Winter sports are justifiably popular in the frozen north. However,
such stuff can be terribly unforgiving of foolishness. Public domain.
I had one particularly unfortunate soldier when I was stationed in Alaska. We’ll call him Billy. Billy was a good kid, but he grew up with a dearth of positive role models. We were putting him out of the Army for writing bad checks, but that process takes a minute.
Our arctic military base sported a well-lit ski slope that was visible from all over post. The Army just teems with arcane rules. Included among the myriad of obscure dicta was a prohibition against farting around on the ski slope after hours. However, these were young American males. You can take the boys out of second grade, but you’ll never take the second grade out of the boys.
On this particular Friday evening, Billy and his mates had parked at the base of the ski slope and trudged up to the top with big inner tubes to do some after-hours, off-the-books sledding. Somebody spotted the mischievous scamps and alerted the MPs. The Army cops met the motley mob at the top of the hill and directed them to go elsewhere and do something else. My guys requested and received permission to make one last run to get back down to their vehicles. Cue the ominous music …
Everything is Physics
Billy launched down the sharply angled slope atop his inner tube. As it is not physically possible to maintain any semblance of directional control on such a primitive conveyance, he drifted off the track and struck a light pole a glancing blow. Fret not; there was no significant harm done … yet.
Billy bounced up in the air only to awkwardly remount his hurtling tube. This time, he was on his back, clinging for dear life with his legs flailing vertically in the air. It was in this inelegant configuration that his butt impacted the ski rack set in concrete at the base of the slope. He was traveling at, conservatively, three times the speed of sound when he sheared off that big piece of treated lumber with his rectum.
By the time his buddies reached his side, he had eviscerated himself through his anus and was in the midst of a grand mal seizure. Billy’s entrails had tragically become his ex-trails. Investigators discovered one of his testicles in the snow the following day. To put it mildly, Billy was in a pretty rough way.
Come dawn, I located Billy in the hospital. Before I went to med school, he was the person nearest death, but not technically dead I had ever seen. He miraculously survived the first few days and underwent his first of several surgeries.
Among other things, this ordeal earned him a colostomy bag. For those unfamiliar, a colostomy is a surgical procedure wherein your large bowel is plumbed through a hole in your abdomen to a bag on the outside.
Once complete, a colostomy leaves your butt free to heal, meditate, sleep, or whatever without further molestation. Surgeons perform them for a wide variety of very good medical reasons.
The Inimitable Power of Family
A combat unit is a tribe — a curiously dysfunctional tribe without any secrets. Although Billy was a poor soldier, he was a good kid. We all wanted him to thrive. Given the sordid circumstances, his separation proceedings were quietly binned. He became a barracks rat, spending his days nondeployable in the orderly room answering the phone. In this capacity, I recall he did a simply spanking job.
We all followed his progress from a distance but with legitimate interest. If nothing else, Billy’s travails reliably put our own problems in perspective. You take stuff like pooping for granted right up until it’s gone.
After several more surgical procedures, Billy finally had a test. His surgeons were going to insert a rubber ball in his butt and then start a clock. If he could hold the ball in place for a fixed period of time, they would reverse his colostomy, and he would get to poop like a normal person again. If he failed, then that bag would become his lifelong companion. Test day was a big deal, and everybody knew it.
As he departed for the hospital on the big day, Billy’s buddies slapped him on the back with heartfelt admonishments to “Be the ball, brother!” and “Crush that ball, stud!”
Billy returned a couple of hours later, looking spent but happy. When I queried him regarding the events of the day, he smiled and said simply, “Held the ball, boss.”
A short while later, Billy had his colostomy reversed. He was ultimately medically retired to receive a military pension that would span the rest of his days. All things being considered, I’d say he earned that. Billy had, after all, and against all odds, indeed held the ball.
Gregory Peck won a Best Actor Oscar in 1962 for To Kill a Mockingbird. Like most Hollywood folk, he was a committed Leftist.
