Jamie Smith Will Be One Of The Fallen Remembered At Long Valley Football Game, Oct. 1

LONG VALLEY, NJ — The 28th anniversary is around the corner when U.S. Army Ranger Corporal James “Jamie” Smith, one of Long Valley’s hometown heroes, made the ultimate sacrifice during “Operation Restore Hope” in Mogadishu, Somalia on Oct. 3, 1993.

Coming up at West Morris Central High School’s football game on Friday, Oct. 1, Smith will be honored as part of a remembrance for “Corporal Jamie Smith Day,” just before the start of the game at home versus Randolph, beginning at 7:30 p.m.

Washington Township Mayor Matt Murello announced in his Mayor’s Message on Tuesday about this recognition for Smith and other military members from West Morris Central High School, who were killed in combat. American Veterans Association of Washington Township Post 1776, Murello and the high school’s administration, will lead the ceremony before the game, Murello said.

Smith’s story was one of the inspirations for the movie “Black Hawk Down,” when two Black Hawk helicopters - expected to perform a mission in about an hour - instead were shot down over hostile territory, Smith one Ranger who headed into danger to help.

At only 21, Smith was sent to Somalia only a month prior in attempts “to contain warlords who were starving the Somali people,” according to an article about him on the U.S. Army’s website.

He was shot in his thigh’s femoral artery while assisting a fellow Ranger in an intense battle that took 18 lives including his. The conflict lasted for an approximate 18 hour timeframe, Smith’s death an agonizing three of those hours, with fellow Rangers unable to transport him from the site, in what was described until the Second Battle of Fallujah in 2004 as “the bloodiest battle involving U.S. troops since the Vietnam War.”

Among Smith's posthumous honors were the Purple Heart and Bronze Star with Valor Device and Oak Leaf Cluster.

A Class of 1990 graduate from West Morris Central High School, Smith played both varsity football and lacrosse in Long Valley; and was involved with the Boy Scouts.

On June 11, 1996, a building was dedicated in Smith’s memory at Picatinny Arsenal, an event his father attended, as did Mark Bowden with the Philadelphia Inquirer, who would later pen the book, "Black Hawk Down, A Story of Modern War."

In 2013, two decades after he was killed, Cpl. James Smith Drive was named in his memory, near Rock Spring Park.

On Oct. 3, 2018, - 25 years after Smith’s final act of bravery took place in Mogadishu - Gov. Phil Murphy signed SJR75 into law, marking each year on Oct. 3, “Sergeant Dominick Pilla and Corporal Jamie Smith Day,” with Pilla of Vineland, killed on the same day that Smith was.

Read more on the U.S. Army website here.

Questions or comments about this story? Have a news tip? Contact me at: jennifer.miller@patch.com.