JACKSON MAN RECALLS PILOT'S RESCUE

The recent rescue of the pilot of a downed American stealth fighter in Yugoslavia triggered memories for ex-Marine Matthew Morton.

The 24-year-old Jackson man knows about rescuing pilots in the Balkans.

Morton, then a lance corporal, was part of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit that rescued Air Force Capt. Scott O'Grady after his fighter jet was struck by a Serb missile over Bosnia in June 1995.

O'Grady ejected from the fighter jet. He spent six days hiding in the bushes and eluding Serb soldiers before being rescued by an elite Marine rescue team.

O'Grady hunted ants, squeezed precious drops of moisture from his socks and hid in the bushes during the days. He moved around only at night.

The pilot moved several miles from the crash site to find a place suitable for a landing by rescue helicopters.

O'Grady contacted a NATO patrol plane with his survival radio after 2 a.m. on his sixth day in the woods.

Two CH-53 helicopters carrying Marine infantrymen, their faces blacked in camouflage, flew in after dawn to pluck him from a Serb-controlled area.

Morton said about 45 Marines participated in the rescue.

The helicopters took off from the flight deck of the USS Kearsarge in the Adriatic Sea. "We were three miles off the shores of Bosnia," Morton remembered.

The entire rescue took about 15 to 20 minutes, he recalled.

"We all just kind of joked it was just something to do before breakfast," said Morton.

Still, the Marines didn't view it as a cake walk. "Everybody's heart rate was going probably like 150 miles an hour," he said.

The Marines went in armed with M-16s, Morton said.

American fighter bombers, electronic warfare planes and attack helicopters also were in the air to provide cover if needed.

As the Marines homed in, O'Grady sent up a red smoke flare and turned his survival hat inside out from the green side to the orange side.

"When they said run for the helicopter, I was running through the bushes, running through the fog," O'Grady told reporters after being rescued. "What do they see coming out is a guy with a beard, pistol, orange hat running at them."

Morton was in the helicopter that carried O'Grady to safety.

"He said he was hungry and he was tired. He said he needed to go take a nap," Morton remembered.

After his rescue, O'Grady praised his rescuers.

"If you want to find some heroes, that's where you should look, because those are the biggest heroes in the world," he said.

Morton doesn't view himself as a hero. He said he was just doing his job.

The key is training, said Morton, who spent four years in the Marine Corps.

"It's called tedious training," said Morton, a student at Southeast Missouri State University.

After getting out of the Marine Corps in June 1997, he has remained active in the military as a member of the 1140th Combat Engineer Battalion of the Missouri National Guard.

Morton said the U.S. military learned some lessons from the O'Grady incident.

The military learned how to be in a better position to launch rescue operations, he said.

Because of the risk in the current air war, the Pentagon deployed numerous search-and-rescue teams to the Balkan region. Those included Morton's old unit, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

Morton is proud of the Marines and the other branches of the military involved in the NATO attacks.

"The way I see it, they are doing their job," he said. "They are defending our national interests."