NEW HAMPSHIRE’S MIKE DURANT – A HERO’S ODYSSEY
It’s now been
twenty years since that October day in Somalia when Mike Durant saw what hell
looked like. A Black Hawk helicopter pilot, Durant was shot down during the
battle for Mogadishu. All the members of his crew were dead. A rescue team moved
him away from the aircraft and placed him next to a wall. But now they, too, were
all dead. Durant had a broken leg, a broken back and was out of ammunition when
a horde of Somalis descended upon him, intent on beating him to death. Already
suffering a bullet wound, Durant helplessly endured the blows. A Somali fighter
smashed Durant’s face and broke Mike’s nose and eye socket with what Mike first
thought was a club. Then, to his horror, Durant realized he was being beaten to
death with the severed arm of one of his comrades. He knew his death was
imminent and then he heard a gunshot.
BERLIN BOY
Forty years ago Mike
Durant boarded a ski bus in Berlin to head north on Route 16 and
then west on Route 26 with dozens of other youngsters to ski at the Wilderness
Ski Area in Dixville Notch.
“I loved skiing,” Durant recalled in a recent
interview. “I loved the snow. Like so many other North Country boys, I also
loved getting out into the woods and hunting. And yes, I also played hockey.”
That Durant played hockey was no surprise, Berlin being
“Hockey-Town USA.”
As that ski bus headed for the slopes Durant’s friends
in adjacent seats surely had no inkling that in 1993 their buddy’s face would
be the first one featured simultaneously on the covers of TIME, NEWSWEEK, and
U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT. That bruised and bloodied face became the face of
an American military encounter that would change the country and the world—the first battle with Al Qaeda.
AMERICAN HOSTAGE
The gunshot was
meant to quiet, not to kill. A Somali leader with some authority saw that Durant
had more value as a hostage/prisoner than as a corpse. Dirt was thrown into
Durant’s face and a rag was stuffed down his throat. His agony became
excruciating when his captors kicked his broken bones and then he realized was
“being carried aloft on the thundering wave of a mosh pit from hell.”
It was October
3, and Durant would face 11 days of agonizing captivity as followers of Somali
warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed
stared down the United States. They used Durant as a pawn so tribal fighters could
seek concessions from an American superpower caught up in an unexpectedly
brutal urban battleground. Durant was confined to a small room to be
interrogated and indoctrinated by select Somalis who knew some English. His
wounds were not treated, but he was given water and allowed to live, as
negotiations continued between Somalis and Americans.
Though the
Americans did not know Durant’s location and could not rescue him, they knew he
was alive. A helicopter flew over Mogadishu with loudspeakers blaring: “Mike Durant!
We will not leave without you!”
The messages gave
Durant hope, but he knew he was dying from his wounds and was running out of
time.
“If you guys are
preparing a rescue mission, you’d better hurry,” Durant thought. “Or else
you’ll be rescuing a corpse.”
The pain worsened
by the hour as Durant suffered in the brutal African heat. When he could, he’d
drift off into a semi-sleep and dream of skiing at Wilderness and of white
Christmases in New Hampshire—and then awaken to his agonizing reality.
It never snows in
Mogadishu.
DREAMS OF FLYING
Durant’s father was a sergeant in the N.H.
National Guard and Mike always respected the military. After a pilot named Joe
Brigham took Durant for a flight over Mt. Washington, Mike dreamed of becoming
an army pilot. He enlisted after graduating from Berlin High School in 1979. He
survived basic training and follow-on schools and eventually flight school.
After earning his wings he was assigned to the 101st Airborne
Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky and soon qualified for The United
States Army’s elite 160th Special
Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), also known as the Night Stalkers. Durant’s career took him to
Korea, Panama, and the Persian Gulf for Operation Desert Storm.
During that 1991conflict Durant flew missions
deep into Iraq, looking for SCUD missiles, eventually finding a site and firing
it up. He also experienced the pain of losing comrades.
“Flying in combat can be an adventure,”
recalled Durant. “But when you lose people it brings you back to reality and
you remember how so many people pay the ultimate price in war.”
SURVIVAL
Durant’s
best-selling 2003 book “In the Company of Heroes” provided material for this
story. It chronicles his Somali ordeal.
“October 9,
1993. On my seventh day as a prisoner of war, I found religion …. Literally
…”
Durant’s
captors allowed a “Care Package” to be delivered to him and among its items was
a Bible. Not only did Durant draw inspiration from certain passages, but he
wrote coded notes in special places, thinking that his captors would let him
keep the Holy Book when he was released and the notes might prove invaluable in
piecing things together later on.
Negotiations
continued while Durant lay a prisoner and American officials conveyed to Aideed’s
people that very, very, very bad things would happen to all of them if Durant
didn’t survive. Finally, on October 14, with the help of the International Red
Cross, the Granite Stater and his Bible were placed on a stretcher and
transported to an exchange point where he was reunited with his countrymen.
Mike Durant had
escaped from hell.
