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We still had no idea who was attacking. Although the Arab
countries largely blamed the United States for their problems
and falsely charged that American carrier-based aircraft had
assisted Israel, we knew that the Arab air forces were
crippled and probably unable to launch an attack like this
one. And to increase the confusion, a ship's officer thought
he saw a MIG- 1 5 over Liberty and quickly spread a false
report among the crew that we were being attacked by the
Soviet Union. Probably no one suspected Israeli forces.
I took a few still-painful breaths to clear my head before
tending my wounds. Ecker hovered nearby, forcing my conscience
to remind me that I should be on the bridge; worse, that an
able-bodied man was away from his battle station to help me.
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With each movement I could feel the tear of sharp bone end
against muscle. I was only abstractly aware of pain; instead,
I was conscious of fear, of duty abandoned on the bridge, and
of an urgent knowledge that, no matter what else might happen,
I would almost surely die if I didn't soon stem the flow of
blood, particularly from the leg wound.
I reached for Dr. Kiepfer's sheets to make a more effective
tourniquet when suddenly four deadly rockets opened eight-inch
holes to tear through the steel bulkhead into the room. Blast,
fire, metal passed over my head and continued through an
opposite wall. Ecker, standing in the open doorway, was
startled but unhurt; several thumb-size holes at forehead
level verified the utility of his battle helmet as he raced
away to answer a call for firefighters.
My bare chest glowed with a hundred tiny fires as burning
rocket fragments and napalm-coated particles fell on me like
angry wasps. Desperately I brushed them away. As the tiny
flames died, the hot metal continued to sear my chest. The
room filled with smoke as the carpeting near me and the
bedding around me burned with more small fires.
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Through the fresh rocket holes I could see a tremendous fire
raging on deck outside and I could hear the crackle of flames.
The motor whaleboat burned furiously from a direct napalm hit
while other fires engulfed the weather decks and bulkheads
nearby. Directly above me on the next deck, I realized, were a
gun mount and a radio antenna. Both were obvious targets. I
would have to leave this place.
My leg pinned me to the bunk. It blocked my movement, weighed
me down, and prevented my escape from the additional rockets
that were sure to come. I considered and quickly dismissed
sliding under the mattress for protection. With the last of my
strength I used my good leg to evict the useless broken limb
from the bunk. Would this open the artery? I had to take the
chance as the sharp bone ends again sliced through muscle.
With great effort I forced myself up, rolled out onto my good
right leg, and hopped away once more toward what I hoped would
be safer ground, closing the door behind me.
The door, closed by habit, shielded me from a new blast and
probably saved my life as a rocket penetrated the room from
above, blasting through the heavy deck plating and air ducts
in the overhead to explode with such force that the heavy
metal door was torn from its frame. I fell to the deck
outside.
On the bridge, the helmsman fell wounded as another assault
sent rocket fragments through steel and flesh. Almost before
he fell, his post was taken by Quartermaster Francis Brown.
The Quartermaster of the watch is the senior enlisted man on
duty and is responsible for the performance of the men.
Friendly, hard-working, cooperative, Brown was a popular
member of the bridge team. I was always pleased when Brown was
on duty with me. He never needed to be told what to do. When
Brown was on watch, if a helmsman was slow to respond to an
order or if a man had trouble with bridge equipment, he
spotted and corrected the problem without being told. Now,
typically, he saw his duty at the unattended helm.
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The gyrocompass no longer worked. It was disabled by three
rockets that rode in tandem through the gyro room, passing
harmlessly between a group of sailors, smashing the equipment
and leaving a three-foot hole in a steel door on the way out.
The magnetic compass, meanwhile, spun uselessly, like a
child's toy.
Gunner Thompson finally reached Mount 51 to find the gun
partially blocked by the body of Fireman David Skolak. Skolak
had been assigned to Repair Two, but after Seaman Payan was
wounded, leaving the gun unmanned, Skolak left his repair
party to take Payan's place. He was quickly dismembered by a
direct rocket hit. Very weak now, Thompson forced himself
toward Mount 52, some forty feet away on the ship's port side.
With luck he would be able to fire at the next attacking jet.
Long before our arrival in the area, most secret documents had
been placed in large weighted bags, ready to be thrown
overboard if necessary to keep them from an enemy. This was a
precautionary measure, frequently taken by ships operating in
dangerous areas. Now, defenseless and under attack, everything
classified but not actually in use was to be destroyed. The
bags proved useless, as they were too large and heavy to
carry, and the water wasn't deep enough for safe disposal,
anyway. The ship's incinerator couldn't be used, as it was on
the 03 level within easy range of the airplanes. As a last
resort, Lieutenant Pierce, the ship's communication officer,
ordered his men to destroy everything as best they could by
hand. Acrid smoke soon filled the room as he and Joe Lentini
dropped code lists, a handful at a time, into a flaming
wastepaper basket; nearby, Richard Keene and Duane Marggraf
attacked delicate crypto equipment with wire cutters and a
sledgehammer.