Oscar-winner Gregory Peck was one of the most popular movie stars ever. His filmography includes epics like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Guns of Navarone, Twelve O’clock High, and Roman Holiday. He died in 2003 at age 87.
Like most movie stars, Peck was a left-wing Democrat. It’s tough to comprehend why that particular job seems to attract Leftists so, but it does. He considered running against Ronald Reagan for the governorship of California in 1970 but demurred. President Lyndon Johnson stated that had he won re-election in 1968 he intended to offer Peck the position of Ambassador to Ireland. Peck, for his part, later admitted that he likely would have taken the job.
Despite starring in several violent movies, Gregory Peck was a rabid gun control advocate. He championed an international moratorium on nuclear weapons as well. These lofty ideals are laudable on the surface, I suppose, but utterly unenforceable. Giving up your guns as an individual or your nukes as a superpower is a great way to get your butt kicked on scales both small and large.
Ethan Peck, Gregory Peck’s grandson, makes a crackerjack Mr. Spock.
Now We Get Into Stephen Peck
Gregory Peck was married to Greta Kukkonen from 1942 until 1955. In 1955 he married Veronique Passani. He ultimately fathered five children. His sole daughter Cecilia is a producer, director, and actress. His grandson Ethan is an actor of some renown himself. While Ethan has played many roles on both the large and small screens, one of his most compelling was as Spock on Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Ethan Peck’s dad is Stephen, Gregory Peck’s son by his first wife. Strange New Worlds is a great show, by the way.
Nepotism specific to Hollywood has a name. They call the successful offspring of successful movie personalities Nepo Babies. The presupposition is that acting is likely not really all that hard, and that having a recognizable name or face is a great way to break into the business. Examples include Jamie Lee Curtis, Nicholas Cage, Lilly-Rose Depp, George Clooney, Scott Caan, Hailey Bieber, Robert Downey Jr, Scott Eastwood, and Liv Tyler. Each of these stars is descended from show business royalty. As they say, the nut usually doesn’t fall far from the tree. And then there was Stephen Peck.
The Philosophy of Plenty
One of the interesting reasons we enjoy such social turmoil these days is that, for the first time in human history, we’re no longer consumed with just not starving to death. In generations past folks were too preoccupied with securing food, clothing, and shelter to fret overly about preferred pronouns and the nuances of social justice. If you’re raised in opulence surrounded by flaming Leftists one might be forgiven for growing up to become a privileged flaming Leftist yourself. However, sometimes the Real World offers a hard lesson in reality.
Stephen Peck is second from the left on the second row up from the bottom.
Stephen Peck came of age in the mid-1960’s. When Stephen’s draft number came up his rich, famous, politically-connected dad could have almost assuredly gotten him out of his obligation. However, to his credit, Stephen bucked up and enlisted in the US Marine Corps. He first donned the uniform at age 22.
This picture was taken the day Stephen Peck was commissioned as an officer in the US Marine Corps.
Vietnam
The younger Peck enjoyed some proper leadership capabilities, and he was soon commissioned as a Lieutenant with orders for Vietnam. The elder Peck was a vociferous opponent of US military involvement in Southeast Asia. However, with the realization that his son was going to war, Gregory stood behind both him and the troops with whom he served.
Many Hollywood types could not differentiate between government policy and the instruments of that policy. It is our Constitutionally-protected right to petition the government for redress. If you don’t like whatever it is the government is doing, then by all means become active in the process and change it. However, don’t take your frustrations out on the lowly grunts who do the fighting and the dying. I can tell you from personal experience, Uncle Sam doesn’t care about your politics. He just expects you to go where you’re told and do what you’re trained to do. Geopolitical niceties matter little to a soldier who is wondering if he will live to see another sunrise.
Jane Fonda has since said she regrets having had this picture taken. So I guess that makes us buddies now…
It would have been nice to have had Jane Fonda figure that out before she crawled up onto that North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun. It would have been almost as nice to have had her apologize for such rank stupidity once she matured enough to do so. However, that was a bridge too far for her.
