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FORT WORTH?Hiding among some trees in Bosnia, Air Force Capt. Scott O’Grady had evaded his enemies since early that afternoon. It was now 1900 (7 p.m.) and the enemy was circling an area within 50 yards of him.
Automatic weapons sprayed the area near him six times in the next half hour. He figured they were seeing something that would give him away.
“I have never felt more fear for losing my life than at that moment,” O’Grady, now a North Texas resident, told students and sponsors at the SBTC’s Youth Evangelism Conference July 15. Then, “I went from being afraid to having a peace throughout that entire experience.”
The experience, which he called “the most positive six days of my entire life,” occurred in 1995 inside war-torn Bosnia, where three factions were engaged in civil war and American pilots were charged with enforcing a NATO no-fly zone policy.
O’Grady and a companion F-16 pilot were veering their planes out of hostile territory at nearly 30,000 feet when the rocket blindsided his aircraft about 10 feet behind the cockpit. Amid fiery wreckage, O’Grady ejected. His parachute carried him down into a clearing closed in by dense trees on all sides. On the way down, he watched enemy trucks convoy along a dirt road toward his estimated landing area. He fled into the trees just before enemy soldiers arrived, he said.
It was about 2 p.m. and for the next six hours, O’Grady hid, waited for nightfall and prayed.
“I have to tell you, that was the longest six hours of my entire life,” O’Grady said.
Over the next five days, O’Grady moved to two more locations, oftentimes within a few feet of the enemy.
O’Grady said three things?faith in Christ, love of family and love of country?motivated him to survive on several packets of water and almost round-the-clock praying.
“I learned something about my prayer life when I was in Bosnia,” he said. “We don’t always get what we want in life. We don’t always get what we desire in life. But what I realized is the thing we need most is already provided for us through the grace of God, through Jesus Christ and his redeeming blood.”
He was wet, fatigued and fighting hypothermia when on the sixth day he made radio contact with an American pilot for the first time.
“I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry, because virtually I had been dead. ? I had been dead to the outside world for six days. Now someone knew I was alive.”
Soon, four helicopters carrying 32 Marines were dispatched for his rescue; two provided air cover while two tried to locate him.
Under fire, the helicopter that rescued O’Grady was seconds later hit by small arms. A bullet ricocheted inside, landing near the feet of a young Marine. The Marine picked up the bullet and put it in his pocket as the helicopter flew away. En route to the U.S.S. Kershaw, no one aboard the helicopter cheered but O’Grady said the young camouflaged faces showed a contented look. “Thirty-two came. Thirty-three went home,” O’Grady said, choking back tears.
