Keni Thomas - The Story Behind Black Hawk Down

 

Brian Lord:

I'm Brian Lord and on the show today, we have special forces, army ranger and award-winning country music artist Keni Thomas, as he shares his part in the story made famous by Ridley Scott's movie, Black Hawk Down. I started the interview by asking Keni how that Dan Mogadishu started.

Keni Thomas:

We had been in the country for almost three months. We'd been running nonstop raids into the city. We were after this Aadid, and he was a warlord and he was our most-wanted. And we had a, you know, a tier level of most-wanted people underneath him that we were after. We'd run 44 raids, six air assaults, and we still didn't have this guy. So it was taking its toll because we were all pretty tired. We were constantly going, going, going. So on this day off was a Sunday. The 3rd of October was Sunday afternoon. So there everybody's doing whatever they do. People are out playing volleyball. I was writing a letter home to my mom and, the guy walks out of the airplane hangar, and that's, it goes down. He just yells get it on, which meant gear up. And that's just like a firefighter, police officer. So that's how it starts. Everybody drops what we're doing. We go in and a, and a mission comes down. So what we're told is that there's two HVT- so high-value targets are in this building in the middle of downtown Mogadishu. It was a daylight raid. Daylight raids are not preferred and, just because the lights are on and they can see, they can see you. Right? And I always say, they call them bad guys for a reason because bad guys don't wave at you when you show up at their house and shoot back. So if you know, people are going to shoot, it's preferred, they don't see you. So we would rather go in at night, but it was a daylight raid. So we knew going in, it was a bad part of town. We knew it was a tough mission, but 35 minutes into it, man, we were done. We extracted the two guys are in that building. We got him, the, there was a couple dozen other people that we know who they were. We pulled all of them out and the trucks down the street come driving up. We throw all the bad guys on the trucks, trucks drive away. We're done. We're waiting to go home. And then just like that is when the first helicopter got shot down. And if anybody's familiar with the story, they understand that the Black Hawk Down, that's where that title came from because everybody had a radio on at that time. And somebody starts yelling over the radio. There's a Black Hawk

Brian Lord:

I'm Brian Lord and on the show today, we have special forces, army ranger and award-winning country music artist Keni Thomas, as he shares his part in the story made famous by Ridley Scott's movie, Black Hawk Down. I started the interview by asking Keni how that Dan Mogadishu started.

Keni Thomas:

We had been in the country for almost three months. We'd been running nonstop raids into the city. We were after this Aadid, and he was a warlord and he was our most-wanted. And we had a, you know, a tier level of most-wanted people underneath him that we were after. We'd run 44 raids, six air assaults, and we still didn't have this guy. So it was taking its toll because we were all pretty tired. We were constantly going, going, going. So on this day off was a Sunday. The 3rd of October was Sunday afternoon. So there everybody's doing whatever they do. People are out playing volleyball. I was writing a letter home to my mom and, the guy walks out of the airplane hangar, and that's, it goes down. He just yells get it on, which meant gear up. And that's just like a firefighter, police officer. So that's how it starts. Everybody drops what we're doing. We go in and a, and a mission comes down. So what we're told is that there's two HVT- so high-value targets are in this building in the middle of downtown Mogadishu. It was a daylight raid. Daylight raids are not preferred and, just because the lights are on and they can see, they can see you. Right? And I always say, they call them bad guys for a reason because bad guys don't wave at you when you show up at their house and shoot back. So if you know, people are going to shoot, it's preferred, they don't see you. So we would rather go in at night, but it was a daylight raid. So we knew going in, it was a bad part of town. We knew it was a tough mission, but 35 minutes into it, man, we were done. We extracted the two guys are in that building. We got him, the, there was a couple dozen other people that we know who they were. We pulled all of them out and the trucks down the street come driving up. We throw all the bad guys on the trucks, trucks drive away. We're done. We're waiting to go home. And then just like that is when the first helicopter got shot down. And if anybody's familiar with the story, they understand that the Black Hawk Down, that's where that title came from because everybody had a radio on at that time. And somebody starts yelling over the radio. There's a Black Hawk going down so we could all hear it. And the, and the re-recordings of that are, that's where the title of that movie came from. And it was, the bird was super six one was the call sign. It was Chief Walcott's bird. So the mission's changed for all of us, there's 80 of us target right now. And then you have, remember the guys I told you just drove away with the prisoners, right? So they're in the trucks and they're, they haven't even gotten back to the base yet when that first helicopter got shut down. So they immediately, they're going to turn around and they're going to meet us at the crash site. So the 80 of us move on foot from the building and in the vehicles are in route to that crash. And it, it really was a foot race. Cause you could see in your peripheral, down the sides of the streets and down the alleyways and the cross street, everybody in the city had stopped shooting at us. And we're now running towards this crash because, and I know that it seems odd that I was saying people were shooting at us and it really, you know, in the beginning, we really wasn't all that bad. Like, and I know that sounds odd and it's not that bad because they were missing, which is exactly what you want to happen. And people shoot at you and they would teach you in ranger school. They're like, "Man, if someone shoots at you and they miss, it's just like, they shot, never shot at you at all. Don't get all upset about it, just do your job." So we had been, it didn't, it didn't seem too urgent over the top that people were taking shots at us. But then when the helicopter goes down, starts racing for that. It's a whole different mission. And it's, it's become something very personal now because you have guys that, you know, and that you care about and that's your priority. And the helicopter goes down and there's a bunch of Delta operators and Rangers on the ground whose whole mission is put the needs of others before ourselves. What do you think we're going to do? We're going to run to help. So that's, what's happened with the mission. And once we get to the, when we it's about five blocks away and when we... So if you can picture that the helicopter went down about to the northeast. So there's three blocks east and then a left turn north. So when we finally turn that corner left, I was like one of the last guys around the corner. And the whole battle was just full on at that point. And, and it happened so fast. And we were outnumbered at that point or about a hundred of us now that had gotten to the crash. And it felt like the entire city- There were helicopters doing gun runs over our heads. There were rounds hitting walls. There was tracer rounds going out and it was- The volume was over the top. And it, they told us in, in retrospect that at that point, within about five minutes of the bird crashing and us getting there on foot, we were already outnumbered 10 to one. So there was already a thousand guys armed shooting. At first, it felt like training. The people will tell you that like fighters and police officers. I said, well, you know, in that moment, my training kicks in, well, your training does kick in. Then there's a point where it's not training anymore. And I don't, I've given up, like, I don't even try and do it from the, from the speech. I don't even try and tell people, this is what it feels like when people start getting hurt, when guys start going down, it shifts. And it really does. It shifts to a whole nother level of reality, because it's just not something that we're used to. Thank God. We don't live in a world where people just drop. It's becoming a lot more common, unfortunately in America. But unless you were at the concert in Vegas or you were at the church in Texas, or the school in Florida, or on the sidewalks in Boston, when people just started dropping, I don't know how to explain that different level of reality. "Oh, wow, this is for real." This is when I saw guys start doing things that were just acts of valor and the truest definition of the word heroic. And it wasn't because anyone was trying to be a hero. It was because they were trying to save each other and it becomes, you've come very aware because like, I can keep you alive on the battlefield. Like, that's not... The trauma of what to do to keep the airways and blood loss from happening. We can all handle that. But what, what I can't teach anyone to do is the emotional aspect of it is like, "That's Brian, that's my friend he's hurt. I care." And you want to go over there and you want to give him some comfort. You want to hug them. You want to say, "Man, I'm so sorry that hurts." You don't have time to do that. All you can do is drag them out of the line of fire. And you just, "You get in there, Eric, get in there. Ramal you get in there, Floyd, get in there..." And you got to- and if it's not your friend, it was someone you needed because you know that we're so small of a unit everybody's job matters. Every job's important. And if you're two or three gunners down, "Oh gosh, who's handling the two or three. I needed that. Oh man, the radio operators. Now who's talking to the aircraft. Oh man, the platoon leaders down, he knows the whole plan. Now I got to step in there. You were in charge!" And they hand you the radio and..."

Brian Lord:

You had one of the best teams. Like I love when you talk about your, your team, who else was there with you in that?

Keni Thomas:

I had a small- my squad was, was about half strength. The, the Rangers are, it's a small, we're all under strength, all the special operations units. It's just, they're tough units to get into. So our squad was five guys. It was my buddy, Doug, who was a squad leader myself. There's usually two team leaders, but it was, I was it. And then my three guys were Jesus who was this tough guy, street hard dude, raised in the hood in Puerto Rico. And like, he, he was, we used to joke with a man, but like the only reason he was even in the army, that was the option. The judge gave him. And my middle guy was Eric Saransky. He had been with us for about a year. He had not been to ranger school yet, but he was a good solid- like he was like a Boy Scout. Like he's the one you want because he was easy to work with. And you just showed him one time and he knew how to make it happen. And then my, my most, the guy that I talk about the most, it has kind of the personality is Floyd. David, if you can imagine, imagine a guy that looks like Barney Fife in body armor. He's like 140 pounds, five foot 11. And he was from South Cackalackey Carolina, like, like down the road from Mayberry. And he was just goofy. And he was the kind of guy I grew up in the south. And he would be with my mom would call him, like, in fact, when she met him, that was the first thing she called him. And she says, "Oh, bless your heart." Like she said, he's a, he's a bless your heart. And he was just, you know, he was, he was a lot of work, but what I learned with Floyd and what Floyd taught me was we're as good as our weakest link. And I, when you're, especially when you count on each other in a small group like that and a team environment, you're as good as your weakest link. And I was a young team leader. I was more... I thought leading by example meant posting better numbers. I know a lot of operators that can shoot better than I can and run faster than I can, but it doesn't make them better leaders. And so what I learned with Floyd was if he wasn't up to standard, then our whole squad was weak. And I had to change my leadership style because I was spending so much time trying to do it all myself and as good as you are, man, you can't do it all yourself. David was our machine gunner. If he wasn't the best machine gunner he could be, that meant the squad's weak. If the squad's weak, the platoons crippled. And if the platoon is crippled, the mission's doomed. So I learned from Floyd that it was my responsibility to take the new guys and get lift them up. In addition to our own responsibilities of having to do our jobs well, part of the burden of leadership, they call it- it's one of the things they teach you, is that you are responsible for helping others. But what I saw was guys that do amazing things and, and for one reason, and I don't care, I don't care what battle it is. I think that's why the combat story is always a motivating one. Cause I mean, we, we, we could go back to the battle of Gettysburg or Franklin and boys on both sides of the, on the line. We'll tell you the same thing. They're not going to tell you that they were fighting for North versus South. No, one's going to tell you that they were fighting against Nazi Germany. No, one's going to tell you, they were fighting against Vietnamese and the spread of communism or ISIS or Al-Qaeda or Muslim terror. The only thing you fight for in that moment is each other. Because everything else doesn't matter. You don't want your friend. You don't want to lose your friends. And that's all it becomes about. And like the whole, like, why we're, why are we fighting? You'll think about that later. But right now it's just, "I gotta, I gotta save my guys." And if it could happen, when you start seeing good guys go down, we all have that a-ha moment. We all realize, oh wow. If it happens to a guy like Earl Fillmore, who was a Delta force, he was the first guy I saw get hit. If he was a Delta force guy, he's as good as it gets. If it happened to him, it happened to me. If it happens to me. It can happen to my three guys, which takes us back to the, to the whole "how do you view yourself?" If you subscribe to the, "You gotta save yourself and no one else is going to look after you." Then you're looking at a moment like that. "Oh man. If it happened to him, it can happen to me." Then you're going to turn and you're going to run and you're going to save yourself. It's not going to work. Like you're going to leave people hanging. And you're going to maybe get down the road a little faster, but you won't get further. No one takes the hill alone. But if your mindset is, "I've got to put my mission in my people before myself," then you go, "If it happened to him, it happened to me. Oh man, if it happened to me, it happened to my guys. I'm going to take care of them."

You know, I'm condensing it quite a bit for you. But you know, from that moment, we had to fight through the night and it became a different battle. It became a battle of really survival at that point, because we had so many wounded guys, there were 135 total in this fight. And by the time it got dark, we already had 78 were wounded and 18 are dead. So there, there weren't many left and we were trying to figure out what, "How are we gonna get everybody out of here?" The help that came for us was our friends. Remember I told you about the guys that driven away with the vehicles, with the prisoners. They had spent all night trying to get to us. They got, they got smoked. They were losing guys trying to get there. The attrition rate was crazy and they just get one ambush after the other. And they kept coming and then they went and they asked for help. There was another military unit in town. Uh, the 10th mountain division was here and they weren't part of any kind of combat operation. They were there to help distribute food shipments and guard the port. They weren't set up. They didn't have tanks. They didn't have fighting. They didn't have armor. And yet those guys all came in like on the back of flatbed, five-ton trucks, they threw up sandbags like the billion-dollar military might of the American military was reduced to flatbed trucks coming in when we needed it most. And that's a whole other, man. I could say, "Well, how'd that happen?" Well, I can tell you why, because there was some Yucknut up in DC who thought he knew better than the people on the ground who he's supposed to be trusting. "Hey, what do you guys need?" "Well, we need this, this, this-" "Yeah, you don't need that. I'm just going to leave it here in the garage." And then by the time those guys is rag tag, beat up convoy gets to us. It's about 4:30 in the morning. We got to hustle. So we load all the wounded guys up on the vehicle and we want to try and get out of there before the daytime comes. And then the bad guys start shooting again because the nighttime slowed down. Like we owned it. Like if the bad, the bad guys, they kind of surrounded the whole crash site area, but they didn't want to stick their heads up and shoot us. Cause they, they wanted to keep their head. They were going to lose it because we could see them. We had night vision.