She did express “regret” for allowing herself to be photographed manning the antiaircraft gun. However, she spoke proudly of her Radio Hanoi broadcasts, her support of a Communist victory, and her attacks on American servicemen as war criminals. As apologies go, that seems tepid at best. Personally, I wasn’t much moved by it. By contrast, Stephen Peck actually did the deed. He trekked overseas and saw the elephant for himself.
Stephen Peck Goes to War
Stephen Peck humped the boonies in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970. This is him out doing his thing in Indian Country. The experience changed him forever.
Stephen is quick to point out that he didn’t volunteer. He was drafted, but he served with honor. He fought with the 1st Marine Division around Da Nang from 1969 into 1970. Like many combat vets, he had a tough time switching that off after he got home. His time in combat had a curious effect on his worldview.
Upon his return, Stephen launched himself into the only world he had ever really known. In 1972 he enrolled in a grad school cinema program with the intent of becoming a documentary filmmaker. He made a decent living in the film industry up until 1990 when he helmed a documentary film on the unique culture among homeless veterans living on the beach in Venice, California.
In Stephen Peck’s line of work, announcing that you were a veteran was not a career booster.
A Change In Perspective
Prior to that time, Peck had kept the details of his military service to himself. Literally nothing triggers a sense of admiration in me like learning that a new acquaintance served our country in uniform. However, in the sorts of circles in which Peck moved, telling folks that he had gone downrange for Uncle Sam was not the best ice breaker. Here is what he had to say on the subject, “I didn’t tell a lot of people I served in Vietnam because in those years you didn’t do that. Around that time those feelings about the war and Vietnam came back to me and I began to think about my experience and talking with other veterans, and produced a film about the combat experience.”
Meeting those homeless vets changed him. Among these hopeless souls he imagined his brothers with whom he had served in the Marines. He later said, “I was making documentary films so I was an observer on the problem but I wasn’t an active participant in solving the problem.” His felt so strongly about the subject that in his mid-forties he quit his job and enrolled at the University of Southern California to earn a degree in social work. His mission now became supporting and encouraging at-risk veterans.
Stephen Peck threw his effort behind US Vets, a non-profit dedicated to battling homelessness among American military veterans.
And a Change In Priorities
Today Stephen Peck is CEO of US Vets, an energetic non-profit dedicated to serving homeless veterans. From their website–nearly 38,000 military veterans are homeless in the US today. That’s roughly 9% of the country’s homeless population. US Vets supports roughly 20,000 of those homeless vets each year. They have provided 393,093 bed nights for eligible veterans and have successfully placed 1,236 previously homeless vets in jobs. US Vets has secured 3,061 permanent housing solutions and served 440,141 meals. They have also provided some 57,782 counseling sessions to help homeless veterans get back on their feet.
US Vets has eleven different hubs supporting veterans around the country. They always begin with shelter. Once a veteran has a safe place to call home he or she can begin down the road to economic self-sufficiency. Along the way, US Vets offers services in support of mental health and wellness as well as job training and workforce development.
US Vets is whittling away at the problem of homelessness among military veterans in America.
Solving the homeless problem among American military veterans is a Gordian task. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by its scope. However, Stephen Peck and US Vets attempt to solve this thorny cultural challenge one veteran at a time. It’s indeed a gargantuan problem, but these guys are steadily chipping away at it.
Ruminations On Stephen Peck
Stephen Peck is Hollywood royalty. Had he chosen to do so, he could have coasted on his famous dad’s trust fund and lived out a life of comfort and leisure someplace. However, unlike so many among the Leftist elites, Stephen Peck actually went to war. Along the way, he saw firsthand how Americans from all walks can come together for a common objective and make some powerfully enduring relationships along the way.
You can’t swing a dead cat in Hollywood without hitting some vapid idiot who is more than willing to shoot a brief public service announcement instructing everyone else in what they need to do to solve society’s many manifest ills. Once that PSA is a wrap they climb into their private jets and blast off back to wherever it is they spend their money.
