Black Hawk Down (55 page)

“Task Force Ranger Operations in Somalia 3-4 October 1993,” U.S. Special Operations
Command and U.S. Army Special Operations Command History Office, June 1, 1994
(unpublished). The official twelve-page summary of the battle with fifty-six pages of
brief accounts of individual heroism.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my friends Max King and Bob Rosenthal at The Philadelphia Inquirer
for their exceptional vision and support. Black Hawk Down began as a newspaper project and
is the kind of story no other newspaper in America would have undertaken. Max and Rosey
saw the potential for it early on, and enlarged my own ambitious for it. By helping to
craft my first draft of this story into an episodic newspaper series, David Zucchino was
its first editor and substantially contributed to this book's final shape. I owe a great
deal to photographer Peter Tobia who made the very difficult trip to Mogadishu with me in
the summer of 1997, and returned with a stunning collection of work documenting that
blasted city.

I have made several friends for life reporting this story. Since I had no military
experience of my own the last two years have been a crash course in martial terminology,
tactics, and ethics. I have learned a great deal from Lieutenant Colonel L. H. “Bucky”
Burruss, U.S. Army (ret.), a great soldier and fine writer, who was kind enough to seek me
out and act as a first reader and. expert adviser. Master Sergeant Paul Howe and Dan
Schilling, a former air force combat controller, were also early readers and made
thoughtful and helpful suggestions. I would not have been able to get started on this
story without the help of Jim Smith, a former Ranger captain whose son, Jamie, was killed
in Mogadishu. Jim kindly introduced me to some of his son's fellow Rangers. Walt Sokalski
and Andy Lucas of the U.S. Special Operations Command public relations office set up the
initial interviews with Rangers and 160th SOAR helicopter pilots that launched this
project. Thanks to Jack Atwater of the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum for his quick course in
Weaponry 101. These are just a few of the hundreds of military people who have generously
shared their time and expertise, some of whom have asked me not to name them. I am
grateful to Ibrahim Robles Farah for his help in getting Peter and me in and out of
Somalia.

Thanks again to my very patient wife, Gail, and our family, Aaron, Anya, B.J., Danny, and
Ben, who permit me to live and work in a way that often complicates their own lives. My
agent, Rhoda Weyr, has proved her unerring judgment once more by steering me to Morgan
Entrekin, whom I feel very lucky to have as an editor, publisher, and friend, and
Assistant Editor Amy Hundley. Together with the rest of the very smart and successful team
at Grovel Atlantic, they have created one of the finest care and feeding systems for
writers currently in existence.