Black Hawk behind him

Marisa O’Neil

John Collett has told the story countless times before.

But no matter how many times the former Army Ranger tells people

about holding off enemy fire for 18 hours in Mogadishu’s Bakara

Market on Oct. 3, 1993, no matter how many times they see “Black Hawk

Down” -- Hollywood’s version of the battle -- they can’t have any

concept of what he and the other soldiers went through.

And he doesn’t expect them to.

“For those of us who lived, we will always remember; for those who

died, they will never be forgotten; for those who weren’t there, they

will hopefully never understand,” he wrote when he returned from the

mission the next day.

Though the 32-year-old Costa Mesa resident served as a consultant

and stunt man in “Black Hawk Down,” he’s never seen the film. He

doesn’t want to dilute his own memories with Jerry Bruckheimer’s

version of the battle.

“When we went on the ground, I have a recollection of how it

happened,” Collett said. “I want to remember Mogadishu as it was for

me. If I read the book and watch the movie, that’s what I’ll

remember. I don’t want to remember Josh Hartnett throwing a grenade

on top of some building that never existed.”

The book, Collett said, is about 50% accurate, 50% fiction, with

many characters consolidated into a few key ones. The movie is about

50% as accurate as the book, he said.

Harry Humphries, a former Navy SEAL who works with Bruckheimer,

initially hired Collett to help procure authentic props and costumes

for the 2001 film. When Collett traveled to Morocco for the movie

shoot, the stunt coordinator decided his military expertise would

make him an ideal stuntman for the picture.

After leafing through photos of the film’s stars, he cast Collett

as stunt double for Ewan McGregor, who played Spec. Danny Grimes.

“I looked through the script and saw he gets blown up a lot,”

Collett said without a shred of irony. “So I got blown up and shot at

and had rockets going off by my head.”

Collett also put actor Enrique Murciano, who played Sgt. Lorenzo

Ruiz, in touch with his old Army buddy Dale Sizemore -- Ruiz’s close

friend. Murciano would call Sizemore from Morocco to talk about Ruiz

before shooting scenes.

Ruiz was one of 17 soldiers killed and about 75 injured in the

battle.

Six months of filming something he’d lived through, however, took

its toll on Collett.

“You’re working with people who are carrying the names of people

you knew who died,” he said. “It tends to wear on your soul.”

In the actual battle, Collett “fast-roped” from a Black Hawk

helicopter into the hostile Bakara Market with a team of Army Rangers

and Delta Force members. The mission to capture Somali warlord

Mohamed Farrah Aidid quickly fell apart when a rocket-propelled

grenade brought down one Black Hawk helicopter near their position,

and then a second.

Suddenly, the soldiers were in the middle of a hostile, well-armed

town.

“You could tell that it used to be a beautiful country,” Collett

said. “But when the warlords came in, their national pastime went

from soccer to gunfights and blowing each other up. Everyone has an

AK-47 in their closet. They would have shot at us or at anyone else

in the street.”

When word of the second helicopter’s downing came, additional

soldiers were sent in from their base at a hangar outside Mogadishu.

Sizemore sprang into action, cutting off a cast placed on his arm

after elbow surgery.

In the movie, his character does the same.

Finally arriving in Mogadishu on a Humvee convoy, Sizemore spotted

Collett covering soldiers as they evacuated the wounded.

“Believe it or not, John’s there lying in the middle of the street

in an itty-bitty divot that didn’t even cover him, shooting

down-street,” Sizemore said. “It’s amazing he did it. It kept a lot

of guys alive by doing that.”

As casualties piled up, their priority became evacuating them and

the bodies from the helicopter crash sites.

“We won’t allow a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the

enemy,” Collett said. “That’s our creed. We live and die by the

Ranger creed. It gives a soldier confidence because we think,

‘Regardless if I come out alive, I’m coming out.’”

Eventually, the convoy left Mogadishu, but with so many casualties

that some soldiers, including Collett, had to leave on foot without

any cover. They didn’t have to walk the entire three miles to a

nearby stadium, as they did in the movie, but he did get grazed by a

bullet.

A couple of days later, Collett was allowed to call his family and

tell them he was alive. This was after TV newscasts had shown footage

of the bodies of dead American soldiers being dragged through the

streets of Mogadishu.

His parents had known he was in Somalia, but nothing more.

“A lot of stuff they do -- we sitting here don’t really know about

it,” said Collett’s father, Matt, a 30-year Costa Mesa police

veteran. “Right now, there’s probably stuff going on we don’t know

about.”

John Collett received a Purple Heart and Bronze Star with a “V”

for valor after the fight. He got a medical discharge from the Army

in 2001, after an injury in a parachuting accident.

He moved back home and enrolled in Orange Coast College, where he

joined the rowing team. Rowing, he said, provides the opportunity to

work toward a common goal with a group of people, much like the

military.

“It’s a group of guys who come in early in the morning, like the

Rangers,” he said. “They’re all volunteers, like Rangers. You’re

working toward a common goal and get to a level of fitness together,

getting ready for competition.”

OCC rowing coach Larry Moore, a Army veteran who fought in

Vietnam, said he understands why Collett would be attracted to the

sport.

“Here, we all live and die together in a boat,” he said. “It

doesn’t perform by one individual alone.”

A back injury is keeping Collett off the water this semester, but

his 19-year-old brother, Jeff, started rowing after he talked him

into trying out. John Collett said he hopes that rowing, which he

calls the hardest thing he’s ever done, will help his brother have

the confidence to do anything he wants with his life.

“Being in Somalia is easy,” he said. “Rowing in an eight-man boat

is hard. Getting shot at is easy. This is definitely the hardest six

to seven minutes in any sport.”

John Collett is studying music at OCC and plans to study at USC to

become a recording engineer. He also stopped drinking, a habit to

deal with the stress in the military and afterward that he said dies

hard.

He doesn’t mind occasionally telling the story of the battle, he

said. But he’s done with re-telling, over and over, his story as he

did on a brief speaking tour.

“At some point speaking about the events, you realize that people

are there to live their lives vicariously through you. It’s like they

take a part of you with them when they go. There’s no way they can

know.”

* MARISA O’NEIL covers education. She may be reached at (949)

574-4268 or by e-mail at marisa.oneil@latimes.com.