Basher Five-Two Read online

  After a somber greeting from the officer in charge, my mother was handed an official U.S. Air Force letter outlining the same set of facts given to my dad. My mother refused to finish reading the letter. Choking back tears, she bravely told the officers that I was not dead. She had known from the beginning of my career that flying an F-16 was dangerous. She knew the heartbreaking stories of pilots killed on training missions and the families they’d left behind. She knew I was in Italy to fly sorties over hostile territory. Yet she refused to believe that her older son was dead. She told my father, too, and anyone else she spoke with in the next six days. Her faith was constant. It was almost twice as if she wouldn’t let me die. Buttressed by her own faith in God, a mother’s love for her son is a powerful weapon, more powerful, perhaps, than anything I was up against.

  When the air force officers had left my parents’ homes, my mom and dad began calling other members of the family. There were a lot of O’Gradys—maybe fifty or sixty of them scattered across the country—and as close as everybody was, in the next six days their bond grew even stronger.

  That afternoon, pinned down in my hiding place, I flinched every time a rifle went off or someone thrashed through nearby trees. Minutes crawled by like hours. By nine o’clock, as temperatures began to drop, the area slowly emptied of search parties. I suddenly found myself alone, and I picked up my radio.

  “Anyone, Basher Five-Two.”

  Behind the static there was no response. My strongest urge was to keep trying—like redialing someone’s phone number when you get a busy signal—but I worried about the life of the radio batteries. When you just monitored your radio, listening to whoever was on the airwaves, it wasn’t that much of a drain on your batteries; but when you transmitted out, speaking into the radio, the batteries took a beating. Altogether, I knew I had about eleven or twelve hours of battery life, and I had no idea how long I would be out there.

  I tried to pull my thoughts together—and to make a specific plan for survival—but my mind kept wandering. It was hard not to fantasize about my family or about being back in my apartment for a hot shower and meal or about just sitting around and talking with my pilot buddies. I thought of the transporters on Star Trek—maybe Scotty could beam me up. I wondered, too, what I would have been doing right now if I hadn’t volunteered for today’s flight duty.

  There were a lot of what-ifs, but none of them mattered. I had to face reality. And reality told me I couldn’t stay here much longer. In the morning, I was sure, soldiers would be joining the search teams.

  Just before nightfall, I flipped from my stomach to my back and opened my Swiss Army knife. A knife blade made a primitive mirror, but it was good enough for me to see the blistering and burns on my cheeks. The cockpit fire had singed my eyebrows and eyelashes as well. At the time of the explosion I’d thought half my face had melted away. I had gotten off lucky.

  As the sky slowly darkened, I was about to experience one of the greatest frustrations of my ordeal. I wanted to move as quickly as possible—hoof it all the way to the Adriatic Sea and find a boat back to Italy, if necessary. But because I was surrounded by hostile forces, I knew I had to move in slow motion. One jerky movement, one careless act of littering, one broken twig—any of those could give me away in an instant. I needed to be aware of my every movement, think several steps in advance, then check for errors once Fd made a move.

  I knew from my survival training that night was the best time to travel. Even so, my safety wasn’t guaranteed. Maybe the Serbs were stationed around the woods or had night vision goggles. I was particularly nervous about making any unnecessary noise, which can be heard farther away at night than in daytime. If I had to redesign the air force’s survival vest, I would eliminate all Velcro. No matter how carefully I opened a pocket of my vest, you could hear the sound halfway to China.

  The air was cooling rapidly now. With regret I remembered the flight jacket I’d left hanging in my locker. I was getting hungry, too, and wished that lunch had been more than a few bites of pizza. To lift my spirits, I touched the little silver cross around my neck. It was an unusual and beautiful piece of jewelry—a small dove perched in the middle of a cross. My sister, Stacy, had given it to me as a present when I finished pilot training. I considered the cross a symbol of my faith and never took it off my neck. Closing my eyes, I said another prayer, asking God to get me through these difficult times. Somehow, I knew He would. Nothing could have been worse than the last six hours. If He had spared me from harm so far, my faith told me He would continue to keep me safe.