Here we see Gregory, Stephen, and Ethan in the early 1990’s. Stephen’s time in uniform took him down a different path.
By contrast, Stephen Peck was sufficiently burdened by what he saw among homeless veterans that he quit his job, went back to school, and devoted the rest of his professional life to making a real difference. Despite the apparent disparity in their political leanings, I suspect his Old Man would be proud.
Nothing like being up 5 miles in the air, exposed to extreme cold and having one of the best air forces in the world trying to kill you. Now Ladies & Gentlemen this is what I call REAL MEN at work!!!!! Grumpy
The man looked like the archetypal southern grandfather—skinny and old in immaculately pressed bib overalls and a button-down shirt fastened at the neck and wrists. He was never without a ball cap. I drove past his house every day as I went to work. Whenever he was outside he would wave. I seldom gave him a second thought. You wouldn’t have, either.
One day he came to my clinic complaining of arm pain. I asked him to roll up his sleeve and was surprised to find that his forearm was a veritable mass of scars. I inquired concerning the original injury, and he sheepishly explained that his arm was dirty with fragments from a German potato masher grenade. It had never been quite right since.
A Most Remarkable Man
At 0630 hours on 6 June 1944, this old man was crouched in a British Landing Craft Assault churning toward Omaha Beach as a member of the 2nd Ranger Battalion. He carried a Browning Automatic Rifle and landed in the first wave. Ever see the movie Saving Private Ryan? He did that.
He and I spoke often of the war. I explained that every time he came to see me as a patient he owed me a fresh war story. The man was old and a widower. I’m fairly certain he enjoyed the attention. Lord knows I enjoyed dispensing it. He once told me what D-Day smelled like. If you’re curious—a weirdly unique mixture of burnt cordite, petroleum, and blood.
He obviously survived the invasion as well as the hell of the bocage country that followed. He lost two toes in the Bulge and met General Patton twice. He said the man had a presence. He picked up the frags in the Hurtgen Forest. He despised that place.
War Story
My buddy was once hidden in a ditch on a reconnaissance patrol feeling out German strength for Patton’s Third Army. He said the big German tanks were roaring past almost close enough to touch. To his credit, he didn’t describe them all as Tigers. Most did, but, then again, I am in no place to judge.
He said a motorcycle with a sidecar rumbled up and stopped right in front of him. The driver remained on the bike, while the Kraut officer in the sidecar stood up and peered in the opposite direction with what he described as an exceptionally nice pair of binoculars. My friend looked left and right and saw no handy German tanks. Rising up out of the grass he leveled his BAR and emptied its 20-round magazine, killing both of the German soldiers. He then “scampered”( his word) out onto the road and retrieved the binoculars.
His patrol leader was livid. He said the ass-chewing he received was simply life-changing. Then he got a conspiratorial look on his face, leaned forward, and said with a wry grin, “But I still got those binoculars back at the house…”
Subtle Wounds
With the war finally over, he took a troop ship back across the Atlantic. Enroute they hit a storm. He said that was the most terrified he had been during the entire war. He claimed it was worse than D-Day. He explained that after all he had seen and done he was afraid the ship was going to capsize and that he would drown in the icy cold waters of the dark Atlantic.
Once he finally got home, his mother threw him a party. Friends and family came from all around to celebrate the fact that he had made it home safely and intact. They all stayed up visiting until late, and then all the guests gradually went home.
His mom then took him to his bedroom. She had maintained it exactly as it had been three years before when he had left Yocona, Mississippi, to become a Ranger. She hadn’t changed a thing. She tucked him in bed and then went to her own room, changed into her night clothes, and climbed into bed herself.
In his words, “I sat there in the dark staring at the ceiling, and I just couldn’t do it. So I got up and tipped outside to the woodshed and fetched myself a shovel. Then I dug a hole in the backyard and crawled into it. I found that after a year under fire I could no longer sleep above ground.”
