Crackie
By Crackie
Editor's Note 9/25/07 Welcome USS Liberty survivors and friends. We have closed the comment section to this post and have also unpublished but not deleted all comments already made.
As I noted in an earlier post, an article in this Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, "No Pyrrhic Victory", celebrated the 40th anniversary of Day One of the highly successful Six Day War. That conflict opened with a shattering blow by Israeli jets against the Egyptian air force on June 5,1967. The author of the Journal op-ed article, Bret Stephens, concluded that the June 5th Israeli surprise attack was "the most audacious military strike of the 20th century." Today, by way of contrast, no superlatives ofany kind have been showered by Journal writers on the crew of the USS Liberty.
Nevertheless, this day marks the 40th anniversary of that crew's stouthearted and ultimately successful effort to keep their ship afloat after a wave of attacks on the USS Liberty, by Israeli jets followed by Israeli torpedo boats. USMC Capt. Scott Keller, in his 2004 book "Marine Pride: A Salute to America's Elite Fighting Force", summed up the fate of the crippled Liberty as it sat in international waters in the Mediterranean: "Her losses were grievous: 34 Americans killed and 171 wounded; when the smoke cleared there were over 821 rocket, cannon, and machine-gun holes in the ship."
Many of the crew received awards for their efforts to save lives, and to keep from sinking, during and after the attack. The USS Liberty was anintelligence gathering vessel, and there were three US Marines on board that day--two Arabic linguists and one Russian language expert, Staff Sgt. Bryce Lockwood. Taking Sgt. Lockwood as one of many who made a differencethat day, I turn to Capt. Keller's account from "Marine Pride":
Two of the marines aboard were killed during the initial attack. Sgt. Lockwood, who was in the hold when the attack commenced, found himself swimming in the water rushing through the holes created by the explosion of a torpedo within the ship. About twenty-five nearby sailors were killed but Lockwood survived. Feeling flesh and movement underfoot, he ducked underwater to find a sailor trapped by a piece of what had been the third deck. He freed the man, pushed him toward the hatch, and then started searching for other survivors. Lockwood rescued a number of men before being forced out of the hold himself. He had had a nasty scare when the manhole cover was closed on him for a time, but managed to attract attention by yelling and a couple of sailors kept the hatch open while he looked for survivors. Satisfied that there weren't any more, he left the hold.
Sgt. Lockwood was awarded the Silver Star for his rescue efforts. His citation reads in part: "despite severe burns, the rapid rise of water,heavy smoke and complete darkness, was instrumental in the rescue of personnel from the flooded compartments, thus averting even further loss of life. Without regard for his personal safety or his injuries, he assisted in the rescue until ordered to leave. His calm, rational thinking and actions evidenced a high degree of professional competence and moral fiber."
Capt. Keller, writing in 2004, notes that the attack occurred "for reasons that remain a mystery." In a sense, the darkness that enveloped Sgt. Lockwood and his comrades that day has never been routed. But there is no mystery about why, battered with a skillfully executed wave of attacks on a unprepared ship, the death toll was not far higher: men like Sgt. Lockwood ignored their wounds and fought to save lives.
Appropriately enough, neither Wall Street Journal writers nor anyone else will ever use term "most audacious" to describe the efforts of the Liberty crew 40 years ago today. (One can, until all the facts finally emerge, wonder whether the Journal's Bret Stephens might have been three days off in selecting his candidate for "the most audacious military strike of the 20th century.") News reports this week, including one this morning in USA Today, indicated that the National Security Agency--on whose behalf the USS Liberty thrust itself into harm's way--planned to release documents concerning the attack that NSA has kept hidden for 40 years. The NSA web site has no postings as of this writing--delay and confusion are the norm when it involves this topic. Throughout all the years of governmental silence, and of officialdom's desire to "move on," the men of the USS Liberty and their kin have endured. Perhaps they have by now, this day--as many of the Liberty survivors and the families of the fallen gather in Washington for a memorial service--perhaps they have now earned another title: "Most Faithful.
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