I was the pilot in command of Super 6-4, which was one of the Blackhawks, and I was actually leading an element of aircraft, and that means my responsibility is to fly, in this case four aircraft into the target area and put troops on the ground. You know, 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.

And I think that's a real important message. You know, we get caught up in a lot of other things,

but that selflessness and 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 Shugart and Gary Gordon, the Medal of Honor recipients, who came to our crash site.

They insisted that they be dropped off and they were, and that's why I'm here today.

I went to survival school and in survival school they, you go without eating for three days and they slap you around a little bit.

And then for me, having experienced it for real, in the real world, it's 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 it was you know you could argue

not survivable by looking at it so you sort of have this rebirth where now you have

the second life you thought your life was over and and what do you do with it? I have tried to raise the bar on myself, elevate my game, 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

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,

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