So mornings come in and we take a look around. There's only about 30 of us left. And so we got to run out of the city and I remember asking him like, "Why are we running out?" I said, "Why don't we just wait for the help copiers come get us?" And well, I didn't realize there were no more helicopters we had lost- So our... The Super 61 had crashed Super 64, which is Mike's bird had come in to replace him in the pattern. He got shot down and he's crashed a mile away in the city. They wrote it up as combat loss. No one could get to it. Cause there was nobody left. Two other birds tried to go help those two crashes. And both of those birds got shot down and they kind of crashed, landed over by the airfield. So now we're out of Black Hawks and like there's no more birds, so we're running out. And so that's what that whole, the Mogadishu mile thing at, first of all, it wasn't a mile. I don't know who came up with that two miles and we were running and that's, I think it got, it, got a little out of hand on the run because what ended up happening, this is when the lights came on it and I remember running out and you could just, I could see the sun coming up as cover that purple-y orange sky out over the, over the buildings. And you could hear the morning. This is the weird thing about being in the third world that you hear these morning prayers get broadcast all over the city. And I looked over at my buddy, Randy, and we're running on both sides of the Randy. What do you think they're saying? He's like, "Shoot, the Americans." Cause they're getting away.

And as soon as the lights came up and the sun, because that's exactly when people start shooting and it felt at this point it almost felt this... I could feel that sense of panicky run for your life, feeling going on. And we stopped moving like a bunch of special operators. There's a reason for like the research is pretty clear. Like if it's firefighters or EMS or athletes when you get super stressed and I call it the suck meter, man, when the suck meter starts tacking into the red, your ability to see the bigger picture of multifunction and multitask, isn't what you think it is. Your brain will start going like this [sound]. And it'll tunnel vision because it's focusing on what's in front of you to try and save yourself. And that's what your brain's doing. And guys will do stupid things. And what ended up happening on that run was I saw guys not doing things they should be doing at some point like the captain stops and cause there's no one on the other side of the street waiting for him. And he doesn't realize he's backing everybody up behind him. And we're all like bunched up in this alley. And like I'm freaking out. Cause one grenade is going to take us out and we're all screaming at the captain like "Move across the street!" And nobody's doing what they should be doing, which is pulling security. And all of a sudden I get, except for one guy David Floyd did Sergeant Thomas look out and he steps out in front of me and you hear him? He's got this big machine gun. He's been toting for one of the wounded guys and David just [Sounds] and fires off this burst on the street. And I looked up, I don't know how I missed it. Like it was deer in the headlights. Like there was a guy leaning out of a doorway with a big rocket launcher and there was another guy right behind him fixing to reload. They weren't like sneaking up and it was in nobody's saw them cause we're all tunnel vision on the captain losing... And David had the presence of mind to do exactly what we taught him to do, which was pull security. Now, thank God we had a guy that kept his wits about him.

Brian Lord:

And this is the Mayberry guy.

Keni Thomas:

Yeah! And there's the lesson. Like I would have told you if they had said who's your weakest link, my first answer would have been easy. My immediate answer would be not me. I'm not the weakest link for sure. And if I had been pressed, I would have been like, ah, you know, it's probably David bless his heart, but you know, working on it, he's going to be great one day. But here's what was lost on me. And the reason I choose to like, I don't want to sit here and tell you that David Floyd changed the tide of the battle, but he did wake us all up. And we all realized that we were, it was getting out of control. So we all took some deep breaths, slowed our metabolism down. And then we just started moving more fluidly and, and slow is smooth and smooth is always faster. You won't make as many mistakes slow as fast. That's that? And it was, I think it was David who kind of saved, saved, saved us. God woke us up. And getting back to what you and I were talking about were people who know they're part of something and they understand their purpose and they believe they're important are the ones that are going to step up when they're needed. And that's up to us to instill that in them, you got to keep telling somebody that they're important. You gotta give them a sense of purpose. And if you say it enough, you believe it. And part of the reason we say the Ranger Creed every day is because the Boy Scout motto, all those things that we say all the time so that your brain begins to believe it. And when you believe something, you begin to live it. So when David says the Ranger Creed just like we said it: Recognizing I volunteered as a ranger fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession..." And all the other things that come with it. "I am a specially selected and well-trained soldier. I will never leave a fallen comrade. My country expects me to move further, faster, and..." What was lost is David never saw himself as the weak link. That was my ego. Like I just thought he was the weak link because he wasn't, he wasn't running as fast as I was. And he wasn't shooting as good as I was. And so I had this preconceived idea of, but I didn't bring to the table, these certain gifts and talents and skill sets that David had. Like, I can teach anybody to shoot a machine gun, but I can't teach you to be, have that kind of tenacity where he knew his physical capabilities weren't what mine were. So he had to work a lot harder just to be there, but he wore, he did the extra work because he knew he mattered and he believed he mattered. So when the moment came, he stepped up and did the thing. And then that I always, and then I come back, well, there's another side to that. Why didn't the six guys on the wall who were all tunnel-visioned on the captain, not do what we should've been doing? Because what I probably could have done in that moment is run across the street and pulled security because I saw what was going on and I could have said, "Let's go, let's move. We're backing things up." And I think, you know, in that moment I was probably the weakest link because I chose to let the situation dictate who I was in that moment. And, man, that brings me to the point is that we all have these gifts. David's got these skill sets and talents that made him believe that he mattered. So when the moment came, he stepped up. And then on the other hand, you had these guys who had gifts and talents and skillsets, but they didn't step up. Why? Because leadership is a choice we make every single day. Like the biggest thing that we've all got going for us at any given time is who has been put on our left and who has been put on our right? What example are you setting for them? Who are you leading? Who are you following? And if you can concentrate on that, on the people around you and taking care of them, it's such a simple concept we got, I mean, it's that easy, yet it's that difficult?

 going down so we could all hear it. And the, and the re-recordings of that are, that's where the title of that movie came from. And it was, the bird was super six one was the call sign. It was Chief Walcott's bird. So the mission's changed for all of us, there's 80 of us target right now. And then you have, remember the guys I told you just drove away with the prisoners, right? So they're in the trucks and they're, they haven't even gotten back to the base yet when that first helicopter got shut down. So they immediately, they're going to turn around and they're going to meet us at the crash site. So the 80 of us move on foot from the building and in the vehicles are in route to that crash. And it, it really was a foot race. Cause you could see in your peripheral, down the sides of the streets and down the alleyways and the cross street, everybody in the city had stopped shooting at us. And we're now running towards this crash because, and I know that it seems odd that I was saying people were shooting at us and it really, you know, in the beginning, we really wasn't all that bad. Like, and I know that sounds odd and it's not that bad because they were missing, which is exactly what you want to happen. And people shoot at you and they would teach you in ranger school. They're like, "Man, if someone shoots at you and they miss, it's just like, they shot, never shot at you at all. Don't get all upset about it, just do your job." So we had been, it didn't, it didn't seem too urgent over the top that people were taking shots at us. But then when the helicopter goes down, starts racing for that. It's a whole different mission. And it's, it's become something very personal now because you have guys that, you know, and that you care about and that's your priority. And the helicopter goes down and there's a bunch of Delta operators and Rangers on the ground whose whole mission is put the needs of others before ourselves. What do you think we're going to do? We're going to run to help. So that's, what's happened with the mission. And once we get to the, when we it's about five blocks away and when we... So if you can picture that the helicopter went down about to the northeast. So there's three blocks east and then a left turn north. So when we finally turn that corner left, I was like one of the last guys around the corner. And the whole battle was just full on at that point. And, and it happened so fast. And we were outnumbered at that point or about a hundred of us now that had gotten to the crash. And it felt like the entire city- There were helicopters doing gun runs over our heads. There were rounds hitting walls. There was tracer rounds going out and it was- The volume was over the top. And it, they told us in, in retrospect that at that point, within about five minutes of the bird crashing and us getting there on foot, we were already outnumbered 10 to one. So there was already a thousand guys armed shooting. At first, it felt like training. The people will tell you that like fighters and police officers. I said, well, you know, in that moment, my training kicks in, well, your training does kick in. Then there's a point where it's not training anymore. And I don't, I've given up, like, I don't even try and do it from the, from the speech. I don't even try and tell people, this is what it feels like when people start getting hurt, when guys start going down, it shifts. And it really does. It shifts to a whole nother level of reality, because it's just not something that we're used to. Thank God. We don't live in a world where people just drop. It's becoming a lot more common, unfortunately in America. But unless you were at the concert in Vegas or you were at the church in Texas, or the school in Florida, or on the sidewalks in Boston, when people just started dropping, I don't know how to explain that different level of reality. "Oh, wow, this is for real." This is when I saw guys start doing things that were just acts of valor and the truest definition of the word heroic. And it wasn't because anyone was trying to be a hero. It was because they were trying to save each other and it becomes, you've come very aware because like, I can keep you alive on the battlefield. Like, that's not... The trauma of what to do to keep the airways and blood loss from happening. We can all handle that. But what, what I can't teach anyone to do is the emotional aspect of it is like, "That's Brian, that's my friend he's hurt. I care." And you want to go over there and you want to give him some comfort. You want to hug them. You want to say, "Man, I'm so sorry that hurts." You don't have time to do that. All you can do is drag them out of the line of fire. And you just, "You get in there, Eric, get in there. Ramal you get in there, Floyd, get in there..." And you got to- and if it's not your friend, it was someone you needed because you know that we're so small of a unit everybody's job matters. Every job's important. And if you're two or three gunners down, "Oh gosh, who's handling the two or three. I needed that. Oh man, the radio operators. Now who's talking to the aircraft. Oh man, the platoon leaders down, he knows the whole plan. Now I got to step in there. You were in charge!" And they hand you the radio and..."

