Always thinking, Tom dug his survival radio out of his vest and, tearing off a glove, set out to flip the switches that would let him broadcast to the others. However, before he could complete the procedure, he was distracted by a large explosion on the ground beneath him. His aircraft, he imagined. Then it hit him that unless he could maneuver his parachute, he was likely to descend into the burning wreckage, not a happy thought. Meanwhile, he discovered that his radio was useless. His cold, numb fingers could not operate the switches. As he was trying to slip it back into its pocket in his survival vest, he hit the ground like a two-hundred-pound bag of fertilizer thrown from the roof of a two-story building.

The impact twisted his left knee. Worse, he was near the fire of his burning jet, its light a beacon to the Iraqis, who would surely come looking for him. Worse still, bombs began exploding nearby, shaking the earth under his feet and filling the air overhead with deadly pieces of red-hot steel.

At that point his survival training took over, and he grabbed a small packet of essential items, called a “dash pack,” from his survival kit. It contained items like a radio and water, and it was small and light enough to be easily portable if an aircrew member had to run from the spot where his parachute might mark his location to enemy soldiers. With his dash pack under his arm, his sore knee sending bolts of pain up his leg, and gallons of adrenaline pouring into his arteries, Griffith stumbled away from the blazing wreckage of his jet.

The terrain quickly became a series of gullies in the hard-packed gravel desert. As soon as he felt hidden in darkness, he sat down and took stock—survival training 101. Aside from the sore knee and pounding heart, he was in pretty good shape, except for one small fact: he was hundreds of miles inside enemy territory, on foot.

Now the guns and the bombs had quit their chorus, and it was quiet. The lights of trucks headed his way as the Iraqis made their way through the desert toward the fire of the crashed F-15E. With no time to worry about his missing front-seater, Griffith began a rapid withdrawal, trying to put as many gullies as possible between himself and the plane wreckage. A plan started to come. He’d walk to nearby Syria and turn himself in to the police or army. Then he reviewed the ATO’s survival procedures. It was time for him to broadcast in the blind on his survival radio. He keyed the mike and sent a mayday call. To his surprise, he was answered by the familiar voice of Dave Eberly. The conversation that followed was comically inane:

Griffith to Eberly: “Is that you?”

Eberly to Griffith: “Yes, is that you?” (An answer probably given with the quiet confidence that there weren’t many other Americans wandering about the western Iraqi desert that particular night.)