Jeff Struecker - Black Hawk Down, 1993, by Judd Parker
From MemoryArchive
Who: Sergeant Jeff Struecker - 75th Army Ranger Regiment What: Battle of Somalia When: October 3, 1993 Where: Mogadishu Somalia
While in high school in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Captain Jeff Struecker came and spoke about many things. He spoke about religion and faith, as he is now a chaplain with the Army, but he mostly spoke to us about his involvement with the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia on October 3, 1993. At the time he was a 24 year old sergeant and squad leader assigned to Task Force Ranger in Somalia as a part of the 75th Army Ranger Regiment. Called Operation Gothic Serpent, the plan was for the task force to capture foreign minister, Omar Salad Elmi and his advisor Mohamed Hassan Awale. They were to fast rope down from hovering Black Hawks, capture them, and load them onto the convoy and get out. Two MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by rocket-propelled grenades, and three others were damaged. These men were trapped at the crash sites and cut off from escape. 90 men of the team went to rescue the downed helicopters, including Sergeant Struecker, and found themselves under heavy militia fire. They were trapped for the night. The ones who safely made it out were sent back in to rescue these men on more than one occassion, a frightening prospect for any man who just made it out of such a dangerous, volatile situation. The next morning, October 4, a combined task force was sent in to rescue them and evacuated them to the U.N. Pakistani base by armored convoy. 18 American soldiers died, and 73 were wounded. Jeff Struecker has been interviewed many times for his leadership and courage in going back in to save these men. He spoke on video with CNN in this transcript, much of what he told us as well. “Well, during the course of the battle, about an hour or two into the fight, I picked up a soldier, Todd Blackburn (ph), took him back to the airfield where we were staying. And on the ride back, one of the men in my vehicle, one of my men, Dominick Pilla (ph), was shot and killed. And when I arrived back at the airfield, I thought to myself that I was going to die and all of them men that I was working with were going to die. The situation was just so intense.
And at that moment, I had nothing left to go to, nowhere to find strength except my faith, and my faith -- really, at that moment, I prayed and asked God to give me strength. My faith in Christ really gave me the strength that I needed to go back out into the city a second and a third time. And from that moment on, I realized, "You know what? My faith has made such a difference for me tonight, I want to do what's possible to share my faith and to tell as many other soldiers as possible about how faith can make a difference for them in a battle.” (Interview with Jeff Strueker, CNN)
He was later played by Brian Van Holt as a major character in the film "Black Hawk Down" in 2001.
His courage and leadership led to the safety of many men, and this remains a memory of mine some ten years after he told us his story.