Brian Lord:

You had one of the best teams. Like I love when you talk about your, your team, who else was there with you in that?

Keni Thomas:

I had a small- my squad was, was about half strength. The, the Rangers are, it's a small, we're all under strength, all the special operations units. It's just, they're tough units to get into. So our squad was five guys. It was my buddy, Doug, who was a squad leader myself. There's usually two team leaders, but it was, I was it. And then my three guys were Jesus who was this tough guy, street hard dude, raised in the hood in Puerto Rico. And like, he, he was, we used to joke with a man, but like the only reason he was even in the army, that was the option. The judge gave him. And my middle guy was Eric Saransky. He had been with us for about a year. He had not been to ranger school yet, but he was a good solid- like he was like a Boy Scout. Like he's the one you want because he was easy to work with. And you just showed him one time and he knew how to make it happen. And then my, my most, the guy that I talk about the most, it has kind of the personality is Floyd. David, if you can imagine, imagine a guy that looks like Barney Fife in body armor. He's like 140 pounds, five foot 11. And he was from South Cackalackey Carolina, like, like down the road from Mayberry. And he was just goofy. And he was the kind of guy I grew up in the south. And he would be with my mom would call him, like, in fact, when she met him, that was the first thing she called him. And she says, "Oh, bless your heart." Like she said, he's a, he's a bless your heart. And he was just, you know, he was, he was a lot of work, but what I learned with Floyd and what Floyd taught me was we're as good as our weakest link. And I, when you're, especially when you count on each other, uh, in a small group like that and a team environment, you're as good as your weakest link. And I was a young team leader. I was more, I thought leading by example meant posting better numbers. I know a lot of operators that can shoot better than I can and run faster than I can, but it doesn't make them better leaders. And so what I learned with Floyd was if he wasn't up to standard, then our whole squad was weak. And I had to change my leadership style because I was spending so much time trying to do it all myself and as good as you are, man, you can't do it all yourself. David was our machine gunner. If he wasn't the best machine gunner he could be, that meant the squad's weak. If the squad's weak, the platoons crippled. And if the platoon is crippled, the mission's doomed. So I learned from Floyd that it was my responsibility to take the new guys and get lift them up. In addition to our own responsibilities of having to do our jobs well, part of the burden of leadership, they call it- it's one of the things they teach you, is that you are responsible for helping others. But what I saw was guys that do amazing things and, and for one reason, and I don't care, I don't care what battle it is. I think that's why the combat story is always a motivating one. Cause I mean, we, we, we could go back to the battle of Gettysburg or Franklin and boys on both sides of the, on the line. We'll tell you the same thing. They're not going to tell you that they were fighting for North versus South. No, one's going to tell you that they were fighting against Nazi Germany. No, one's going to tell you, they were fighting against Vietnamese and the spread of communism or ISIS or Al-Qaeda or Muslim terror. The only thing you fight for in that moment is each other. Because everything else doesn't matter. You don't want your friend. You don't want to lose your friends. And that's all it becomes about. And like the whole, like, why we're, why are we fighting? It you'll think about that later. But right now it's just, "I gotta, I gotta save my guys." And if it could happen, when you start seeing good guys go down, we all have that a-ha moment. We all realize, oh wow. If it happens to a guy like Earl Fillmore, who was a Delta force, he was the first guy I saw get hit. If he was a Delta force guy, he's as good as it gets. If it happened to him, it happened to me. If it happens to me. It can happen to my three guys, which takes us back to the, to the whole. How do you view yourself? If you subscribe to the, "You gotta save yourself and no one else is going to look after you." Then you're looking at a moment like that. "Oh man. If it happened to him, it can happen to me." Then you're going to turn and you're going to run and you're going to save yourself. It's not going to work. Like you're going to leave people hanging. And you're going to maybe get down the road a little faster, but you won't get further. No one takes the hill alone. But if your mindset is, "I've got to put my mission in my people before myself," then you go, "If it happened to him, it happened to me. Oh man, if it happened to me, it happened to my guys. I'm going to take care of them." You know, I'm condensing it quite a bit for you. But you know, from that moment, we had to fight through the night and it became a different battle. It became a battle of really survival at that point, because we had so many wounded guys, there were 135 total in this fight. And by the time it got dark, we already had 78 were wounded and 18 are dead. So there, there weren't many left and we were trying to figure out what, "How are we gonna get everybody out of here?" The help that came for us was our