  I usually carried a medal of St. Christopher—the patron saint of travelers—in my flight suit pocket, but Fd left that in my locker, too, along with my wallet. I glanced down at the Rolex watch, the present from my father. I knew what would happen if I was captured. The Rolex would be gone in a wink … a nice little war souvenir for somebody. I was determined that would never happen. Nobody was going to capture me.

  I began to think of my goals. The first was to survive. The second was to evade the enemy. The third was to make radio contact and get myself rescued. I knew that survival didn’t always mean evading the enemy. If you were seriously hurt and were going to die without prompt medical attention, it was your duty to turn yourself over to your enemy if that was the only person who could care for you. You owed it to yourself and your nation to survive. When you were healthy again, then you would try to escape.

  But I was healthy, and I was determined to evade the enemy. I remembered the motto of our Thirty-first Fighter Wing at Aviano. The Thirty-first was a proud group, with a remarkable history of wars and battles to its credit, including many stories of prisoners of war. The motto of the Thirty-first was simple and, in my circumstances, straight to the point. They were the words written on our insignia shield, just under the winged dragon: “Return with Honor.” That was exactly what I intended to do.

  Midnight passed before I finally made my move. There was no moon and only a handful of stars. A dark night. Good for avoiding the enemy, I thought. Not so good for navigating. Slowly and quietly, I slipped out of my harness, and along with the Ziploc bag that had held my radio, I left everything in a pile. The locals would easily find the gear, but by then I would be long gone. This would be the only time I would leave anything behind, even the smallest piece of trash. I kept on my G suit for the little extra warmth it provided.

  I made a mental checklist of what I had left. Then I tried to stand. An act I normally took for granted was suddenly almost impossible. First, I was incredibly stiff from lying so long in the same position. Second, I had to move in superslow motion. It took me five minutes to push up my torso with my right hand, then pivot to a sitting position. Feeling every muscle in my body, and aching in most of them, I advanced to a squat and finally to my feet. Between each movement I stopped and listened for soldiers or civilians. The night was as quiet as a church. Picking up my survival rucksack as though it were a football, I baby-stepped out of the woods and into the grass.

  It had taken me almost an entire hour to leave my hiding place. I was feeling weak and light-headed, and after a while I was trembling from the cold. Listening to my own rough breathing, I could see dim shapes eight or ten feet ahead of me. Everything was a fuzzy shade of gray, and I moved with caution.

  I tried one direction, hit a dead end of dense trees, then took another route. It was almost like being blindfolded. Heading south from my landing site, I eventually found a narrow path that took me up an incline and into a grassy cove of tall, willowy trees. It was another dead end, but as good a place as any to hide for the next twenty-four hours. In my state of exhaustion, I was ready to crash. I had been traveling for more than three hours and had probably covered less than half a mile.

  I stepped into a nearby clearing and opened my rucksack to see what it contained. I might have lost my flashlight, but I had a penlight in the shoulder pocket of my flight suit. Its white beam seemed brighter than the sun. Afraid of being seen, I dared using the
light only once or twice, and for the briefest of seconds. In my rucksack I found eight small containers, called flexipaks, of water. This was about a quart of water in total. I also had an empty plastic water pouch, a gray wool ski hood, a yellow sponge, a pair of green wool socks and a pair of wool mittens, a floppy orange hat, a tarp that was green on one side and silver on the other, a large square of camouflage netting, a silver-foil space blanket, sun goggles and sunblock lotion, a fire starter, a five-inch knife, and a 121-page booklet titled Aircrew Survival.

