Life After Black Hawk Down | No Man Left Behind

I was the pilot in command of Super 64, which is one of the Blackhawks, and I was actually leading an element of aircraft. That means my responsibility is to fly, in this case, four aircraft into the target area and put troops on the ground. The mission itself was to capture a warlord and some of his senior people. We'd been doing that for a couple of months when the Black Hawk Down mission occurred on October 3rd.

You know, there wasn't a person involved in that mission who didn't put their life on the line that day for someone or to support the mission. I think that's a real important message. We get caught up in a lot of other things, but that selflessness, that commitment to each other, and that commitment to the mission, I think, is at the core of the story.

The manifestation of it for me is Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon, the Medal of Honor recipients, who came to our crash site. They insisted that they be dropped off, and they were. That's why I'm here today. I went to survival school, and in survival school, they go without eating for three days, and they slap you around a little bit.

For me, having experienced it for real in the real world is not even close. In my mind, I died when we crashed. I was knocked unconscious, and I think psychologically that was the end for me. It was a violent crash. You could argue it was not survivable by looking at it.

So, you sort of have this rebirth where now you have a second life. You thought your life was over, and what do you do with it? I have tried to raise the bar on myself, elevate my game, and do things that I probably wouldn't have done if I hadn't had that experience. I've done a lot of things that you know I would say stray outside the lines for me, but I did them because I realized I've already had a second chance. I'm not going to have a third, so I'm going to take full advantage of what's been offered to me.

From a military perspective, this mission was a success. That mission that day was a success; we captured the people we were after. You know, if you define success from a military perspective as casualties, the casualties on the other side far outnumbered ours. But we lost people, and anytime we lose people, we have such a high standard here with our military in the United States that any loss whatsoever is viewed upon with great speculation.

But in the big picture, that's the price we're going to pay. I mean, if we're going to go try to fight ISIS, if we're going to go try to straighten out places like Afghanistan, people are going to die. If we don't accept that going in, we shouldn't go, because that is the world that we live in. It's dangerous. These missions are hard and there will be a price to pay.