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In the TRSSComm room, equipment finally in full operation,
operators had just begun to talk with their counterparts at
Cheltenham, Maryland, when rockets suddenly undid all their
work to disable the system forever. A shower of sparks
cascaded from high-voltage wires overhead, bathing the men and
equipment below in melted copper and filling the room with the
smell of ozone. Operators at Cheltenham did not learn until
much later why Liberty stopped talking in mid-sentence.
A code-room Teletype operator on Liberty's third deck pounded
desperately on a keyboard, trying to send the ship's cry for
help. Getting no answer, he tried other equipment until
someone finally noticed that a vital coding device had been
removed for emergency destruction, disabling the machine. The
operator tried again. Still nothing. Vividly aware of the
nearness of death, the man was speechless with terror. His
voice came in senseless gasps and his body shook; he wet his
pants in fear, but he remained at his post and continued to
hammer his message into the keyboard. Still no answer. In the
rush to reinsert the coding device, the wrong device had been
used. "Forget the code," cried Lieutenant Commander Lewis when
he saw the problem. "Go out in plain language!"
Still the message failed to leave the ship. No one knew that
all our antennas had been shot down.
From where I fell outside the doctor's stateroom I could hear
the flames, the loud hiss of CO, bottles, the rush of water
from fire hoses and the sharp crunch as water became steam
against hot steel. Smoke was everywhere.
A young sailor plummeted hysterically down a ladder, crying,
"Mr. O'Connor is dead! He's in combat and he's dead!" then
disappeared on his grim mission, informing everyone of the
death of my roommate and long-time friend. I thought of Jim's
wife, Sandy, pregnant; his infant son; their pet schnauzer.
Who will tell Sandy? My wife Terry will console her, help her.
Maybe they'll console each other.
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A sailor arrived with a pipe-frame-and-chicken-wire stretcher.
Judging my rank from the khaki uniform, Seaman Frank Mclnturff
assured me as he laid the stretcher at my side, "Don't worry,
Chief, you'll be all right." Then, startled when he noticed my
lieutenant's bars, he apologized grandly for the oversight. We
both laughed as I assured him, "That's okay. You can call me
Chief."
I saw no point in moving from where I was. Surely there was no
time to treat wounded. If there was time, certainly there were
enough men near death to keep the medical staff more than
busy. Mclnturff insisted that the wardroom was in operation as
an emergency battle dressing station and that I should go
there. He and his partner rolled me onto the stretcher, my leg
twisting grotesquely in the process. Then he tied me in place
with heavy web belting and hoisted the stretcher. The first
obstacle was not far away. The ladder leading down to the 01
deck inclined at a steep angle. I will fall through the straps
and down the ladder, I thought. With my stretcher in a near
vertical position, we started down. My arms ached as I held
the pipe frame to keep from slipping; chicken wire tore my
fingers; as I slid deeper toward the foot of the stretcher I
could feel the broken bone ends grinding together. Suddenly
all such concern was forgotten as another rocket assault
battered the ship. The now-familiar, ear-shattering,
mind-destroying sound of rockets bursting through steel raced
the length of the ship.
I braced for the plunge down the ladder as holes opened in the
steel plating around us. Then, except for the flames, the
machinery and the fire lighting equipment, silence.
Following each rocket assault, the silence seemed unearthly;
slowly we would become aware of the other sounds, but the
immediate sensation was relief and a strange silence. In
silence we found ourselves still alive, still standing on our
ladder and still breathing deeply. The next ladder was no less
steep, but passed easily without the rocket accompaniment.
We arrived next at the door of the wardroom, our destination,
where we were greeted by more rockets, entering the room
through an opposite wall. White smoke hung in the air. A fire
burned under the empty dinner table.
"Where should we go?" Mclnturff asked. Nothing could be seen
of the battle dressing station that was supposed to operate
here. Clearly, the wardroom could not be used.
"Just put me down here," I told him. My stretcher was eased to
the ground at the open door as the two men returned to the
bridge to retrieve more wounded. "Move me away from the door!"
I cried as more rocket fragments hurtled through the open door
and over my stretcher to spend themselves on the nearby
bulkhead. I was quickly moved; the door was closed. The narrow
passageway soon filled with wounded, frightened men. A battle
dressing station, I learned, had been set up in the chief
petty officers' lounge around the corner and was already
filled with wounded. Dr. Kiepfer was operating the main battle
dressing station in the enlisted mess hall one deck below
while this auxiliary station was being operated by a lone
senior corpsman, Thomas Lee VanCleave.
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