Sunday, May 29, 2016
By Sally Mamdooh
DENVER - The sounds of the water falling in retired Army Col. Lee Van Arsdale’s backyard is a lot different than what he heard in the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, 22 years ago.
"There was firing going on almost from the first second we landed there,” Arsdale told Denver7 reporter Sally Mamdooh. “It was a total mess."
On October 3, 1993, Van Arsdale watched Operation Gothic Serpent unfold from the Joint Operation Center. It’s the operation many people have come to know from the movie Blackhawk Down.
"We knew we were going into a hornets nest which is all more reason you get in and out as quickly as possible," Van Arsdale remembered.
With little intelligence, Task Force Ranger captured two of Mohamed Farah Aidid’s lieutenant’s that day, but the success of the mission is often overshadowed by the haunting images of a tragic loss of life of two pilots.
"They did everything that they needed to do, to bring that helicopter down in such a manner that the people in the back lived, but in so doing they gave up their own lives,"
The heroic actions of pilot Cliff Wolcott and co-pilot Donvon Briley helped save the lives of our Delta Force snipers.