Word: brayed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...bullets ricocheted murderously off the alley walls, the men decided it would be suicidal to remain on the street. Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Bray, 27, kicked in the door of a house, one of several buildings the soldiers would eventually occupy. For the next 12 hours, the pilots of Task Force 160 would provide the only lifeline keeping these besieged Rangers and Delta Force troops alive. Dropping to rooftop level in the face of intense fire, the Little Birds repeatedly emptied their rotating machine guns, then flitted back to the airport. Several pilots flew as many as nine missions...
...plant a tracer round or two in the street. Then the Rangers would call back a correction in aim, sometimes directing fire as close as 15 ft. from their positions, and the gunships would return for a serious pass. As one Little Bird whizzed by, its guns blazing, Bray felt dozens of hot projectiles * striking his body. "I thought I'd had it," he recalled. It took Bray several seconds to realize it was not bullets raining down on him but the brass casings pouring out of the chopper's twin Gatling guns...
Sheltered in a warren of houses and courtyards, Bray and his men now faced another complication: more than a dozen Somali women and children who were huddling, terrified, against the walls. Fearing that if the civilians were released they would either be killed in the street or serve as spotters for Somali sharpshooters, the Rangers corralled the Somalis in a back room. Somalis would later charge that the Americans were using women and children as hostages. In fact, say the soldiers, the reverse was true: "We were under such tight rules of engagement that we couldn't effectively return fire...
...direction. Yelling to warn his comrades, he threw his body over two wounded soldiers to shield them from shrapnel. Meanwhile, Technical Sergeant Tim Wilkinson, 36, a Special Forces medic, also nestled next to the downed helicopter, heard a call from the other side of the street. It was Bray; his men needed medical attention. Yelling across the street for them to "lay down some cover," Wilkinson grabbed his medic's bag, put his head down and ran. He didn't even bother to bring his rifle. "It's just like stealing a base in baseball," he said...
...many other self- destructive habits: because we like the way they make us feel. Prohibition, for example, tends to make its advocates feel powerfully righteous, and militant righteousness has effects not unlike some demon mix of liquor and amphetamines: the eyes bulge, the veins distend, the voice begins to bray...