The 1995 Blog Downed Pilot Eludes Serbs; Americans Take Notice Of
The 1995 Blog Downed pilot eludes Serbs; Americans take notice of Bosnia The war that tore apart Bosnia in 1992-95 was Europe’s deadliest and most vicious since the time of the Nazis. It was a war that returned “ethnic cleansing” to the world’s vernacular, a war that claimed 100,000 lives. Yet, few Americans were familiar or conversant with the dynamics or complexities of a conflict that pied Bosnian Muslims against ethnic Serbs against ethnic Croats. Nearly 80 percent of Americans responding to a nationwide survey in January 1993 gave the wrong answer, or said they did not know, which ethnic group had conquered most of Bosnia and had encircled the capital, Sarajevo. Only one respondent in five in that survey correctly identified the Serbs. But early June 1995 brought a rare occasion when Americans did turn sustained aention to Bosnia. And that, as I note in my latest book, 1995: The Year the Future Began, was when Captain Sco F. O’Grady, a U.S. Air Force pilot, was shot down over western O'Grady_cropped2 O’Grady, after the rescue Bosnia on a routine surveillance mission, enforcing the NATO no-fly zone over Bosnia. At first, it was unclear whether O’Grady, 29, had survived the destruction of his F-16C fighter jet, which a Soviet-made Serb surface-to-air missile blasted from the sky on June 2, 1995. Soon, intercepted radio transmissions indicated that the Serbs had found O’Grady’s parachute and were looking for the downed pilot. O’Grady later likened himself to a “scared lile bunny rabbit,” and said: “Most of the time, my face was in the dirt, just praying that no one would see me.” He eluded his would-be Serb captors, moving stealthily at night, sleeping lile, drinking rainwater, and eating plants and insects after his rations ran out.
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