  If I found any humor in my situation, the thought of reading Aircrew Survival was it. When you’re trying to avoid being captured, you don’t have the time to sit around and read a book the way you would in a library. The other items in the rucksack had different degrees of usefulness to me. Since I was trying to hide from the enemy, I had serious doubts about the floppy orange hat and the sun-reflecting space blanket. Stuck in the damp cold of the mountains, however, I found the wool socks and mittens a godsend. Some items I had in my survival vest were also of value: a compass, a medical kit, iodine tablets to purify dirty water, rescue flares, camouflage paste, a tourniquet to stop the bleeding in case I got hurt, and most important, my battery-operated GPS navigational receiver. I had a 9-mm Beretta pistol in my holster, but it would have been foolish to use it. The enemy had had me outgunned from the moment they’d shot down my plane.

  I donned the fresh pair of wool socks as well as the ski mask for warmth, and took out my GPS. Next to my radio, the GPS receiver was my most critical piece of equipment. It, too, operated on batteries, and I had to be careful not to run them down. The size of a Walkman, with a liquid crystal display screen, the GPS could calculate my longitude and latitude within 100 feet of my exact location. It did this by picking up the signals of at least three separate satellites, then triangulating, or fixing, my position on the ground.

  Impatiently, I turned on my GPS receiver and waited. It seemed forever before the screen indicated that the first satellite had been found. After fifteen agonizing minutes, I had my three satellites in line, and the readout indicated my longitude and latitude. My spirits improved. Now I could communicate to somebody where I was. I brought out my radio and turned to the Guard frequency. Again, I knew the risk of my signal’s being picked up by Serbs, but I also wanted the greatest chance of being rescued. Maybe, I hoped, there was a pair of friendly ears in the sky.

  “Anyone, Basher Five-Two,” I called.

  With a heavy heart I listened to the crisp sound of static.

  “Anyone, Basher Five-Two,” I repeated.

  More static. I tried not to feel discouraged. The radio worked by line-of-sight contact. At night, I had no idea what the landscape around me was like. If a mountain I couldn’t see was in the way, the signal wouldn’t go anywhere. I thought how great it would be if I had a different type of radio—one that was satellite based, like my GPS, with virtually unlimited range and secured channels. I planned to try my radio again in a few hours. If I still couldn’t get any reception, I’d find a clear and secure place for sending my signal tomorrow.

  I put the radio and the GPS receiver away, zipped up my rucksack, and nestled into my new hiding place in the cove. I was exhausted but much too pumped up for sleep. It would be light in a few hours. All I could do was wait to see what the day would bring and thank God that I was still alive.

  Photo Insert

  Here I am, only a few months old. (Courtesy of Mary Lou Scardapane)

  I’ve always enjoyed doing things with my dad. I learned a lot from him about the importance of working hard and taking pride in whatever I did. My dog’s name was Pepsi. (Courtesy of Mary Lou Scardapane)

  When I was four years old, my family lived in New York City. One year I was Batman for Halloween. That’s my sister, Stacy, beside me. (Courtesy of Mary Lou Scardapane)

  Christmas 1971 with my mom, my brother, Paul, and my sister, Stacy. (Courtesy of William O’Grady)

  My first horse ride, at age six, on Brownie at Joe’s Stables in California. (Courtesy of William O’Grady)

  In Cub Scouts, I really enjoyed learning about animals, nature, and wilderness survival. (Courtesy of William O’Grady)

  We moved to Spokane, Washington, when I was nine. I’m the kid in the middle. (Courtesy of Mary Lou Scardapane)

  When I was ten, I began skiing. Here I am at Mount Spokane with my sister. (Courtesy of William O’Grady)

  In the F-16 with the bubble canopy up. (Courtesy of William O’Grady)

  The official patch of my squadron. (Courtesy of the author)

  The cockpit of the F-16. (Courtesy of Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems)

  All strapped in and ready to go! That’s how I look wearing the helmet and oxygen mask. (Courtesy of Mary Lou Scardapane)

  The F-16 in flight. (Courtesy of Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems)

