It has been thirty years since that October 1993 week 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
Fifty 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 to me over the telephone. “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 then 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 felt 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. Helicopters 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 1991 conflict, 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 is an adventure,” recalled Durant. “But when you lose people, it brings you back to reality, and you remember how so many pay the ultimate price in war.”
SURVIVAL
Durant’s best-selling 2003 book “In the Company of Heroes” provided material for this piece. It chronicled 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 after his release 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 41 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 prevented 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 2,000.
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 again flew 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 worked together to raise six children. They moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where Mike ran his own company, Pinnacle Solutions, an engineering and training services business that developed flight simulators and the like. Durant received the “2013 Vetrepreneur Award” for his company’s efforts on behalf of veterans. Pinnacle Solutions grew steadily and, at one time, employed almost 100 people.
During the phone conversation, Durant explained that the events from October 1993 remain with him. He spoke candidly about American policies and policymakers, from the Somalian conflict to the Afghanistan War.
“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 even General Powell 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’d 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 watched 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 Madison, Alabama. In 2022, he was a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama. After taking an early lead in the GOP primary competition, he eventually finished third.
The Durants’ kids are now grown up. The youngest, Michael, was an ice hockey player.
In Alabama?
“Yep,” said Durant. “We have ice in Alabama. And Michael was on a travel team, decisively engaged in ice hockey operations. The problem was that the trips could be long ones. Like 7 ½ hour drives to Columbus, Ohio.”
Durant often thinks of New Hampshire and savors his visits “home.”
“I was always excited to see the Red Sox in the World Series,” said Durant. “Of course. But it broke my heart when Wilderness Ski Area closed.”
Durant occasionally returned to the Granite State 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 one year 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!