Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

  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.)

  Griffith to Eberly: “Yes, it’s me. Where are you?”

  Eberly to Griffith: “I don’t know. Where are you?”

  Griffith to Eberly: “I have no idea.”

  Now that each knew the other was alive, they started working out how to solve the problems confronting them. They quickly discovered that they were both near a dirt road and a parallel power line and that they were close to each other: they could both see the same Iraqi truck go by.

  They started toward each other in the pitch-black darkness, until suddenly they walked into each other.

  It was a good moment. There weren’t many of them that night.

  The two musketeers headed west, following a small compass Griffith dug out of a pocket of his survival vest. Later, as dawn started to gray the desert, they looked for a low spot where they could hide for the day. Once they’d found what seemed to be a suitable hideout, they settled down, and Eberly tried to raise help on his survival radio. Meanwhile, Griffith went through his pockets and culled out anything of value to the enemy. As he buried them in a shallow hole, he mused: Will some desert-dweller, maybe two thousand years from now, dig up my radio frequency card, authenticator code tables, and target drawing, and draw scholarly conclusions about mankind’s follies centuries ago?

  By then, the sun was high enough to tell them something about their surroundings, and much to their alarm, they found they’d been trying to hide in a shallow depression on some sort of rock-strewn farmer’s field. “Where will we hide?” they asked themselves. “And now it’s getting light.” But nearby, a hill rose up sharply, maybe three hundred feet, with large rocks on its crest, big enough for two men to hide behind.

  Fortunately, fog came with the rising sun, and Eberly and Griffith were able to creep up to the crest and hide among the boulders.

  As far as they could tell, the desert was peaceful. No Iraqi Army patrols were beating the bushes trying to capture them. What’s more, the hill provided a good line of sight to look for rescue aircraft and for radio. Here would be a good place to wait for rescue, they decided.

  Most of the rest of the day was divided between attempts at sleep and radio calls for help. Two obsessions dominated their minds: Gee, I hope we get out of here. And I wonder when they are going to come and rescue us?

  ★ Efforts in that direction were under way . . . but there was no rush.

  Though other aircraft in the area had reported the shoot-down and (from “initial voice contact”) likely ejection of Eberly and Griffith, the CSAR cell in the TACC was stymied until they had received confirmation that the two airmen were alive and their exact location was known—the launch criteria the SOF commander had established for his rescue assets.

  In point of fact, the SOF criteria were not always enforced. A day earlier, a Rafha-based MH-53 had conducted an unsuccessful search for a downed F-16 pilot in southern Iraq. And two days after the Griffith and Eberly shoot-down, Captain Trask and his MH-53 had joined in the search for Lieutenant Devon Jones without certain knowledge of the F-14 pilot’s location or condition.

  So why did the search for the F-15E crew not start immediately? Possibly because their condition and location had not been determined, and possibly because the enemy defenses in this corner of Iraq were considered too severe to risk a rescue attempt. In all fairness, enemy defenses there were heavy. This part of Iraq was known as “Sam’s Town,” after a country-and-western casino in Las Vegas, so named because of the aggressive SAM sites in the area. Yet, when later in the war numerous Special Operations Scud-hunting teams were flown into western Iraq, non-SOF airmen concluded that the rescue assets they relied on were more interested in supporting Special Operations missions than saving their lives.

  Whatever the reason, during the following days, three CSAR sorties were flown—to no avail. They went south of Griffith and Eberly. After that, the two men were on their own.

  ★ After they’d settled in on top of the hill, Griffith used a piece of Eberly’s parachute to clean and bandage his pilot’s neck wound. Later, they could hear the seemingly endless thunder of bombs dropped by B-52s on a target far to the south. Eberly urgently tried to reach the big bombers with his radio, but to no avail. After nightfall, they managed to contact an F-15C fighter patrolling overhead, who disappeared to the south without recontacting them. This was standard procedure. Because of the Iraqi direction-finding trucks, lengthy conversations were avoided. Shortly thereafter, the F-15C pilot relayed their general location to AWACS on secure (encrypted) radio.

  After that, it was another day of waiting. Yet they knew they couldn’t stay where they were much longer. Though they could survive for a while without food, they were running short of water, and would have to move before they became too dehydrated to travel. They considered several plans—like stealing an Iraqi car, or highjacking one at gunpoint, and driving into Syria—but none seemed really workable.

  Later, they listened on their survival radio to the pickup of Devon Jones. This was exciting—and painful—to hear.

  They kept asking themselves questions: “Is this place too hot for the rescue birds? Where are we going to find water? How long will it take to walk to Syria?” And the most dreaded of all: “Does anyone know we are here?”

  Late in the afternoon of the second day, they ripped up the remainder of Eberly’s parachute and fashioned what might pass from a distance as Bedouin robes and headdresses. After sunset, they started walking toward Syria.

  Soon, the lights of two towns appeared in the distance. From where they stood, they guessed that one was in Iraq and the other in Syria.

