Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Living… in the middle of hell. What was supposed to be a routine mission into warlord-controlled Somalia has turned into a fierce battle for mere survival.
Visiting… Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. The warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid has ravaged the city and sent hundreds of thousands into famine. Eversmann and his fellow U.S. Army Rangers including John Grimes have been sent in to capture two of the warlord’s top advisors.
Profession… soldier.He’s a staff sergeant, but when his Lieutenant has to be removed from duty due to a seizure, Eversmann finds himself as the leader of Ranger Chalk Four. He’s never led his own platoon before – and this happened to be the worst mission on which to learn how to lead.
Interests… his duty. Eversmann did not become a Ranger just for fun, he did it to improve the world. As he puts it, “Look, these people… they have no jobs, no food, no education, no future. I just figure that... we have two things we can do. We can help, or we can sit back and watch a country destroy itself on CNN.”
Challenge… staying alive. When things go horribly wrong, Eversmann and his men find themselves in the middle of Mogadishu surrounded by hostile militants. “We’re Rangers,” he says to buck his men up, “not some sorry-ass JROTC. We’re elite. Let’s act like it out there.”
Personality… tough and perseverant. All of the odds are against Eversmann, yet he continues to fight. In his words, “Nobody asks to be a hero. It just sometimes turns out that way.”
Get to Know him in...
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When U.S. Rangers and an elite Delta Force team attempt to kidnap two underlings of a Somali warlord, their Black Hawk helicopters are shot down, and the Americans suffer heavy casualties, facing intense fighting from the militia on the ground.
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Already a classic of war reporting and now reissued as a Grove Press paperback, Black Hawk Down is Mark Bowden’s brilliant account of the longest sustained firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. On October 3, 1993, about a hundred elite U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into the teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take an hour. Instead, they found themselves pinned down through a long and terrible night fighting against thousands of heavily armed Somalis. The following morning, eighteen Americans were dead and more than seventy had been badly wounded. Drawing on interviews from both sides, army records, audiotapes, and videos (some of the material is still classified), Bowden’s minute-by-minute narrative is one of the most exciting accounts of modern combat ever written—a riveting story that captures the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle.
