Durant Michael J. - In The Company Of Heroes

I FIRST MET M ICHAEL D URANT in April 1997, at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, when I was researching my book Black Hawk Down. Durant was still an active-duty pilot with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, a unit with a top-security clearance, and it had taken me more than a year to get permission to interview him.

When I arrived at Fort Campbell, I was surprised to find myself with not one, but three public affairs officers as escorts. They introduced me to Durant, a fit man with ramrod posture and a very serious manner, and then asked if we minded if they all sat in on the interview. It seems they werent worried about a security breach; they just wanted to hear Durant tell his story.

No wonder. Durants experience is one of the most harrowing in the history of the American military, and one of the most compelling ever told. Shot down over Mogadishu, injured in a hard crash landing, briefly rescued by two brave Delta Force operators, Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart, who died protecting him (and who were awarded posthumous Medals of Honor, the first since the Vietnam War), beset by an angry mob, stripped, and beaten, and certain of his own pending death, only to be spared, carried off into captivity, shot, publicly interrogated, and finally, after eleven days, released. The pilots story was about being thrown into a terrible, exhausting extreme of human experience, and somehow coming back alive. We all listened spellbound.

In a calm, deliberate voice, Durant unfolded the tale. He clearly remembered every detail of the event. Given the lives that were lost around him, Shughart, Gordon, his copilot Ray Frank, his crew chiefs Bill Cleveland and Tommy Field, Durant felt compelled to get the story straight indeed, he told me that the only reason he had agreed to talk to me was his concern that the incident be recorded correctly. In captivity he had kept notes secretly scribbled in the margins of a Bible given him by visiting members of the International Red Cross. His determination to remember his story had begun then, lying in pain on a cot in some dark quarter of Mogadishu, not knowing if he would ever see home again.

When he did get home, Durant found himself in an awkward and often painful predicament. He was celebrated as a hero, but he didnt feel like one.

All I did was get shot down, he told me.

The real heroes were the men who died trying to save him, yet Durant was the one who got to come home and get on with his life. There were offers for books and movie deals, some of which rankled the families of those whose men didnt make it. The army considered Durants performance under terrifying circumstances to have been a model for soldiers in captivity. Durant did a dignified and admirable job of coping with it all, of acknowledging the heartfelt admiration of his countrymen, never failing to downplay his own heroism and salute that of the men who fought to save his life. In light of it all, its little wonder that he took such care in telling the story to me. When I went to Somalia and found the man who had supervised Durants captivity, Abdullahi Hassan, known as Firimbi, he confirmed Durants story down to the smallest detail, and was filled with admiration for the American helicopter pilot.

In writing Black Hawk Down, I was faced with the challenge of blending hundreds of stories, and by necessity Durants, like the others, was reduced to fairly summary form. I am very pleased that he has the opportunity in this book to tell the whole thing in his own words. Having once sat and listened to him myself, I can tell you that you are in for an adventure.

Mark Bowden
January 2003

T HERE ARE MANY REASONS why I decided to write this story. I felt compelled to do so from the beginning, yet put it off for some reason. Knowing well the pain suffered by those involved, I thought that perhaps it might be best to let it become a not-so-distant memory. I have written it at last, because so many people have asked me to do so, and more important, so that when my children are old enough to read it they will have their fathers account of what happened.

This story is about loyalty, duty, honor, and love: loyalty to your comrades, your unit and your country; dedication to duty; honor in the face of extreme adversity; and love for a small boy, very far away, whose life together with his father had only just begun. It is a story about doing what you know is right in your heart, despite what others might think or say. It is about never giving up, ever, under any circumstances.

This story is, of course, all based on my perspective. Therefore, some may remember these events slightly differently. Hopefully, the discrepancies will be only minor, and if not, rest assured that no intentional deviation from the truth is in these pages.

On the morning of October 4, 1993, I swore allegiance to the truth, no matter the consequences. It is one of the most important promises made to God that I have kept.

It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

SORBONNE, PARIS

APRIL 23, 1910