  Meanwhile, though they tried to walk carefully in the inky darkness, they found themselves stumbling inside a circle of tents. They were in the middle of a Bedouin encampment, where maybe a dozen medium-size but very hostile dogs were doing their best to sound the alarm. For some reason, they failed to wake their Arab masters (no one appeared, or even called out), but they succeeded in thoroughly frightening Griffith and Eberly, both of whom grabbed their 9 mm side arms thinking they might somehow shoot one of the beasts quietly and scare off the others. Then it came to them that the dogs seemed all snarl and bark, and the two pilgrims wandered off into the safety of the night.

  After walking for several hours, the pair were crossing one of the many dirt roads that paralleled the border, when a truck roared up out of the night. Eberly and Griffith dropped to the ground, but on the flat featureless surface of the desert, they were still exposed. As it neared them, the truck slowed, but the driver either did not see them or was alone and in no mood to be a hero for Saddam. The truck resumed its speed and drove off.

  Shortly, Tom raised another F-15 combat air patrol aircraft on his radio. Easily convinced that they were the crew of Buick 04, the fighter, call sign Mobile 41, did not ask them to authenticate. He told them to wait while he flew south, but promised to be back shortly. He never returned. When it hit them that he wasn’t coming back, their frustrations rose to an all-time high and their spirits dropped to an all-time low.

  About two in the morning, they made out the dim outline of a building ahead of them. It was not far away, and there were no lights. No one appeared to be around. When Eberly, now desperately in need of water, announced that he was going to see if he could find something to drink, Griffith cautioned against it. He’d remembered a survival training dictum about avoiding buildings. Besides, he explained, they must be close to Syria. In fact, maybe they were in Syria and just needed to go a little farther to be sure.

  But Eberly’s thirst proved too desperate for such cautious considerations, and he approached the building.63 Since Griffith didn’t want to risk separation in the dark, he followed close behind. Suddenly, gunfire erupted from the top of the building. So
meone had obviously been on guard—and doing a good job at it. Then maybe ten other troops came rushing out of the building, all firing wildly in the air or else in the general direction of the two airmen. If they were trying to scare the two Americans, they did an excellent job.

  Both raised their hands and shouted, “Don’t shoot! We are friends!”

  Who knows? they thought. These guys might be Syrian.

  That hope was dashed when they were hustled inside the building and into a small room with a prominent picture of Saddam Hussein on the wall. This was a bad moment for the two American airmen.

  The room was packed. In addition to the Americans, there was a flock of seventeen-year-old Iraqi privates, commanded by an Iraqi second lieutenant who appeared to be perhaps twenty-one. Though the Iraqi troops were greatly aroused by their find, they made no move to harm their captives, who, by this time, had concluded they’d run into an Iraqi border patrol guard post about a mile short of their destination. (After the war, Tom Griffith learned that it was fortunate they hadn’t reached the border area. It had been mined.)

  After a time, the Iraqis handcuffed the Americans, loaded them into a white Toyota pickup, and delivered them to a larger fort nearby, where they were met by a first lieutenant. Like the border troops, he and his soldiers showed no hatred and treated the two Americans in a civilized manner. Though they did their best to ask questions, they had little success, as the Iraqis spoke no English and the F-15 crew spoke no Arabic.

  The Iraqis then delivered Griffith and Eberly to a larger office, where they were met by an Iraqi captain. Also present were a group of officers, one of whom spoke broken English. “I am a doctor,” he explained, then examined Eberly’s neck wound.

  After conducting an inventory of the Americans’ survival equipment (it had been taken from them when they were captured) and writing down their names, the Iraqis made some halfhearted attempts at interrogation. Questions like “How far and how fast can your aircraft fly?” brought truthful but useless answers, like “Well, it depends.”

  By 4:00 A.M., Griffith and Eberly had been fed and given water. Then they were handcuffed again and placed facedown on the back of a flatbed truck, which carried them to the outskirts of a nearby town. There they stopped at a modest house surrounded by a brick wall, the home of a general, their guards explained. An Iraqi captain and two guards led them past the general’s white 1975 Chevy Impala and inside. Soon the three Iraqis showed them into the general’s office, seated them on a sofa, then waited with them for the general. A few minutes later, the general, in his bathrobe, greeted them. Like their previous captors, he treated them civilly; when they asked if they could get some sleep, he had them taken to a room with two cots. There they were allowed to rest for the next four or five hours.

  Now that they were alone, they took the opportunity to put a story together for serious interrogations. In order to keep the Iraqis from probing the defensive strengths and weaknesses of the F-15E, they decided to deny they’d been shot down; it would be easy to claim an electrical fire was the culprit. In any case, they were far from certain about what had actually bagged them (though it was likely a surface-to-air missile).

  As they waited in the general’s home, they were visited by a number of curious and not unfriendly guards. One who was especially friendly had studied petroleum engineering and spoke good English. “This is a terrible war,” he confided earnestly. “Don’t you agree?” And, “What do you think is going to happen? Something bad, no?”

  But then a heavyset guard appeared, with a far more hostile attitude. “We are going to ask you a lot of questions,” he announced, “and you must cooperate,” implying by his tone serious penalties for noncooperation. As he warmed to his task, his comments grew more and more argumentative: “Why did you start the war?” Or, “You are all going to perish.” Or, “You are all helping Israel.”

