On Friday, the U.S. military will hold a ceremony for renaming Fort Eisenhower in Augusta in honor of Gordon. President Donald Trump announced the change in June. Trump’s move was part of a broader effort to restore the names of military installations after they were changed during the Biden administration because they honored Confederate leaders.

The Augusta post was originally named after John Gordon, a Confederate general and slave owner who was generally recognized as the head of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia. Its name was changed in 2023 in honor of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Without questioning whether Gary Gordon deserves such recognition, critics have blasted Trump’s move as calculated and divisive. In contrast, Durant supports the decision, calling it “an elegant solution.”

“A lot of us felt like the legacy of our military and our military installations was being just flipped on its head with all these name changes,” he said. “To be able to come up with this elegant solution where it is going to be Fort Gordon again and honor Gary at the same time — that is just a win-win.”

Now retired, Durant, 64, still feels a strong sense of responsibility to honor Gordon and Shughart, partly through how he lives what he calls his “second life.”

“I can’t squander it,” Durant said. “This is a gift. I got it twice. Most people only get it once.”

A ‘tender, soft, shy presence’

The oldest of two children, Gary Ivan Gordon was born in Lincoln, Maine. His father worked in the local paper mill, while his mother took care of the family at home.

Gordon’s widow, Carmen Owens, met him at a five-and-dime in Lincoln, where he worked. They were both teenagers then. Gordon asked around town about her. They became pen pals and stayed in touch for years.

“He was always continuing to be in my life, as if he was watching over me,” she recalled.

Gary Gordon with his wife, Carmen, and their children, Brittany and Ian. (Courtesy of Carmen Owens)

Owens remembers he was handsome and intelligent. An avid reader and a self-taught artist, he was also confident, Owens said, though he had a “tender, soft, shy presence.”

Gordon joined the U.S. Army at 18. Eventually, he was selected to join the military’s elite Delta Force, a group of highly trained soldiers assigned to daring missions. He excelled in the military, Owens said, through his stubbornness and determination, both Gordon family traits.

“He would not accept failure,” she said.

Fort Eisenhower in Augusta is being renamed after Master Sgt. Gary Gordon of Lincoln, Maine. A Delta Force soldier, Gordon was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism during the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, Somalia. He was also portrayed in the 2001 award-winning film "Black Hawk Down." (Courtesy of Carmen Owens)

Gordon deployed overseas during the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 and the Persian Gulf War in 1990, the same year he married Owens. They raised two children. Gordon was 33 when he died in Mogadishu.

Owens has imagined how her late husband would have reacted to having a military base named after him had he been alive, given his modesty and shyness.

“I know that he would have been very proud for that recognition,” she said. But Gordon, she added, would have also held the view that he “just was doing what everybody else was doing that day.”

Somali children run alongside a U.S. Marine M-1 Abrams tank during an armored patrol in north Mogadishu, Somalia. (Mark Duncan/AP 1993)

The Battle of Mogadishu

On Oct. 3, 1993, the task force was assigned to apprehend some of Aideed’s personnel in Mogadishu. The American troops captured 24 of his supporters that day, including one of his top lieutenants. But the mission went awry when one of their Black Hawk helicopters was shot down with a rocket-propelled grenade.

For Durant, the ground became a blur. He managed to crash his chopper upright. A slab of corrugated metal pierced his windshield, stopping only inches from his face. None of his crew members survived their injuries from the crash and the ensuing attack on the ground.

Children walk along the rotor of a wrecked American helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia. This Blackhawk helicopter, which was used to root out ammo caches, was subsequently shot down by Somali warlords. (Scott Peterson/Liaison 1993)

Hovering above Mogadishu in a third helicopter, Gordon and Shughart witnessed the desperate scene unfolding below. They volunteered three times to rescue Durant and his crew members before they were finally given permission, according to their military commendation records.

“To me, this is game over. We have got two Delta guys here. They are going to handle this, and we are going to get rescued,” Durant recalled. “Initially, I didn’t realize there were only two of them.”

Gordon and Shughart pulled Durant out of the wreckage and then took up positions on the exposed side of the downed chopper, where the attackers were approaching. The trio was vastly outnumbered. Durant joined the firefight with his submachine gun, though it kept jamming. At one point, he used it to sweep away what he thought was a grenade that had landed just to his right. He covered his face with his arms as whatever it was exploded with a concussive blast, covering him with dust.

Lightly armed, Gordon and Shughart killed some of the attackers before they both ran out of ammunition. Gordon was fatally wounded first. Shughart handed Durant Gordon’s rifle. And then he returned to the battle before he was killed. At that point, Durant expected to die.

“I remember looking up at the clouds going by. That is one image I still remember — what the sky looked like,” he recalled. “They descended on me. Initially, they were going to kill me. There was no doubt about it.”

The attackers broke Durant’s nose, cheekbone and eye socket. They ripped his gear off and threw dirt in his face, yelling that he was going to die in Somalia. The beatings finally stopped. Durant’s life was spared, though he became a prisoner. The mob hoisted him in the air and paraded him through Mogadishu. Wounded later by a gunshot and interrogated, Durant spent 11 harrowing days in captivity before he was finally released.

U.S. helicopter pilot Michael Durant is carried on a stretcher to the helicopter from the 46th Combat Support hospital. (Hocine Zaourar/AFP via Getty Images 1993)

Eighteen U.S. service members were killed and dozens of others were injured in the battle, which also claimed the lives of hundreds of Somalis. Those casualties and the images of a dead U.S. soldier being dragged through Mogadishu helped change public opinion in America.

U.S. foreign policy shifted in the wake of the disaster. Within days, the Clinton administration pulled American troops out of combat in Somalia. All U.S. soldiers left the country by March 1994, though the violence persisted there. President Bill Clinton also ordered a review of how and when the United States should become involved in peacekeeping operations.

The library book

In 1994, both Gordon and Shughart posthumously received the Medal of Honor. Durant provided eyewitness testimony supporting their commendations.

Michael Durant was able to rejoin the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment after his captivity in Mogadishu. (Courtesy of Michael Durant)

The father of six children, Durant retired from the military in 2001 as a chief warrant officer 4. He started an engineering company that employed hundreds of people. He resumed playing hockey and has climbed mountains in Colorado. In 2022, he ran unsuccessfully in a Republican primary for the U.S. Senate in Alabama. Next on his list is the New York City Marathon in November.

Today, Durant’s home near Jasper, Alabama, is full of reminders of the battle he survived. On his walls hang framed oil painting prints depicting Gordon and Shughart protecting him. In another room hangs a plaque featuring their names along with the names of the other U.S. service members killed in the battle. Durant also has a small piece of his stricken Black Hawk on display.

Durant also praised them in the book he published in 2003 about his captivity in Mogadishu, “In the Company of Heroes.” Writing it, he said, was cathartic and healing.

A statue of Master Sgt. Gary Gordon in Lincoln, Maine. Gordon, who died in 1993 while attempting to rescue a downed U.S. helicopter pilot in Mogadishu, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. (Mark Rediker/WABI-TV5 via AP 2021)

Toward the end of his book, Durant recalls visiting Gordon’s hometown for a ceremony honoring the fallen soldier in 1994. As he prepared remarks for the event, Durant wrote, he visited a local library and checked out a book about the history of the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award for valor. The book, Durant wrote, was “full of interesting historical facts, and its record of heroic deeds was quite overwhelming.”