Towards the end of the movie, when they are going back in they say it will take time to send in the 10th mountain.
Then the UN troops show up.

So the 10th mountain is never mobilized to go in and help, but the UN does?

Can someone explain what I am misunderstanding in the movie.

10th Mountain was part of the UN forces.

10th mountain lost men getting in the battle.

Per wiki:
Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division

SGT Cornell Lemont Houston, Sr. 41st Engr BN 31 Killed on the rescue convoy

PFC James Henry Martin, Jr. 23 Killed on the rescue convoy

It's a movie. Read a book.

So they couldn't get them to move in, instead of waiting for UN troops?

 
It makes it sound like they took forever to get ready. Wouldn't they have been alerted as soon as there was a problem?

It's still a movie.

10th Mountain goes in.

There was a lot of confusion and the UN commander was hacked off because he wasn't given a heads up on the initial mission.

The Malaysians and Pakistanis had the armored vehicles.

Delta didn't want to do the op with 10th, because they hadn't worked together.
Paul Howe talked about it in the documentary.

I had a couple of friends  in that unit.

You want to look for a book called "Death Ground" and there was a chapter there.

2-14 infantry was one of the best trained battalions in the 10th MTN.  They were very good. They had a one year workup to get ready for their rotation (well above average) and trained pretty thoroughly; there is an article called 'the supercharged battalion' that describes their trainup.

smallwarsjournal.com/documents/superchargedbattalion.pdf

The movie was based off Bowden's book and there was little to nothing of 10th MTN in the book.

10th MTN was not informed of the raid in advance.  2-14 launched their QRF in daylight, C Company, which was beaten back short of the Rangers.  (The Company C QRF effort was not shown in the movie. They were in US five ton trucks) The battalion commander realized that if his unit was defeated there would be nobody left to rescue the Rangers, so there was no third chance.

He had to mobilize Pakistani T55 tanks, and Malaysian kondor six wheeler APCs, organize the mess, put 10th Mountain troops in the back of the kondors and then go.

Three different languages and putting the convoy together in the dark was a soup sandwich. It took time.  That, and it wasn't clear where the Rangers were, between their location, and the status of the two downed helicopters, Shugart and Gordon, Durant, etc.

At one point somebody, I think the Pakistanis, refused to go any further and the 2-14 element had to clear the route themselves.

There were two rifle companies in the attack; one of the US rifle platoons in A/2-14  got cut off when a Malay missed a turn and then the vehicle got blown up by an RPG-7. Basically they were told to fight their way back out as 2-14 couldnt rescue them, and the Rangers at the same time. I knew one of the soldiers in that platoon.  

The lost platoon story is here:
http://battleofmogadishu.com/Cms_Data/Contents/mog/Media/Documents/JAN_APR_98.pdf

One of the company XOs wrote this:
http://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/magazine/issues/1994/SEP-OCT/pdfs/SEP-OCT1994.pdf


The guys I knew in that bn spoke very highly of that unit and spoke very, very highly of LTC Bill David, who retired as a one star.

Thanks. I know it's just a movie and there is more to the story.

This. As great as the movie is the book gives so much more detail into the event. Be warned though you won't be able to put it down.