The Mogadishu Mile was a route that was taken by

United States Army Rangers United States Army Rangers, according to the US Army's definition, are personnel, past or present, in any unit that has the official designation "Ranger". The term is commonly used to include graduates of the US Army Ranger School, even if t ...

and

Delta Force The 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta (1st SFOD-D), referred to variously as Delta Force, Combat Applications Group (CAG), Army Compartmented Elements (ACE), "The Unit", or within Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Task Fo ...

soldiers from a

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

crash site to an appointed rally point held by the

10th Mountain Division The 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) is a light infantry division in the United States Army based at Fort Drum, New York. Formerly designated as a mountain warfare unit, the division was the only one of its size in the US military to re ...

on National Street during the Battle of Mogadishu on October 4, 1993. The U.S. soldiers involved were part of

Task Force Ranger Operation Gothic Serpent was a military operation conducted in Mogadishu, Somalia, by an American force code-named ''Task Force Ranger'' during the Somali Civil War in 1993. The primary objective of the operation was to capture Mohamed Farra ...

, an attempt to seize two lieutenants of warlord

Mohamed Farrah Aidid Mohamed Farrah Hassan Aidid ( so, Maxamed Faarax Xasan Caydiid; ar, محمد فرح حسن عيديد; 15 December 1934 – 1 August 1996) was a Somali general and diplomat. Educated in both Rome and Moscow, he served as a chief in the Italian ...

. Originally they were supposed to take cover by running alongside a convoy of

Humvee The High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV; colloquial: Humvee) is a family of light, four-wheel drive, military trucks and utility vehicles produced by AM General. It has largely supplanted the roles previously performed by the ori ...

s and armored personnel carriers, however when the convoy failed to understand that vehicles were needed for cover, they left them and the soldiers were forced to run without support and with very little

ammunition Ammunition (informally ammo) is the material fired, scattered, dropped, or detonated from any weapon or weapon system. Ammunition is both expendable weapons (e.g., bombs, missiles, grenades, land mines) and the component parts of other weap ...

. The Mogadishu Mile began at 05:42 a.m. and ended when all the troops exfiltrated to the rendezvous point and were loaded into APCs and Humvees, reaching either the Pakistani Stadium or the Airport by 06:30 a.m. During the run, the convoy and in particular the soldiers on foot were attacked with

rocket-propelled grenades A rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) is a shoulder-fired missile weapon that launches rockets equipped with an explosive warhead. Most RPGs can be carried by an individual soldier, and are frequently used as anti-tank weapons. These warheads are ...

and small-arms fire, wounding several soldiers including Sgt. Randy Ramaglia. Many soldiers were suffering from

sleep deprivation Sleep deprivation, also known as sleep insufficiency or sleeplessness, is the condition of not having adequate duration and/or quality of sleep to support decent alertness, performance, and health. It can be either chronic or acute and may vary ...

and

dehydration In physiology, dehydration is a lack of total body water, with an accompanying disruption of metabolic processes. It occurs when free water loss exceeds free water intake, usually due to exercise, disease, or high environmental temperature. Mil ...

Film inaccuracies

It is often believed that the soldiers involved in the Mogadishu Mile had to run all the way to the

Mogadiscio Stadium Mogadishu Stadium ( Somali: Garoonka Muqdisho) is a stadium in Mogadishu, Somalia. The stadium has been completely rebuilt and artificial turf was laid on 27 March 2020. History The facility was constructed in 1977 during the Siad Barre admini ...

, as it was shown in the 2001 film '' Black Hawk Down''. However, in that scene the filmmakers took artistic license and dramatized the event, departing from the original '' Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War'' book by

Mark Bowden Mark Robert Bowden (; born July 17, 1951) is an American journalist and writer. He is a national correspondent for ''The Atlantic''. He is best known for his book ''Black Hawk Down (book), Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War'' (1999) about th ...

. In the film, the Mogadishu Mile ends with about a dozen soldiers entering the Mogadishu Stadium having run all the way through the city. In the book, it ends with soldiers reaching a rendezvous point on National Street (in opposite direction to the stadium):

"As he approached the intersection of Hawlwadig Road and National Street, about five blocks south of the Olympic Hotel, he saw a tank and the line of APCs and Humvees and a mass of men in desert battle dress. He ran until he collapsed, with joy."

Not only the Rangers and Delta Force soldiers made the Mogadishu Mile, but also soldiers from U.S.

alongside them:

"We didn't ride off the crash site. We didn't run out. We walked expediently in a
tactical Tactic(s) or Tactical may refer to: * Tactic (method), a conceptual action implemented as one or more specific tasks ** Military tactics, the disposition and maneuver of units on a particular sea or battlefield ** Chess tactics ** Political tacti ...
formation for about a mile to get to an awaiting convoy."

On the whole, the film version where the convoy leaves the soldiers running through the city alone does not correspond to the real event:

"No one ran out of the city. The Mog mile was to a rally point where the Pakistani tanks and the vehicles from 10th Mountain were, waiting to take the men of TFR out to the Pakistani stadium."

"These APCs were headed back about 800 meters to a strongpoint where reserve element has stayed behind with the tanks, and the plan was to move the wounded via the vehicles and the healthy by foot back to the strongpoint. That's exactly what happened. That, in all its non-dramatic form, is the so-called "Mogadishu mile"..."Col. Lee A. Van Arsdale. "Audio Commentary by Task Force Rangers"
Black Hawk Down 3-Disk Deluxe Edition
/ref>

References

Battle of Mogadishu (1993)