I'm Rebecca Levoy, and this is You Can't Make This Up.

You Can't Make This Up is the podcast where we uncover the true stories behind your favorite Netflix documentaries and films.

On today's episode, we take a closer look at the Netflix documentary series, Surviving Black Hawk Down.

We went from a raid force to a rescue force, and now we needed to be rescued.

Today we're talking to film subjects, Tom Satterley and Brad Thomas.

In October 1993, U.S. soldiers operating in the middle of a civil war in Somalia

were on a mission to capture high-ranking militia leaders linked to the fighting.

But their extraction from the streets of Mogadishu was blocked by an unexpected counterattack from

Somali warriors resulting in an all-out urban firefight. While the army rangers were pinned down

in the streets, resistance fighters shot down two Black Hawk helicopters. What became known as the

Battle of Mogadishu lasted for hours, with the U.S. suffering heavy casualties and seeing a pilot

taken prisoner. The failed mission altered the course of American involvement in the conflict.

The Netflix series Surviving Black Hawkdown takes us back to the battlefield as told from

the perspective of Americans on the ground and in the air. It also brings us the voices of Somali

militants who took up arms and of civilians caught in the air. It also brings us the voices of Somali militants who took up arms

and of civilians caught in the crossfire. It not only recounts what happened during those many

hours of combat, it tackles what it meant for the soldiers who made it out alive.

They want you to go to war, so they train you how to go to war. But they don't train you to

deal with it after the fact, and they certainly didn't't train you to deal with it after the fact.

And they certainly didn't train me how to deal with it now.

It's not normal.

It's not healthy.

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