Soldiers revisit 'Black Hawk Down' battle 20 years later

Soldiers revisit 'Black Hawk Down' battle 20 years later
Army Times
by Michelle Tan
Staff writer
October 3, 2013

Twenty years after fighting in the Battle of Mogadishu, Keni Thomas and Jeff Struecker returned to Somalia.

“You think I want to get on a plane for 40 hours and go riding around with my hairs standing on end, with my stomach churning, in the back of an SUV in downtown Mogadishu again?” Thomas said. “Hell, no, but I went because that’s the story that needs to be told. This is a story I’ve been tasked with.”

The story of the battle, made famous by the book “Black Hawk Down” and a subsequent movie, is something Thomas believes needs to be told, even two decades later.

It took him a while to realize that, said Thomas, who is now a country music singer based in Nashville.

“What I had to learn is, the story is not the curse,” he said. “If you don’t talk about the guys and girls that you fought with, no one else is going to.
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