He continued, “My mom heard the noise and came out to investigate in her nightgown. When she found me curled up in that hole and realized for the first time what I had been through and how it had changed me, she fell to her knees and wept.”
Deep Magic
How does one respond to that? I had no words. I just sat there, took his hand, and tried desperately not to embarrass myself.
I took my friend for granted. I assumed he would always be there—right down the road, waving at me as I went to work. But that was obviously not the case. We are all living under a death sentence.
My buddy developed a vicious aspiration pneumonia and then, just like that, he was gone. With the crystalline clarity of hindsight I now appreciate that this quiet little invisible man was actually something quite remarkable indeed.
Somalia in the modern era has been essentially ungovernable. Myriad incompatible tribal factions, pervasive corruption, and a perennial tendency to bite the hands that feed them now serve to keep the Somalis isolated, chaotic, and hungry.
What is it exactly about Somalia? The New York Times has described the Somali ethos as “legendarily individualistic.” In 1995 the US General Colin Powell said of Somalia, “Where things went wrong is when we decided, the UN decided, that somehow we could tell the Somalis how they should live with each other. At that point we lost the bubble…”
These skinny little dudes were formidable opponents in the late 19th century.
Somalis were the first people to domesticate the camel some 2,500 years before Christ. Early in the 20thcentury the Somali Dervishes successfully repulsed English military operations four different times, no mean feat at the height of the British Empire. The Republic of Somalia was formed in 1960 by the confederation of a British protectorate and a former Italian colony.
Don’t let the formal threads and placid demeanor fool you, Mohamed Siad Barre was an inveterate butcher.
Mohamed Siad Barre seized power in 1969 and ruled as a dictator until he was overthrown in 1991 in a bloody civil war. Barre’s model of governance has been described as “scientific socialism,” whatever that really means. The reality was that it was a quirky mixture of Islam and Marxism with a little Somali nationalism sprinkled over the top for flavor. His was described as “the worst human rights record in Africa.” Considering the competition that is no small accolade.
Somalia is one gigantic self-inflicted wound.
After the ouster of Barre in 1991 Somalia pretty much didn’t have a government. Governance devolved into something fairly feudal driven by clan, religious, and tribal connections. The resulting utter chaos came atop a deadly famine. Ten percent of Somali children under the age of five died of hunger. The world through the UN stepped in to try to help. This turned out to be a really bad idea.
Food relief flowed in from around the world. However, Somali warlords used starvation as a weapon to control the populace.
The planet threw food at these people, but petty warlords armed to the teeth weaponized food shipments to enhance the power of their own little fiefdoms. Under the guise of the UN, governments deployed military forces in an effort at stabilizing the situation enough to mitigate the famine. In response, the Somalis stole stuff, attacked UN forces, and generally made life miserable for everybody.
The Italian Contingent
Unlike the Americans who fought later, the Italians brought ample organic armor support.
The Italians came ready to play. They fielded paratroopers, M60 Main Battle Tanks, armored cars, and tank destroyers. The first serious combat engagement involving Italian forces since the end of WW2, this particular mission was titled Operation Kangaroo 11.
This is a birds-eye view of Checkpoint Pasta.
The Italian command split their mechanized forces into two columns and pushed into the Haliwaa District north of Mogadishu. Their mission was to search for weapons and attempt to disarm forces loyal to local warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid and his Somali National Alliance. As part of this operation, the Italians set up a checkpoint alongside, appropriately enough, an abandoned pasta factory. The resulting bloodletting has come to be known as The Battle of Checkpoint Pasta.
Somali militia fighters set fires and erected roadblocks to prevent the Italians from getting back to their bases.
Toward the end of their sweep, Somali militia used women and children as human shields and attacked the two columns. The Somalis engaged Italian VCC-1 Camillino armored vehicles at close range with RPG-7 rocket launchers and immobilized some. Meanwhile, Somali militia barricaded the surrounding streets and unlimbered pretty much everything they had. The result was an epic close-quarters firefight over some of the most worthless terrain on the planet.