  Later that day, they were handcuffed and blindfolded, led outside, and loaded into the backseat of a six-passenger pickup truck. When the truck started up, their blindfolds were removed and they were taken into town. There the streets were lined with civilians chanting Arabic curses. They both bore up well under this (After all, they thought, words can’t hurt us, especially if the only ones we can understand are “Saddam! Saddam!”), until a young man hurled a rock through the truck window. Then it became Oh shit, I’m scared! Get us out of here, Lord!

  Somehow that demonstration ended without serious consequences, and they were taken back to the general’s house for phase one of their interrogation.

  In the beginning, the questions were simple: “Are you able to evade a missile?” And they answered in kind, “Well, that depends.”

  But the easy part of their captivity soon proved to be over. They were cuffed, blindfolded, loaded back into a truck, and driven off. The setting sun behind them told them they were headed east, toward Baghdad. They traveled all night, were handed off from one military unit to another. Near morning, Tom Griffith was able to sneak a peek: a road announced in English, “Baghdad 20 km.”

  When they reached their first place of confinement in the capital (where it was, they never learned), they were split up. From then on, the interrogation was conducted by professionals.

  The next days were not pleasant. Though the questioners were well-versed in technical details—“What was the dispense rate you had set in your ALE-40 chaff dispenser?”—they hadn’t the faintest notion of how American culture worked or how Americans looked at life. One day, the interrogator sat down and announced smugly that George Bush had died, expecting Griffith to break down in tears. Instead, he feigned anguish: “Oh, Christ, that means Dan Quayle is president!”

  As the days passed, Griffith was moved from cell to cell and from jail to jail. He quickly lost track of where he was and where he’d been, until one day he was moved to Baath Party headquarters and confined in the cell next to CBS News reporter Bob Simon, who had been picked up on the Iraqi side of the lines, where he’d been trying to scoop the press pool. This had not been a smart place to get caught, since the Iraqis were now convinced that he was a spy and were preparing to execute him—a fact that did not thrill Tom Griffith. Could it mean he was on “death row”?

  Meanwhile, by February 25 the Black Hole had picked the last targets in Baghdad, and the Baath Party headquarters became one of the few that were acceptable to Schwarzkopf after the Al-Firdus bunker tragedy. During this strike, a bomb fell short of its aim point and blew in the walls of the prisoners’ cells.

  “Oh Christ, I’m going to die in prison!” Griffith cried out to himself, certain that the bombs would set the building on fire.

  Three other bombs struck farther away, on the other end of the building, destroying nearby cells (which, fortunately, were empty). Doors were also blown open, temporarily freeing a few POWs, who immediately—and unsuccessfully—went combing the rubble for cell keys that would let them free the others.

  Since the building was now a total loss, the inmates were rounded up and sent to military facilities, where they were housed in groups instead of single cells. Tom Griffith was locked up with Jeff “Sly” Fox, who had been captured on February 18.

  “How’s the ground war going?” Griffith asked.

  “It hasn’t started yet,” Fox answered.

  “Ohhhhhh!” Griffith groaned, with a despairing look.

  “Hey,” Fox replied, “don’t worry. The air war is going great. It’s not going to be much longer until we get out of here!”

  Welcome words indeed. Griffith had by now lost twenty-five pounds. All the old heads in prison were suffering from dysentery, and there was no way to keep clean.

  Two days later, it was strangely quiet outside the cells. They could hear no bombers flying overhead. No AAA guns were popping off at F-117s. At first, the POWs thought this was because of weather aborts; but in the morning, the blue sky and warm sunshine made it clear that the bombing had stopped for some other reason. Each POW prayed it was for the right reason: that the
war was over.

  Very shortly after that, the prisoners were given soap and wash water, there was more and better food, and a barber came around to give them a shave—an Iraqi shave, dry with a rusty razor. (No wonder so many Iraqis wear beards, Tom Griffith told himself.)

  “I think you will be going home soon,” an Iraqi officer announced on the fourth of March.

  Is this a trick to get our hopes up? Griffith wondered.

  But later that day, a bus arrived for Griffith and his fellow prisoners—two special forces troopers, the Army drivers, Specialists Melissa Rathburn-Healy and David Locket, who’d been captured during the battle of Al-Khafji, and two other aircrews. Soon afterward, a representative of the International Red Cross conducted them to the Nova Hotel, where the international press was waiting. After politely thanking them for bringing the captives to safety, the Red Cross representative firmly sent the Iraqis packing (thereby making himself an instant hero in the eyes of the now-former POWs), and the Americans were asked to identify by name any others in captivity (the sins of Vietnam were not going to be repeated).

  Then for Tom Griffith it was a bus trip to Jordan, a flight to Oman, and the hospital ship Mercy off the coast of Bahrain. Dave Eberly went from Baghdad to Riyadh, and then to the Mercy for a longer stay.

  On the Mercy, Griffith’s first priority was a phone call to his wife in North Carolina. Though he woke her up at 4:00 A.M., she didn’t seem to mind. Tom was safe and coming home!