friends. Remember I told you about the guys that driven away with the vehicles, with the prisoners. They had spent all night trying to get to us. They got, they got smoked. They were losing guys trying to get there. The attrition rate was crazy and they just get one ambush after the other. And they kept coming and then they went and they asked for help. There was another military unit in town. Uh, the 10th mountain division was here and they weren't part of any kind of combat operation. They were there to help distribute food shipments and guard the port. They weren't set up. They didn't have tanks. They didn't have fighting. They didn't have armor. And yet those guys all came in like on the back of flatbed, five ton trucks, they threw up sandbags like the billion dollar military might of the American military was reduced to flatbed trucks coming in when we needed it most. And that's a whole nother man. I, I could say, "Well, how'd that happen?" Well, I can tell you why, because there was some Yucknut up in DC who thought he knew better than the people on the ground who he's supposed to be trusting. "Hey, what do you guys need?" "Well, we need this, this, this-" "Yeah, you don't need that. I'm just going to leave it here in the garage." And then by the time those guys is rag tag, beat up convoy gets to us. It's about 4:30 in the morning. We got to hustle. So we load all the wounded guys up on the vehicle and we want to try and get out of there before the daytime comes. And then the bad guys start shooting again because the nighttime slowed down. Like we owned it. Like if the bad, the bad guys, they kind of surrounded the whole crash site area, but they didn't want to stick their heads up and shoot us. Cause they, they wanted to keep their head. They were going to lose it because we could see them. We had night vision. So mornings come in and we take a look around. There's only about 30 of us left. And so we got to run out of the city and I remember asking him like, "Why are we running out?" I said, "Why don't we just wait for the help copiers come get us?" And well, I didn't realize there were no more helicopters we had lost- So our... The Super 61 had crashed Super 64, which is Mike's bird had come in to replace him in the pattern. He got shot down and he's crashed a mile away in the city. They wrote it up as combat loss. No one could get to it. Cause there was nobody left. Two other birds tried to go help those two crashes. And both of those birds got shot down and they kind of crashed, landed over by the airfield. So now we're out of Black Hawks and like there's no more birds, so we're running out. And so that's what that whole, the Mogadishu mile thing at, first of all, it wasn't a mile. I don't know who came up with that two miles and we were running and that's, I think it got, it, got a little out of hand on the run because what ended up happening, this is when the lights came on it and I remember running out and you could just, I could see the sun coming up as cover that purple-y orange sky out over the, over the buildings. And you could hear the morning. This is the weird thing about being in the third world that you hear these morning prayers get broadcast all over the city. And I looked over at my buddy, Randy, and we're running on both sides of the Randy. What do you think they're saying? He's like, "Shoot, the Americans." Cause they're getting away. And as soon as the lights came up and the sun, because that's exactly when people start shooting and it felt at this point it almost felt this... I could feel that sense of panicky run for your life, feeling going on. And we stopped moving like a bunch of special operators. There's a reason for like the research is pretty clear. Like if it's firefighters or EMS or athletes when you get super stressed and I call it the suck meter, man, when the suck meter starts tacking into the red, your ability to see the bigger picture of multifunction and multitask, isn't what you think it is. Your brain will start going like this [sound]. And it'll tunnel vision because it's focusing on what's in front of you to try and save yourself. And that's what your brain's doing. And guys will do stupid things. And what ended up happening on that run was I saw guys not doing things they should be doing at some point like the captain stops and cause there's no one on the other side of the street waiting for him. And he doesn't realize he's backing everybody up behind him. And we're all like bunched up in this alley. And like I'm freaking out. Cause one grenade is going to take us out and we're all screaming at the captain like "Move across the street!" And nobody's doing what they should be doing, which is pulling security. And all of a sudden I get, except for one guy David Floyd did Sergeant Thomas look out and he steps out in front of me and you hear him? He's got this big machine gun. He's been toting for one of the wounded guys and David just [Sounds] and fires off this burst on the street. And I looked up, I don't know how I missed it. Like it was deer in the headlights. Like there was a guy leaning out of a doorway with a big rocket launcher and there was another guy right behind him fixing to reload. They weren't like sneaking up and it was in nobody's saw them cause we're all tunnel vision on the captain losing... And David had the presence of mind to do exactly what we taught him to do, which was pull security. Now, thank God we had a guy that kept his wits about him.