A HUMANITARIAN MISSION
American involvement in Somalia came about during
the last days of the Bush Administration, in December of 1992. The country had
descended into lawless chaos, which combined with famine meant that tens of
thousands were dying of starvation. Because competing warlords were preventing
food and humanitarian assistance from getting to the starving people, American
military forces embarked upon Operation Restore Hope to secure food distribution
points and routes. The mission evolved during 1993, as forces from the U.S. and
elsewhere were inevitably drawn into the internecine fighting. The Clinton
administration significantly increased the American military presence in
Somalia and eventually the Americans were seen as opponents to Aideed, the most
prominent warlord. Food distribution was threatened and both sides took
casualties. Eventually a major mission was planned for October 3 to capture
Aideed and his top lieutenants. While many of the targeted individuals were
indeed captured, the mission was disrupted when a Black Hawk helicopter was shot
down by a rocket propelled grenade. Later, Durant’s helicopter was also shot
down. The battle resulted in 18 American deaths, with
80 wounded. Estimates of Somali casualties range from 1,500 to 3,000.
BACK TO AMERICA
Given the
severity of his wounds and injuries, Durant’s rehabilitation took a long time,
but he still dreamed of flying again. He was told that the prospect of
rejoining the Night Stalkers in a flight status was doubtful, but he
persevered. In 1995 he ran the Marine Corps Marathon to prove his fitness and
eventually he did again fly Black Hawks.
In 2001 Durant
retired from the Army and married Lisa desRoches, the widow of a helicopter
pilot who was killed on a training mission. The two have worked together to
raise six children. They live in Huntsville, Alabama, where Mike runs his own
company, Pinnacle Solutions, an engineering and training services business that
develops flight simulators and the like. Durant received the "2013
Vetrepreneur Award" for his company’s efforts on behalf of veterans.
Pinnacle Solutions has grown steadily and now employs 81 people.
During an October 29th interview, Durant explained that
the events from October of 1993 are always with him. He speaks candidly about
American policies and policy-makers.
“Looking back, I wish that the Clinton administration
would have been more responsive to the requests they received from the leaders
on the ground in Somalia,” said Durant. “Three things in particular would have
made us more successful. An aircraft carrier would have been a huge plus. As it
was, we were sleeping 50 yards from the bad guys on the ground. Requested
AC-130 gunships would have come in handy on Oct. 3 and 4. And leaders on the
ground requested we have tanks and armored vehicles which were never delivered—which is why we suffered so many casualties.”
Secretary of Defense Les Aspin took the fall. He resigned
in December of 1993 and died in 1995.
“I met Secretary Aspin at a memorial ceremony at Fort
Bragg,” said Durant. “He could see the consequences of his decision-making on
the faces of the families there. I think it contributed to his death.”
Meeting the families of Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart was
especially poignant for Durant. The two soldiers were Delta Force operators who
jumped from a helicopter to try to protect Durant and the crash site. Both were
killed and each received the Congressional Medal of Honor.
“When I first
saw Gary and Randy I thought I’d been saved,” recalled Durant. It was the
greatest feeling. Then I realized it was only those two, against hundreds of
Somalis. They never had a chance.”
Durant
treasures a letter he received from Randy’s widow, Stephanie, which thanked him
for giving Randy’s death a purpose. “I can look at you and see that his efforts
were not in vain… Because of your bravery and refusal to be captured, I can
sleep at night.”
Durant likens
the Somali experience to the Vietnam experience, in that American forces were
hamstrung by politics. He added that he has been asked repeatedly about the
2012 Benghazi fiasco where four Americans died in Libya.
“Benghazi was
like Somalia in that our people didn’t get the support they deserved and they
paid for it with their lives.”
Naturally,
Durant has seen Ridley Scott’s movie “Black Hawk Down.” Actor Ron Eldard played Durant in the movie.
“Ron seemed
like a good guy,” recalled Durant, who met many cast members. “Although he
really didn’t look, talk, or act like me. They mostly seemed like good guys,
although Jeremy Piven was an ass.”
Piven played
Cliff Wolcott, the pilot of the first Black Hawk shot down.
TODAY
Today Mike and Lisa Durant live in Huntsville.
Three of their six children still live at home. The youngest, Michael, is an
ice hockey player.
In Alabama?
“Yep,” said Durant. “We have ice in Alabama. And
Michael’s on a travel team, decisively engaged in ice hockey operations. The
problem is that the trips can be long ones. Like a 7 ½ hour drive to Columbus,
Ohio.”
Durant often thinks of New Hampshire and savors
his visits “home.”
“Of course I was excited to see the Red Sox in the
World Series,” said Durant. “But it broke my heart to hear that Wilderness Ski
Area closed.”
Durant was in the Granite State last winter to
play in the Concord Black Ice Pond Hockey Tournament at White’s Park.
How did he do?
“Well, I’m proud to say that my team was the
‘Over-40 B-Division’ champs,” said Durant.
You can take the man out of Hockey-Town, but you
can’t take Hockey-Town out of the man!
