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A solid blanket of force threw me against a railing. My arm
held me up while the attacker passed overhead, followed by a
loud swoosh, then silence.
O'Connor spotted bright flashes under the wings of the French
built jet in time to dive down a ladder. He was struck in
midair, severely wounded by rocket fragments before he crashed
into the deck below.
I seemed to be the only one left standing as the jet
disappeared astern of us. Around me, scattered about
carelessly, men squirmed helplessly, like wounded animals-
wide-eyed, terrified, not understanding what had happened.
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The second airplane made a smoky trail in the sky ahead.
Unable to move, we watched them make a sweeping 180-degree
turn toward Liberty, ready to resume the attack. My khaki
uniform was bright red now from two-dozen rocket fragments
buried in my flesh. My left leg, broken above the knee, hung
from my hip like a great beanbag.
The taste of blood was strong in my mouth as I tested my good
leg. Was I badly hurt? Could I help the men floundering here?
Could I help myself? Was it cowardice to leave here?
On one leg, I hopped down the steep ladder, lurched across the
open area and fell heavily on the pilothouse deck just as
hell's own jackhammers pounded our steel plating for the
second time. With incredible noise the aircraft rockets poked
eight- inch holes in the ship; like fire-breathing creatures,
they groped blindly for the men inside.
Already the pilothouse was littered with helpless and
frightened men. Blood flowed, puddled and coagulated
everywhere. Men stepped in blood, slipped and fell in it,
tracked it about in great crimson footprints. The chemical
attack alarm sounded instead of the general alarm. Little
matter. Men knew we were under attack and went to their proper
places.
Captain McGonagle suddenly appeared in the starboard door of
the pilothouse and ordered: "Right full rudder. All engines
ahead flank. Send a message to CNO: 'Under attack by
unidentified jet aircraft, require immediate assistance.' "
Grateful for an order to execute, confident that only this man
could save them, the crew responded with speed and precision
born of terror. Never have orders been acknowledged and
executed more quickly. These were brave men. These were
trained men. But these were also confused and frightened men
inexperienced in combat. An order told them that something was
being done, made them a part of the effort, gave them
something to take the place of the awful fear.
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Reacting to habit as much as to duty, and grateful that duty
required his quick exit from this terrible place, Lloyd
Painter looked for his relief so that he could report to his
assigned damage control station below. Finding Lieutenant
O'Connor half dead in a limp and bloody heap at the bottom of
a ladder, he demanded: "Are you ready to relieve me?"
"No, I'm not ready to relieve you," O'Connor mimicked weakly
-aware, even now, of the irony. McGonagle interrupted to free
Lloyd of his bridge duty.
I lay next to the chart table, unable to control the blood
flow from my body and wondering how much I could lose before I
would become unconscious. Blood from my chest wound was
collecting in a lump in my side so large that I couldn't lower
my arm. My trouser leg revealed a steady flow of fresh blood
from the fracture site. Numerous smaller wounds oozed slowly.
Next to me lay Seaman George Wilson of Chicago, who had stood
part of his lookout watch this morning without binoculars. In
spite of a nearly severed thumb, Wilson used his good arm and
my web belt to fashion a tourniquet for my leg, effectively
slowing the worst bleeding. Someone opened my shirt, ripping
off my undershirt for use somewhere as an emergency bandage.
Meanwhile, I wrapped a handkerchief tightly around Wilson's
wrist to control the bleeding from his hand. In this strange
embrace we received the next airplane.
BLAM! Another barrage of rockets hit the ship. Although the
first airplane caused a permanent ringing in my ears and
forever robbed me of high-frequency hearing, the attacks
seemed no less noisy. Men dropped with each new assault.
Lieutenant Toth, still carrying my unsent sighting reports,
received a rocket that turned his mortal remains into smoking
rubble. Seaman Salvador Payan remained alive with two jagged
chunks of metal buried deep within his skull. Ensign David
Lucas accepted a rocket fragment in his cerebellum. And still
the attacks continued.
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In the pilothouse, Quartermaster Floyd Pollard stretched to
swing a heavy steel battle plate over the vulnerable glass
porthole. A rocket, and with it the porthole, exploded in
front of him to transform his face and upper torso into a
bloody mess. Painter helped lead him to relative safety near
the quartermaster's log table before leaving the bridge to
report to his battle station.
On the port side, just below the bridge, fire erupted from two
ruptured fifty- five-gallon drums of gasoline. A great flaming
river inundated the area and poured down ladders to the main
deck below. Lieutenant Commander Armstrong-ever impulsive,
ever gutsy, ever committed to the job at hand-bounded toward
the fire. "Hit 'em! Slug the sons of bitches!" he must have
been saying as he fought to reach the quick-release handle
that would drop the flaming and still half-full containers
into the sea. A lone rocket suddenly dissolved the bones of
both of his legs.
Meanwhile, heretofore-mysterious Contact X came to life with
the first exploding rocket. Quickly poking a periscope above
the surface of the water, American submariners watched wave
after wave of jet airplanes attacking Liberty. Strict orders
prevented any action that might reveal their presence. They
could not help us, and they could not break radio silence to
send for help. Frustrated and angry, the commanding officer
activated a periscope camera that recorded Liberty's trauma on
movie film. He could do no more. 1
Dr. Kiepfer, en route to his battle station in the ship's
sickbay, stopped to treat a sailor he found bleeding badly
from shrapnel wounds in a passageway. A nearby door had not
yet been closed, and through the door Kiepfer could see two
more wounded men on an exposed weather deck. Cannon and rocket
fire exploded everywhere as the men tried weakly to crawl to
relative safety.
"Go get those men," Kiepfer yelled to a small group of sailors
as he worked to control his patient's bleeding.
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