Coincidence in Mogadishu

Coincidence in Mogadishu

Our new neighbor just stopped by our house in Georgetown. He

recently retired from the U.S. Navy at a Rear Admiral rank. He is a

Seal. 

He came to relate the status of his two new daughters both born last

night maybe a month prematurely. They were carried by a surrogate

mother. His wife's first husband, also U.S. Navy, committed suicide

and she raised three boys by herself...the youngest of which is now

16 and lives with them and attends Gonzaga Catholic High School in

Washington. 

After marrying several years ago...they had known each other in grade

school at the Naval Station in San Diego on Coronado Island...both

being from ‘Seal’ families, our neighbors decided to have children via

in-vitro fertilization using a surrogate mother and donated eggs. We

were able to look in on one via a webcam in the ICU in San Diego. He

will join his wife shortly to bring them home.

In addition to the news about the baby girls, we discovered that 'we'

have another connection with our neighbors....'we' in this case being

really Chris.

When he heard from me that Chris had served a short tour in Somalia

in 1992 while in the Navy paying back for his medical school education,

our neighbor-visitor related that he led the Seal team that

reconnoitered the beach at Mogadishu, Somalia before the invasion in

1992 by the US and 22 other countries in the so-called

'Operation Restore Hope' campaign. He described swimming in with his

seal team...he was the leader...maybe 15 times from a ship offshore

mapping routes for landing boats and identifying the location of

defenses.

He said that he had never seen anything like the actual assault. He

remembered especially vividly the Apache gunships hovering behind

the hills waiting to pounce on any Somali militia to appear. 

U.S. Marines storm Mogadishu, Somalia

The actual landing of troops was relatively uneventful because the

psyops beforehand had convinced the Somali militia to leave the city.

So the civilian population welcomed the Western troops hoping they

brought food and medicines. In fact, if you recall, media people still in

Mogadishu took pictures of the seals and marines coming ashore. Of

course, later, came the infamous ‘Blackhawk Down’ incident.

Chris flew into Mogadishu shortly after the invasion secured the

beach and nearby airport and set up shop along the runway. He was

the medical officer of a Navy Seabee battalion.  Chris said that the

Seabees brought in every single thing they needed...lumber, nails,

plywood, power tools, generators, fuel...they secured nothing from

the economy. Even water was provided by a ship anchored off the

airport supplied to shore by a floating pipe.

"During the operation, Army engineers and Navy Seabees repaired or

constructed more than 1,200 miles of roads, drilled 14 wells, and

erected a Bailey bridge across the Juba River near the town of Jilib."

During a 'supply'..meaning 'find some booze on the local

economy' run with a fire team and a couple of

vehicles, Chris encountered a nest...a couple of trucks,

10 men, and weapons off on a side road... of Somali

militia on the outskirts of the city. As the senior rank

in the party, Chris was in charge of organizing the

group but he was no combat platoon leader.

Fortunately, he had a ‘gunny’ Marine sergeant with

him who helped organize a perimeter line with proper fields of fire and

that kinda stuff. I think I recall that Chris told me that the Somali

militia guys, taken by surprise by an unexpected US military ‘force’,

surrendered without much of a fight. I think Chris would have gotten

to wear a campaign medal indicating participation in combat, except

that the ‘supply’ run had been 'spontaneous' and the brief encounter

unreported in official logs.

Chris tells this additional story about himself: As a child of the 1970s

and the Vietnam War, the US military was not his favorite institution.

But he signed up for a 4 years tour in return for which the US Navy

paid for his medical education.

He hit some rough spots early in his tour adapting to the culture of the

US military after 4 years at Williams College...mostly in the library

trying to graduate. Part of his introduction to the Navy was time spent

at The San Diego Naval Hospital where he spent his internship...not

far from Coronado. Chris lived on the beach in a house next to the

concrete ‘boardwalk’ on which skateboarders would be seen being

running path on which skateboarders were pulled along by their dogs.

After Somalia and seeing the planning, coordination, and execution of

the battle plan, Chris observed, wryly, that  

 

"If you must go to war...go to war with the US Navy."