Chief Warrant Officer David Ritchie stared at the wall in the helicopter hanger at Longhorn Helicopters in Denton, standing at attention, devoid of emotion, as his former commanding officer, Col. Stuart McRae, pinned the Legion of Merit medal above his left pocket.
“For exceptionally meritorious service culminating a distinguished 23-year military career as the Battalion Standardization Officer,” read McRae before pinning the star-shaped medal with 12 stars in the center of the decorative piece. “[His] actions are in keeping with the finest traditions of military service.”
The Legion of Merit is typically awarded to general officers and colonels. Most members of the military don’t receive it upon retiring. But Ritchie isn’t most people. He’s a former Army Ranger who was part of the operation that later inspired the movie Black Hawk Down, and he’s managed 12 combat aircrews, earned 800 combat hours, deployed numerous times in support of combat operations and led more than 500 direct action air assault missions.
“[Ritchie is] a true warrior that embodied the warrior ethos and values,” McRae said. “[He] is a warrior. That term has become a bit cliche in recent years, but in his case, it is very appropriate as he has deployed to combat around 18 times and has done it not for glory but because he has felt a sense of duty to both his country and his fellow soldier.”
Ritchie isn’t a particularly tall man or especially thick. But when he moves, there’s a readiness about him, as if he were prepared to strike if threatened. He doesn’t look at you, but through you, as if his mind is calculating three moves ahead before you have time to react.
For the last two years, Ritchie served as chief flight instructor of the Army’s flight school in Fort Rucker, Alabama. He recently retired and accepted a job as a flight instructor at Longhorn Helicopters in Denton.
But between 2003 and 2012, Ritchie said he flew about 12 to 15 missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, “transporting soldiers and saving lives.” He figures he’s earned more than 30 awards, but he doesn’t keep count.
The one medal he does mention receiving was his Purple Heart for his actions during the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. He was briefly mentioned in Mark Bowden’s book, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, about the events that transpired in the ruins of Mogadishu, Somalia, but his character did not appear in the film adaptation.
“It was semi-organized chaos,” said Ritchie, flashing back to that day when all hell broke loose in the streets of the once-picturesque African port. “I thought about it while watching the movie, but I don’t really think about it. I mean, I miss friends and stuff like that. But I don’t miss that.”
The day of the Rangers
It was just a normal mission, like the dozens of missions Spc. Ritchie had run with his fellow Rangers. They’d been in Somalia for a couple of months “doing their thing” from a joint operations center on the beach.
“It was just a little bit worse scenario than we were used to working in, a little more [gun]fire going on, more [rocket-propelled grenades] flying by,” he said, “but we didn’t think anything of it.”
Ritchie was part of a company of Army Rangers from Bravo Company assisting the Delta Force commando squadron with the help of helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Their mission that day was to dismantle the leadership of Mohamed Farrah Aidid, a warlord who led a ragtag clan that had made the mistake of challenging the United States.
“[We had to] let the United Nations do their job feeding everybody,” Ritchie said.
Their missions had spread hatred among the locals, despite their commanding officers issuing strict rules of engagement: to shoot only if someone were pointing a weapon at them. But the bad guys with guns mingled with women and children, the aged and the infirmed, who would all appear whenever there was a disturbance in Mogadishu, according to an article written by Mark Bowden article that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer in November 1997.
On Oct. 3, 1993, their targets were two top Aidid lieutenants. Delta Force planned to storm the house where the lieutenants were hiding and capture them as four UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters dropped a legion of Rangers to secure the perimeter.
Ritchie traveled with a ground convoy of humvees, an all-terrain vehicle, that moved out after the helicopter force lifted off and headed toward their destination. The column of 12 vehicles’ objective was to reach a point behind the Olympic Hotel and wait for Delta Force to finish their assault on the target house. He was a machine gun team leader.
Ritchie had joined the service after seeing an Army Ranger poster of a soldier wearing green and black face paint crouching in a swamp. “For those who fight for it, freedom has a flavor the protected will never know” is just one of the statements printed that entice young people to serve their country.
“I just thought that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen until I was that guy in the swamp,” Ritchie said. “That actually sucked pretty badly. It was 30 degrees in the middle of the night [with] snakes and alligators.”
