![]() Struecker, 52, led his ground unit through the city three times as the battle raged. special operators would spend 18 hours running and fighting their way through the city’s streets, according to the Army. It set off a frantic mission to secure the locations of the downed Black Hawks and recover wounded and fallen Americans. After the assault force nabbed Aidid’s aides, militants attacked the troops and shot down two MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters with rocket-propelled grenades - something the Army had never seen before, officials said. force of less than 200 operators would find itself in a fight with some 10,000 to 12,000 well-armed Somali fighters. What I don't think anyone anticipated was the sheer numbers.” “You know as soon as you get in it’s going to be a fight, and it's going to be a fight the whole time that you're in there, and it's going to be a fight until you get out. “This is the middle of bad-guy territory, and we’re kicking down the door and walking into the heart of it,” he said. It was the Rangers’ seventh mission in Somalia, but this one, Struecker said, was in broad daylight in a well-defended part of Mogadishu with an unknown number of enemy fighters. The helicopter assault force went in first to search for the warlord’s henchmen and the ground force came into the market later, according to the Army’s description of the battle. Struecker, then a staff sergeant with the Rangers’ 3rd Battalion, was leading a squad assigned as the ground reaction force to support the helicopter-borne troops entering Aidid’s stronghold in the Bakara Market. The assault force was inserted into the city by helicopter, and another element was to follow that group into the city in Humvees, according to the Army, which said many elements of the battle remain classified despite the enormous attention it has received publicly. peacekeeping troops working to end civil war in Somalia. The battle broke out as American special operators - primarily Rangers, and other elite soldiers from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, or Delta Force - set out to capture two top lieutenants of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, who was responsible for attacks on U.N. Collett, then a specialist, was a squad automatic weapon gunner with the Army’s 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment during the battle made famous by the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.” (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes) ![]() Special Operations Command for actions in the infamous October 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. 1, 2021 at Fort Benning, Ga., by Army Gen. Collett is presented the Silver Star on Friday, Oct. ![]() The Battle of Mogadishu, in which 18 American soldiers were killed, was later made famous by the best-selling book “Black Hawk Down” and the Hollywood movie of the same name. The Silver Stars presented in a ceremony at Fort Benning, Ga., for those who were serving 28 years ago in the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment were upgrades of Bronze Star medals with combat “V” for valor that the Rangers were presented months after returning from Somalia. “I’d been to combat a couple of times before Somalia and a lot of times after, but I’ve never seen heroism, I’ve never seen fighting, like we saw among these guys on the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia,” said Struecker, one of 18 veterans who fought in the battle officially known as Operation Gothic Serpent and awarded the Silver Star for valor Friday. During 23 years in the Army - much of it in the elite ranks of the 75th Ranger Regiment - Jeff Struecker saw combat in Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan, but nothing compared to the infamous October 1993 gunfight through the streets of Mogadishu. ![]()
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