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Title details for In the Company of Heroes by Michael Durant - Available

In the Company of Heroes

The True Story of Black Hawk Pilot Michael Durant and the Men Who Fought and Fell at Mogadishu

by Michael Durant
Steven Hartov
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
"Ranger, Ranger, you die Somalia!" shouted the enraged Somali voices surrounding Blackhawk helicopter pilot Michael J. Durant, his bird shot down by a well-placed rocket-propelled grenade. With his devastating injuries, Durant would be lucky to survive the night.
"Mike Durant...Mike Durant..." came the disembodied voice floating above the war-torn streets of Mogadishu, mixed in with the steady drone of a large U.S. Army helicopter. "Mike Durant...We will not leave without you!"
Piloting a U.S. Army Special Operations Blackhawk, Durant was shot down and captured on October 3, 1993, in the battle depicted in Mark Bowden's bestselling book Black Hawk Down. Durant became a prisoner of Somali warlord Mohammed Aidid — the man responsible for prolonging starvation in his country by hijacking United Nations food shipments. U.S. policy makers had determined that capturing Aidid was the only way to restore order. The simple snatch-and-grab plan, named Operation Gothic Serpent, turned into the biggest U.S. Firefight since the Vietnam War.
Durant's experience as a prisoner in Somalia grew increasingly bizarre, crystallizing a clash of cultures by turns frightening, melancholy, hilarious, and strangely familiar. Revealing never-before-told stories with the incisive thought and emotion of one who was there, In the Company of Heroes is one man's unforgettable, true story of going to hell and making it back alive.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 1, 2003

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780743548656
      • File size: 159327 KB
      • Duration: 05:31:55

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Chief Warrant Officer 4 Michael J. Durant, now retired, was captured by the Somalis in the operation described in BLACK HAWK DOWN. This work is Durant's own story--not only of the events of October 1993, but also of his entire career and his memories of fallen comrades. While his work contains some profanity and much military jargon, Durant does a decent job reading. Though his delivery is sometimes flat, overall his voice is clear and disciplined, as though he were giving a post-op report. M.T.F. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 1, 2003
      The 1993 battle in Mogadishu between American soldiers and Somali militiamen gets a human-scale retelling in this jaunty but harrowing memoir. Durant went down with the Black Hawk he piloted; after a terrifying crash in which his back and leg were broken and a violent fire-fight, he was held captive for ten days by Somali militiamen as a pawn in their stand-off with American peacekeeping forces. Frightened and in agony from his wounds, he called on his survival training to help him endure, but he also relied on the empathy of some of his Somali captors, especially the gruff but sympathetic guard who feeds, bathes and bonds with him. Durant is a gung-ho army honcho, not much given to introspection, and the book often takes leave of the captivity narrative to recount his exploits in conflicts from Panama to Iraq, and to celebrate the bravado and leave-no-man-behind esprit-de-corps of his elite"Night Stalkers" helicopter unit. The writing is full of terse jargon, weapons specs, helicopter-assault procedural and special-ops swagger ("They were the kind of professionals who could pick off a rabbit from a roller-coaster with a BB gun"). But overall the story remains taut, and the prose evokes both the chaos of combat and the anxiety of confinement. Durant's perspective on the Somalia conflict is somewhat limited and jingoistic ("Mogadishu was Tombstone, and we were Wyatt Earp"), but his is a revealing portrait of the human face of war. 16 pages of b&w photos.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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