http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/09/black-hawk-down-s-long-shadow.html
Black Hawk Down’s Long Shadow
20 hours ago - by Daniel Klaidman
Twenty years later, the battle still echoes in America’s top policy circles. As the U.S. sets foot in Somalia again, men who fought in 1993 tell Daniel Klaidman what still haunts them.
Danny McKnight’s trip began in a tiny New England cemetery on Saturday, September 28, 2013—a crisp, clear fall morning. He kneeled by the gravestone of Corporal James Cavaco and placed a rock on top of it. McKnight’s wife, Linda, had painted the rock black, and on it, he had written with a silver Sharpie, “An American Hero” and “RLTW”—Rangers Lead the Way, the elite infantry unit’s motto.
McKnight was at the outset of a pilgrimage to the gravesites of men who served under him in Somalia—his “kids,” as he calls them. They were part of Task Force Ranger, an American assault team assigned to capture Mohammad Farrah Aidid, an elusive Somali clan leader who held sway over the war-torn city of Mogadishu. On October 3, 1993, the team began what seemed at first to be a routine mission to detain two of Aidid’s top advisers. But after a Black Hawk helicopter was shot down, the operation shifted to a far more dangerous rescue mission—what would become the bloodiest U.S. combat engagement since the Vietnam war.
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