Mark Bowden began writing his book Black Hawk Down in 1996; three years after the Battle of the Black Sea took place in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. After finishing the book Bowden published it in 1999 and 2000, and it is still in print. It is 346 pages long, including the epilogue. Published by Penguin Books, Black Hawk Down costs fourteen dollars. There are no other books presently available today on this particular topic. Bowden mentions a few books that lightly touch on it, which he used for sources, but his remains the only book solely written on the battle.
Bowden has written a book based on a historical event, and his past writings include only journalism. Mark Bowden is not a historian nor does he have any military experience. Mark Bowden wrote this book to, “combine the authority of a historical narrative with the emotion of the memoir, and write a story that read like fiction but was true.”(331-332)
The book is set in Mogadishu, Somalia, and is based on events that took place in 1993. Journalist Mark Bowden uses official papers, radio transcripts, and interviews with survivors to tell the detailed story of what happened during that operation, right down to the actual dialogue. He uses many written accounts of Delta Force soldiers and had direct interviews with a couple others. He also interviewed numerous Rangers that were part of the task force. In his book, Bowden cleared up any misunderstandings in the mission that were conveyed through other authors that wrote on the subject. He does this though recorded conversations of the battle, the recorded aerial footage and an oral interview of General William F. Garrison who commanded Task Force Ranger. Bowden says, “None of the men…had a complete vision of the battle. But, their memories, combined with this documentary material, including a precise chronology, and the written accounts of the Delta operators and SEALS, made it possible for me to reconstruct the whole picture.”(344-345) In short, the book serves as a fairly accurate description of the battle.
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Bowden shows a hint of prejudice when writing the novel. He favors the Delta operator or the so-called “D-Boys” as he called them. He feels that Delta held everything together down there. The only real solid information acquired through Delta came from one soldier. This one-man, one-sided view influences Bowden’s opinion and way of thinking when writing the book, but he writes it in such a way that an unbiased opinion can easily be formed after reading the book. To make things a bit more lucid to you Bowden includes a few maps within the book. The maps help to see the position of one element in relation to another, but the accuracy of the maps appear to be fairly poor. Due to the lack of military experience Bowden does not realize that he should include a statistics table in the book showing casualties, and including which ones were fatal and how they were taken. Things like this would help to keep pace with the book. It is difficult to do this because Bowden often changes perspectives in the book. He does this to communicate the idea of the “fog of war” to his readers and hopefully build their curiosity more.
In the end Bowden begins to assign blame for the tragedy. He claims that the battle was neither a failure nor a success, merely just another battle fought and forgotten. When taken into a military perspective, Task Force Ranger clearly won that battle, but they lost the war. The public and political eye declared it a miserable loss. The public and some other government officials readily blamed President Bill Clinton and his administration for the deaths of the American boys. It even resulted in the resignation of Secretary of Defense Les Aspin. Les Aspin received blame for the denial of armored support. General Garrison never pursued the request, and he turned down the AC-130 gunship plan, which lead critics to believe he is to blame. In the end Bowden comes to the conclusion that he is not qualified to assign such blame and criticize these events, but research he did allowed him to accurately report the feelings, memories, and opinions of the men that were involved. (336)
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While reading the book it becomes almost impossible to put down. Despite the lack of military experience, Bowden’s depiction of this should prove as the most accurate and riveting piece written for the Battle of The Black Sea. He seemed to capture the very essence of the fight in his book. Quite simply, Bowden captivates his audience.
