Former Army Ranger James Lechner shined a light on the brutal Battle of Mogadishu.
The Battle of Mogadishu (commonly known as Black Hawk Down) was a brutal fight in Somalia that started on October 3, 1993 and carried into the next day.
A small group of Army Rangers, Delta Force operators, 24th STS members and a few SEAL Team 6 commandos were sent to Somalia to stop a genocide being carried out.
What started as a capture and extraction mission turned into hell on Earth after multiple helicopters were hit by Somalia fighters.
There have been a lot of stories that have come out about the battle since 1993, including a hit movie starring Josh Hartnett.
Lechner was a member of the 75th Rangers in Somalia and suffered a gruesome gunshot wound to his tibia.
The details sound horrifying.
“Took an AK-47 round right below the knee. Blew out my tibia, and as you know, when bone gets hit, it becomes shrapnel. So that shredded my leg. The bullet went down, came out above my ankle. I had a grapefruit sized hole in the front of my leg and the bullet had shredded the whole left side,” Lechner explained in a recent interview with Shawn Ryan.
He continued, “One of the Delta [Force] medics…came running out of the building, and now there’s firing bullets just cracking down the street continually. Came through that fire, grabbed me by my vest, dragged me inside the building that they had fortified. It became the casualty collection point. He gets me in there. Lots of blood. Hit two arteries. So, I had arterial bleeding and blood was just extremely profuse going on.”
Lechner said the scene was so intense that the blood on the floor was “two inches deep.”
You can watch his full comments in the video below starting around 1:39:00, and let me know your thoughts at David.Hookstead@outkick.com.
Ultimately, 18 Americans were killed in the Battle of Mogadishu and dozens more were wounded. Delta Force snipers Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart both earned the Medal of Honor for inserting into Mike Durant’s crash site and fighting to the bitter and bloody end.
While the battle was horrific, it’s also worth noting there isn’t a single other military on the planet that could have been put in that situation and come out the way it did.
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It was a testament to American exceptionalism and refusal to quit, despite a city being cut loose against a very small fighting force.
What do you think about the Battle of Mogadishu? Let me know at David.Hookstead@outkick.com.