In The Company Of Heroes
The Personal Story Behind Black Hawk Down
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4.8 • 169 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Piloting a U.S. Army Special Operations Blackhawk over Somalia, Michael Durant was shot down with a rocket-propelled grenade on October 3, 1993. With devastating injuries, he was taken prisoner by a Somali warlord. With revealing insight and emotion, he tells the story of what he saw, how he survived, and the courage and heroism that only soldiers under fire could ever know.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The 1993 battle in Mogadishu between American soldiers and Somali militiamen gets a human-scale retelling in this jaunty but harrowing memoir. Durant went down with the Black Hawk he piloted; after a terrifying crash in which his back and leg were broken and a violent fire-fight, he was held captive for ten days by Somali militiamen as a pawn in their stand-off with American peacekeeping forces. Frightened and in agony from his wounds, he called on his survival training to help him endure, but he also relied on the empathy of some of his Somali captors, especially the gruff but sympathetic guard who feeds, bathes and bonds with him. Durant is a gung-ho army honcho, not much given to introspection, and the book often takes leave of the captivity narrative to recount his exploits in conflicts from Panama to Iraq, and to celebrate the bravado and leave-no-man-behind esprit-de-corps of his elite"Night Stalkers" helicopter unit. The writing is full of terse jargon, weapons specs, helicopter-assault procedural and special-ops swagger ("They were the kind of professionals who could pick off a rabbit from a roller-coaster with a BB gun"). But overall the story remains taut, and the prose evokes both the chaos of combat and the anxiety of confinement. Durant's perspective on the Somalia conflict is somewhat limited and jingoistic ("Mogadishu was Tombstone, and we were Wyatt Earp"), but his is a revealing portrait of the human face of war. 16 pages of b&w photos.
Customer Reviews
idk
Reading this as a teenager really opened my eyes as to what my dad and a lot of other men and women went and go through during their time overseas during a war. My Dad had witnessed his best friend being mentally tortured by what was going on until he was eventually K.I.A. by an I.E.D. in an abandoned car. My friends dad has witnessed the vehicle in front of his get hit by an R.P.G. killing 3 of his friends. Even though I had watched the movie [Black Hawk Down] and then read the book, it still was a great read.
Excellent
Many books are written about Delta Force and the Seals and rightly so but little is said about the special men and women who get them to and from the fight. Especially moving is the account of being shot down and held for captive during the events that inspired "Blackhawk Down". The skill, courage, and sacrifice of these men & women deserves our respect, thanks, and for us to always remember what they give for us and our country. God bless you Michael Durant and thank you for your sacrifice.
Great read, humbled.
To say this story is an inspiration and insight into courage and teamwork is an understatement. Those of us who have served, gone through SERE and felt the sting of captivity, simulated or real, can only begin to sense what CWO Durant went through. Thank you for sharing your story.