“ALL SHIP’S PERSONNEL PREPARE TO REPEL BOARDERS.” This meant there was going to be a firefight. Although it was not part of my duty to hand out the few small arms we had on the ship, I made my way to the gun locker as fast as I could, along with Aimetti. Both of us, having seen our friend Francis Brown with his head blown open were filled with such a rage that we could envision nothing better than delivering a little payback to those who had killed him. I could do nothing to stop the jets, with their rockets, napalm and .50 caliber machine-guns. I could do nothing in fighting back against the torpedo boats. But by God, if it was going to be a man-to-man fight with whoever was onboard that helicopter, then I was going to try and make up for lost time. I ran down to the gun locker with Aimetti only to find it locked up tighter than Fort Knox. The master at arms, the only one with a key to the locker was no where to be found. Considering the high numbers of dead and wounded, we figured he had to be among them. The locker was not that big - only about four feet wide, four feet deep and six feet high. Nor were our war machines that impressive - some old WWII-era M1 Garands, some .45 pistols and a few 12 gauge shotguns. Nevertheless, we were desperate for something to fight back with, even if it were only a BB gun. Someone (I can’t remember who - it may even have been me) grabbed an ax and started beating the lock on the locker. It yielded nothing. The lock was beaten to death but it would not give. We left the area, unarmed and just as defenseless as we had been earlier when the jets and torpedo boats attacked. As the helicopter hovered over us at about fifty feet above the deck, I could see that my worst suspicions had been proven correct. This was not a rescue helicopter. Instead, like a hornet-swollen hive, there were commandos on board, special forces, armed with sub-machineguns used for close-quarter combat. I knew immediately they were not here to give us help. They were here to finish what their fellow assassins had been unable to accomplish. They were going to murder the entire crew of the USS Liberty. Then, once we were all dead and they were free to move about as they pleased, they would place explosives in strategic areas of the ship, detonate them and sink us all. The perfect crime, leaving no witnesses. As the helicopter hovered for a moment, I saw that the troops inside were preparing to board the ship. From no more than 75 feet away, I stood like a dumb-ass in an open doorway where they had a clear shot at me. I locked eyes with one of my would-be assassins who was sitting on the floor of the helicopter. His legs were hanging out, and he had one foot on the skid below as he waited for the order to repel down to the ship’s deck and finish us all off. I stepped out of the hatch and stood on the deck of my battered and bloody ship. I thought about everything that had happened over the course of the last hour or so. My good friend, Francis Brown, his brains splattered all over the bridge…David Skolak, who was left in chunks of flesh, bone and internal organs…all the other men, whom I had never gotten to meet or know, and who were now gone forever. And so, the only thing I could do in that moment in letting my killers know what I thought about what they had done to my ship, to my friends and to my country, was to give them the finger. The one Israeli with whom I had locked eyes, merely chuckled at the sight of something as impotent and harmless as my middle finger and in the midst of all his machine gun-toting buddies, he simply smiled and gave me the finger back. -Phil Tourney "What I Saw That Day"
Posted on: Wed, 07 Aug 2013 21:58:02 +0000
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