Ritchie passed basic training, then airborne training, before entering what’s called “Ranger Indoctrination,” “which is kind of like, for me, hell for about a month,” he said. Aspiring Rangers receive maybe two or three hours of sleep at night, constant inspections, four or five hours of physical training a day. If someone left their locker unlocked, the group was running formations. There are mass punishment and group punishment.
“It’s all to work together as a team,” he said.
Ritchie headed to Ranger battalion next and spent two years training before heading to Somalia.
“That’s what’s great about training,” he said. “It’s real intense and you just kind of go into that mode. It was scary, but it wasn’t overtaking you. You were just doing those automatic actions.”
Ritchie said you think about the mission until someone is in your face with a gun, and then you’re acting automatically.
“It’s like driving a car,” he said. “If someone pulls out in front of you, you automatically swerve. It’s the same as having a gun in your hand, flying a helicopter or whatever. If you can see it coming, you’re thinking about it. But those immediate steps, you’re just executing them.”
Ritchie saw the Blackhawk helicopters being shot down as his convoy pulled into a city that resembled a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie. Gunfire was erupting all around him, and bullets were flying through his vehicle. A bullet went through his vest, and another tore through his leg, but he didn’t realize he’d been injured. He was just trying to reach his fellow soldiers in the helicopters before the mob overtook them.
Ritchie exited his humvee, manned the .50 caliber machine gun and unleashed hell on their enemies that day.
It wasn’t until the next day when he realized he was injured. He looked down and saw the blood coming out of his boot. “It was all just flesh stuff,” he said. “I was the least of their worries.”
Eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed, and more than 70 soldiers were injured during the battle. Ritchie said there weren’t enough surgeons, so he put bandages on his wounds and went back to work supporting his fellow Rangers.
“It was all kind of just flesh wound stuff,” he reiterated. “But my mom wasn’t happy about it.”
The first battle of Mogadishu ended with an estimated 1,500 to 3,000 Somali casualties, according to some sources. The Somalia National Alliance, the warlord’s political alliance, claimed only 315 people were killed and 812 wounded.
Helicopter pilot
After receiving the Purple Heart, Ritchie spent another two years with the Rangers before applying to flight school. He’d never given much thought to flying a helicopter. As a Ranger, he spent a lot of time in helicopters, and he’d watch them drop them off and leave, thinking that they’re “going back to a hotel,” which didn’t sound like a bad thing.
Ritchie just knew he needed to do something different, or he’d end up like some of his old sergeant major heroes, who were all getting knee surgeries and hip replacements in their retirements.
“Yeah, they’ve done great things,” Ritchie said, “but those are the guys you hear about dying three or four years after they retire because they’re not running 20 miles a day anymore.”
The life of a Ranger wasn’t what he imagined it would be when he looked at that poster. Only 2 percent of the job was heated action. The other 98 percent “is lying on a beach, freezing,” he said.
Ritchie believed retirement as an officer would be less strenuous, he’d earn more money, and it would be an easier life on him and on his family. His first child was diagnosed with autism in a time when doctors were still trying to understand the disorder.
Ritchie spent six months in a TH-67, a training helicopter, receiving basic flight training, instrument flight training and tactical flight training. His next helicopter was a UH-60 Blackhawk.
“It was like flying a bus,” he said.
Since he’s learned to fly helicopters, Ritchie has spent thousands of hours training other pilots for the Army. He was accepted into the 160th Night Stalkers, where he flew MH-47G Chinooks. He flew dozens of missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he refuses to talk about them. To him, saving lives and protecting freedom was just part of his job.
After retiring from the service, he accepted a job at Longhorn Helicopters. Now instead of training soldiers, he’s training law enforcement. He trains all the Texas Department of Public Safety helicopter pilots, Drug Enforcement Administration agents and night-vision goggle training for the Federal Aviation Administration.
“He’s a go-to guy,” said Todd Branda, general manager of Longhorn Helicopters. “If you need something done, he can get it done.”
Ritchie’s former commanding officer at Fort Rucker presented him with the Legion of Merit award, and one of his former flight instructors was also on hand to watch him receive his award. Ritchie appreciates the accommodations, and he’ll never forget his experiences or his brothers.
“But it’s weird,” he said. “Before you go to war as a soldier, you want war; as soon as you go there, you never want it again.”
CHRISTIAN McPHATE can be reached at 940-566-6878 and on Twitter at @writerontheedge.