Italian Weapons
The AR70/90 has served as the primary Italian Infantry rifle for 30 years. Oddly, I don’t recall the soldiers with whom I served looking much like this.
The Italians wielded Beretta AR70/90 assault rifles and MG3 light machine guns. The AR70/90 has been the standard 5.56x45mm service rifle of the Italian armed forces since 1990. It is currently undergoing a phased replacement by the polymer chassis ARX160. A gas-operated, piston-driven design, the AR70/90 evolved from the previous AR70 first fielded in 1972.
The AR70/90 evolved from the earlier AR70 shown here. The AR70 was a state of the art late-20th century design.
Those early AR70 rifles were initially inspired by a joint SIG/Beretta project to develop the SG530 rifle. The general similarity to the SIG family of weapons is fairly obvious. While a serviceable enough design, the AR70’s stamped steel receiver featured pressed-in bolt guides that could deform under hard use and deadline the weapon. In 1985 the Italian military began testing an upgraded version eventually called the AR70/90.
The AR70/90 was the AR70 nicely upgraded. It has been a dependable and effective weapon.
Those original trials pitted the AR70/90 against the HK G41 and an Italian-made copy of the Israeli Galil SAR. The Colt M16A2 got an invitation as well but was disqualified due to some kind of nebulous legal troubles. The AR70/90 ultimately won the trials and gained acceptance as the new Italian military rifle.
The four-position selector on the AR70/90 offers a lot of flexibility.
The AR70/90 featured a four-position selector that offered safe, semi, 3-round burst, and full-auto operation. The standard rifle included a fixed polymer stock, while the SC70/90 version sported a folding stock and was intended for Alpine troops. The SCP70/90 was that same weapon with a shorter barrel crafted for use with airborne forces. The AR70/90 weighed 8.8 pounds, fed from STANAG magazines, and cycled at 650 rpm on full auto.
This is a wartime German MG42 remarked as an MG3 after swapping a few parts.
The MG3 is essentially a German MG42 light machinegun rechambered for 7.62x51mm. The MG3 and MG42 share a high level of parts commonality. While the wartime MG42 cycled at a blistering 1,200 rpm, most modern MG3 variants include a heavier bolt and redesigned recoil spring that slow the rate of fire down considerably.
The Italians have been building their own MG3 machine guns for more than 60 years.
Beretta, Whitehead Motofides, and Franchi have produced licensed versions of the MG3 in Italy since 1959. These guns include a 1,200-gram bolt that offers a rate of fire of around 800 rpm. The Italians used the weapons on both ground and vehicle mounts.
Somali Weapons
These weapons were seized by the French Navy on board a ship bound for Somalia. Holy crap.
This part of Africa has been showered with small arms for decades. Somalia was originally aligned with the Soviet Bloc until the late 1970’s when the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre abruptly changed teams and jumped in bed with the West. As a result, Somali arms bazaars are a cornucopia of military small arms from around the world. That means FN FALs, G3’s, M16’s, and AK’s—lots and lots of AKs.
This young stud is packing a curious piece of iron. This is an early milled receiver underfolder AK47 with the stock removed, a later AKM handguard, and a pair of magazines taped together. Note the early slab-sided magazine and excellent trigger finger discipline.
We have discussed the Kalashnikov assault rifle in this venue before. Designed by Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov as a tool with which to defend Mother Russia against aggression from the West, the AK ultimately became the single most influential mechanical contrivance of the 20thcentury. With more than 100 million copies in service, the AK is the most produced firearm in human history.
The PKM shown here is a belt-fed LMG chambered for the archaic rimmed 7.62x54mm round. The gun uses an inverted version of the traditional Kalashnikov action.
