With My Shield: An Army Ranger in Somalia

(Hardback, Unabridged edition)

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This is the inside story of an Army Ranger, surrounded and outnumbered, fighting a desperate action on the ground during the Black Hawk Down raid in Somalia in 1993. In 1993 Lieutenant James Lechner, a member of the 3rd Ranger Battalion, was selected for a top secret special operations task force being sent to Mogadishu, Somalia, to capture the insurgent leader Mohamed Farah Aideed. In early October, after weeks on the ground and conducting a number of raids in the city, the Task Force is called upon to conduct a daring daylight mission into the heart of Aideeds territory. During the raid, following the initial dangerous fast rope insertion and subsequent capture of a group of Aideeds lieutenants, one of the Task Force Black Hawk helicopters is shot down and Lechner and his comrades are soon caught up in the fiercest combat involving US forces since the Vietnam War. In the middle of the hostile city, deep in the enemys stronghold, the small group of Rangers and special operators now find themselves fighting not only to rescue the downed helicopters crewmen, but also to save their own lives. This first-hand account tells the story of how these elite warriors were able to stand together and prevail against incredible odds. It gives the reader the perspective of an Army Ranger fighting on the ground, combined with professional military analysis, in a groundbreaking book that tells the complete story with never-before-revealed details.

Author Bio

James Lechner served in the US Army for 27 years and participated in eight operational deployments, including Somalia with Task Force Ranger, as well as the Sinai, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to this, Jim has advised the NSC at the White House and served numerous tours at the CIA. Since his retirement from the US military in 2011, Jim has served in Afghanistan as a counter-insurgency advisor as well as providing support for other US government efforts. He holds a masters degree in history, serves on the board of directors of the New York Warrior Alliance, the Big Red Barn Veterans Retreat Center and various other veterans charities and is currently a television war correspondent for Newsmax covering the war in Ukraine. Jim lives with his wife, Beth, in Chapin, South Carolina.