  The Super Cobras and Super Stallions as they lift off from the deck of the USS Kearsarge to carry out their TRAP mission to rescue me. (Courtesy of USMC Sergeant Dave A. Garten)

  Immediately after my rescue, I board the USS Kearsarge from the helicopter deck. (Courtesy of USMC)

  The men who rescued me and lifted me out of Bosnia—the members of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit who participated in the TRAP mission. Their mission completed, they clean their weapons aboard the USS Kearsarge. (Courtesy of USMA Corporal Kurt Sutton)

  A group portrait of my rescue team posed before a Super Stallion. (Courtesy of U.S. Department of Defense)

  I give the Juvats sign upon arriving at the Aviano NATO air base. (Courtesy of AP/World Wide Photos)

  With Bob “Wilbur” Wright, who was flying with me when I was shot down. (Courtesy of AP/Wide World Photos)

  One very happy return. At Andrews Air Force Base with my mom and dad. (Courtesy of Mary Lou Scardapane)

  Reunited with my family … at the White House! (Courtesy of Mary Lou Scardapane)

  Taking a stroll with my commander in chief, President Clinton, at the White House. (Courtesy of AP/World Wide Photos)

  SIX

  With the first light of dawn, I got a rude surprise. I was lying peacefully in the darkness on my tarp, the green side folded over me, with the camouflage netting spread on top. Even though my feet and head stuck out of the netting, I had thought the trees concealed me well. I had opened a flexipak and had taken my first drink of water in seventeen hours. Just as I was congratulating myself on fooling the enemy, I realized I wasn’t concealed at all.

  The night had tricked me. The thick trees that by touch and through my dim sight had seemed so perfect had, in fact, very few low branches. I would stick out like an elephant to anyone coming up the path. I tried not to panic. Ever so slowly, I gathered my gear and slipped toward the clearing where I’d made my radio transmissions. Not far away, amid a stand of skinny trees, there were low branches I could hide under. And if I had to flee, I wasn’t trapped in a total dead end. I picked a hiding spot and prepared to burrow in.

  Several years before, I had taken a two-week survival course at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane and, later, a one-week water survival course at Holmstead Air Force Base. I had learned tons of useful things in both courses, but the training at Fairchild was the most relevant now. My instructors had emphasized the importance of finding a good hiding spot, or “hole-up” site, as the military called it. A hole-up site was only good if you followed the BLISS principle. Your hole had to blend into the environment. It had to be low and regular in shape. And it had to be in a secluded area. It was also helpful if you had some protection from the elements, a way to escape when cornered, an ability to see the land around you, and clear radio reception. By itself each part was minor, but if you followed them all, they could add up to the difference between success and failure.

  With my new hole I wasn’t batting a thousand, but as I set up my tarp and netting at a nerve-rackingly slow pace, I felt I was doing well under the circumstances. When I was finally settled in, I pulled my evasion chart from
my G-suit pocket and began to plot the longitude and latitude coordinates I’d gotten from my GPS receiver last night.

  My evasion chart, known as EVC—the military has initials for everything—was basically a topographical map of Bosnia. It showed all the hills, valleys, rivers, and land features around me. On its legend was other helpful information about local vegetation and animals, including a poisonous snake called the European viper. I wanted to be sure to avoid that. For all its usefulness, however, the EVC had two major disadvantages. First, it was made of a heavy-duty, waterproof material that you couldn’t fold or unfold without waking the dead. Second, because the EVC was designed to serve in emergencies as a blanket or a splint or even a tarp for hauling supplies, it was huge—almost five feet by three feet. I used my knife to cut out the piece of the EVC that showed my immediate area, and I shoved the rest into my rucksack. Once I’d plotted my coordinates on my new, smaller EVC, I picked out a hill about two miles away that I hoped would make a decent stage for a rescue attempt. As I would be moving only at night, two miles was a lot of territory to cover, but reaching that hill became my new goal.