You can indeed kill an AK, but it takes a great deal of effort. I used Kalashnikov rifles back when I wore the uniform that had not been cleaned since they left the factory, were employed in combat against US forces and captured, and were then repurposed into American stores yet still ran reliably and well. Everything about the gun is massively overdesigned. The critical bits are chrome-plated for wear resistance in sordid locales. The same basic action found itself into the PK-series belt-fed machineguns as well, albeit slightly modified and upside down.
The Rest of the Story
This unfortunate young man was the first Italian KIA of the engagement.
Once the Somali militia erected their roadblocks and disabled a couple of Italian armored vehicles things started to get real. An Italian paratrooper named Pasquale Baccaro was struck in the leg by an RPG and killed, while the unit Sergeant Major was grievously wounded in the abdomen. A third paratrooper was badly wounded in the hand.
The B1 Centauro tank destroyer is a relatively lightweight wheeled vehicle that packs a substantial punch.Orbiting Mangusta gunships like this one provided top cover.
At this point, the Italian commanders unlimbered the serious stuff. A column consisting of eight M60 tanks, seven B1 Centauro tank destroyers, and several Fiat 6614 armored cars proceeded to the checkpoint near the pasta factory and opened up with their organic machineguns. Meanwhile armed Italian UH-1H Huey helicopters along with Agusta A129 Mangusta gunships joined the fray from above. One of the Italian raiders was killed clearing a Somali fighting position with an OD 82/SE hand grenade.
This is the rusting hulk of the Somali Iveco VM 90 taken out by a TOW missile from an Italian Mangusta gunship as it appears today.
The tanks engaged a series of shipping containers used by militia members, graphically educating the Somalis on the salient battlefield differences between concealment and cover while killing several in the process. One of the Mangustas took out a captured Iveco VM 90 vehicle with a TOW missile. 2LT Andrea Millevoi, the track commander of a Centauro tank destroyer, was shot and killed as he leaned out of his vehicle.
This is a photo of an Italian Centauro tank destroyer in action during the battle.
Both sides thoroughly blooded, the Italians took their toys and went home. The Battle for Checkpoint Pasta has since been described as an Italian defeat, but that’s not an entirely fair assessment. Somali militia had the Italian forces cut off and surrounded. In a remarkably chaotic environment, the Italians blasted their way clear and relocated to a position of safety. While they did suffer three dead and 22 wounded, Somali losses were estimated at nearly 200.
Ruminations
The Battle at Checkpoint Pasta helped set the stage for the protracted street fight that involved American forces some three months later.
Three months later, American forces fought the Battle of Mogadishu, the two-day bloodbath that was so graphically depicted in the book and movie Blackhawk Down, against forces aligned with the same dirtbag warlord. In this later engagement, there were nineteen Americans killed against several hundred Somalis. One of the rawest aspects of the American fight was the lack of organic armor support.
It sure would have been nice to have had a couple of M1 tanks and half a dozen Bradleys on standby when those Blackhawks went down in Somalia. Commanders on the ground had requested armor support, but the civilian leadership in DC thought that might look bad.
Unlike the Italian contingent, the US civilian government under Bill Clinton felt that the inclusion of tanks made for a bad optic. This decision forced our warriors to fight their way out on foot. I’ve had a tough time forgiving Clinton for that.
Mohamed Farah Aidid died from battlefield wounds about a year after UN troops pulled out of Somalia. Interestingly, his son Hussein Mohamed Farrah Aidid emigrated to the US at age 17 and eventually served eight years as a US Marine. Hussein returned to Somalia after the death of his father to take his place leading the Somali National Alliance.
The last UN troops left Somalia in March of 1995. Somalia has subsequently become one of the world’s most ghastly hellholes. For his part, Mohamed Farrah Aidid was shot in battle a year later and subsequently died of a heart attack during surgery. Good riddance.
There’s a lot that’s not awesome about Somalia these days. This crowd is gathered to watch some poor schmuck get his hand cut off for stealing in accordance with Sharia Law.Somalia is awash in violent crazy people with guns.
