He survived Black Hawk Down and was played by a Hollywood A-lister. 30 years on, he reveals how life has changed

UK Daily Mail ^ | 04/24/2025 | SHEILA FLYNN

[DFG]

Just months before the eighth anniversary of the Battle of Mogadishu and the release of the soon-to-be-classic feature film immortalizing it, survivor and war hero Norm Hooten retired from the Army as a master sergeant.

It was August 2001, and his wife Bonnie, a pharmacist, ‘was not down for another 10 years in the Army,’ Hooten said in a podcast interview earlier this month.

‘It had a lot to do with my family,’ Hooten told Ryan Manion on The Resilient Life. ‘I had young kids at the time, and … a lot of times, what the families go through is as difficult or more so than what the actual soldiers on the ground go through – and it really, really scared her to death … she said something to me one time that really resonated with me. It was really kind of a driving factor in me leaving the army.

‘She said, “You know, when we first started together here in the unit … when we would go to team parties … it was fun."'

They’d all been young couples with young families, she recalled, ‘living as normal a life as we could.’

‘But now when I go,’ she told Hooten, ‘ I’m one of the few people out of our group that isn’t a widow, and I’m just not ready to continue doing that. I don’t want the kids to do it.’

So he enrolled in pharmacy school, intending to join his wife’s industry – only for the 9/11 attacks to strike America one month letter.

Hooten was recalled back to the Army, rejoining its ranks as Eric Bana played a character based on – and named for – him on movie screens across the world.

[desertsolitaire]

God bless their courage and a shame we can’t always support people we send in in a timely manner.

[AppyPappy]

It’s odd because people say this generation isn’t made of that but I know one.