Brian Lord:

And this is the Mayberry guy.

Keni Thomas:

Yeah! And there's the lesson. Like I would have told you if they had said who's your weakest link, my first answer would have been easy. My immediate answer would be not me. I'm not the weakest link for sure. And if I had been pressed, I would have been like, ah, you know, it's probably David bless his heart, but you know, working on it, he's going to be great one day. But here's what was lost on me. And the reason I choose to like, I don't want to sit here and tell you that David Floyd changed the tide of the battle, but he did wake us all up. And we all realized that we were, it was getting out of control. So we all took some deep breaths, slowed our metabolism down. And then we just started moving more fluidly and, and slow is smooth and smooth is always faster. You won't make as many mistakes slow as fast. That's that? And it was, I think it was David who kind of saved, saved, saved us. God woke us up. And getting back to what you and I were talking about were people who know they're part of something and they understand their purpose and they believe they're important are the ones that are going to step up when they're needed. And that's up to us to instill that in them, you got to keep telling somebody that they're important. You gotta give them a sense of purpose. And if you say it enough, you believe it. And part of the reason we say the Ranger Creed every day is because the Boy Scout motto, all those things that we say all the time so that your brain begins to believe it. And when you believe something, you begin to live it. So when David says the Ranger Creed just like we said it: Recognizing I volunteered as a ranger fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession..." And all the other things that come with it. "I am a specially selected and well-trained soldier. I will never leave a fallen comrade. My country expects me to move further, faster, and..." What was lost is David never saw himself as the weak link. That was my ego. Like I just thought he was the weak link because he wasn't, he wasn't running as fast as I was. And he wasn't shooting as good as I was. And so I had this preconceived idea of, but I didn't bring to the table, these certain gifts and talents and skill sets that David had. Like, I can teach anybody to shoot a machine gun, but I can't teach you to be, have that kind of tenacity where he knew his physical capabilities weren't what mine were. So he had to work a lot harder just to be there, but he wore, he did the extra work because he knew he mattered and he believed he mattered. So when the moment came, he stepped up and did the thing. And then that I always, and then I come back, well, there's another side to that. Why didn't the six guys on the wall who were all tunnel-visioned on the captain, not do what we should've been doing? Because what I probably could have done in that moment is run across the street and pulled security because I saw what was going on and I could have said, "Let's go, let's move. We're backing things up." And I think, you know, in that moment I was probably the weakest link because I chose to let the situation dictate who I was in that moment. And, man, that brings me to the point is that we all have these gifts. David's got these skill sets and talents that made him believe that he mattered. So when the moment came, he stepped up. And then on the other hand, you had these guys who had gifts and talents and skillsets, but they didn't step up. Why? Because leadership is a choice we make every single day. Like the biggest thing that we've all got going for us at any given time is who has been put on our left and who has been put on our right? What example are you setting for them? Who are you leading? Who are you following? And if you can concentrate on that, on the people around you and taking care of them, it's such a simple concept we got, I mean, it's that easy, yet it's that difficult.

 

Beyond Speaking is hosted by Brian Lord and produced by Eric Woodie