The timing of the threat against the American Embassy in Mogadishu on January 2, 1991 was far from perfect as Washington’s attention was centered on the approaching January 15th deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. It was with that deadline in mind that on the night of Wednesday, January 2nd, we boarded our aircraft for an evening of NVG training in the Omani desert. However, before we launched, word was circulating around the ship about trouble in Somalia where the civil war was endangering diplomats. President Bush ordered U.S. Air Force C-130s to fly to Mombasa, Kenya with the expectation that they would fly to the Mogadishu International Airport once arrangements could be made for the aircraft to land and for Embassy staff to move to the airport for evacuation. [1] Somalia had been a place we had paid absolutely no attention to during our time in the region, and with our night training being so important to the liberation of Kuwait, we didn’t give Somalia another thought tha