raged, he grabbed the heavy strap on the back of my armored vest and dragged me out of the firing and through the doorway into a tiny courtyard. Another one of the sergeants pressed me down and tried to reassure me as I struggled to control the pain. Blood poured from my shattered leg, spreading out in a pool around me on the dirty floor of the courtyard. Bullock immediately went to work, reaching into the wreckage of my leg, packing the multiple holes with fistfuls of special clotting bandages. Quickly, he pushed the needle of an IV of fluid into my arm to replace my blood loss. He then half rolled me over, cutting away a flap in my pants to expose my backside, and injected me with a syrette of morphine. The drug rolled in and pushed the intense pain away. He told me to make sure I let any other docs who treated me later know I had already been given one dose of the powerful painkiller. After a few minutes, starting to stabilize, I first asked Bullock if the bleeding had stopped and then for his assessment. He said it was bad, there were a couple of big holes in my leg, but, amazingly, the bleeding had stopped. “Can they save it?” I asked. He was non-committal, but said it may be possible. The initial sight of my blood flowing around me and the damage to my leg left me shocked, but I thanked God for the miracle that the bleeding had stopped. I would deal with the consequences of trying to rehabilitate it later. When Bullock finished working on me, I was eased onto a stretcher and slid farther back into the Somali house. A Somali woman and some small children were huddled there against the wall. In the growing shadows, I could see their wide eyes and wondered how they would remember all of this. One of the Delta assaulters searched the house and found an AK-47, which he immediately disabled.

Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, in the desert
outside of Mogadishu in September 1993. (Author’s collection)

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