Transcription
When did you find out it was the Israelis who attacked the ship?
>> Not till the next morning in my my own uh recollection. Uh the aircraft were all unmarked. The torpedo boats were flying the uh Star of David. One of the officers that was on the deck happened to be Jewish. When he saw the Star of David flag, I understand he broke out in tears.
>> Did the the torpedo boats that fired machine guns at the Liberty, I mean, they must have been close enough to see the American flag flying over the ship?
>> Yes. Uh excuse me. Our our initial flag was flying from a flagstaff at the back of the main uh mast. That was knocked down in one of the first air air attacks. Um
>> [clears throat]
>> Our uh signalman ran that back up again. It was knocked down again, and it then he ran up the uh holiday flag, which is 5 ft by 8 ft, the largest flag we had aboard ship. Um that flag was literally riddled with uh shrapnel. He ran that up on the uh one of the port signal arms, which is on the port side. But we had a good breeze blowing that day. The flag was out there, pretty obvious. Uh Egyptian ships are painted black with hull markings in Arabic script. Um every highway sign in Israel is in Hebrew, Arabic script, and English lettering. So, that excuse falls away. Um US ships are painted gray with hull markings in English lettering. Our hull marking was GTR-5, which stands for General Technical research, the fifth, the newest of her class. Technical research means that she's a non-combatant. It's a violation of international law to fire on non-combatants. The Israelis were riddling her life rafts with machine gun fire. That's a violation of international law. The irony of that is that came about as a result of refugee ships being machine gunned by Nazi wolf packs during World War II.
>> What did your commanding officers tell you about the motive for this attack? So, you're you're lying recovering. You've got wounds to your face and your hands. And someone at some point tell explains to you why this happened. What did that person say?
>> Um Honestly, I didn't hear anything. Um Years later when I reconnected with some of the crew, and it was well over 20 years later before I reconnected with any of the crew. Uh I say it's 19 82 before I reconnected with any of the crew. So, this is what, 15 years afterwards. Um I honestly didn't know. Most of us were pro-Israel that were aboard the ship. It's kind of ironic that uh one of our analysts uh He He was processing the United Arab Republic traffic that we were getting. He made a small UAR flag and had that stuck in his out basket. Most of the crew were smoking back then. They'd walk by and say, "Hey, Rich. Your Your herbs are doing so well." And they set fire to his flag. He said, "No, cut that out. Put it out." One of the sailors had made a huge Star of David out of teletype paper. That was pasted up on the starboard bulkhead. That is really torpedo struck within a few feet of that Star of David flag.
>> Did you talk about this after? Did you do interviews with the media? Did you tell your friends, your family? Like how did you respond to this once you recovered?
>> My situation was a little different. I was on temporary assignment from my home base in Bremerhaven, Germany. I was 10 days aboard the carrier America. Uh flown back to uh Luqa, Malta, where the ship was dry-docked. Um I was one more day aboard her there. This guy, ironically, didn't have a place to sleep in the One of the sailors said uh "Go go up to sick bay and talk to Dr. Van Lane." He said, "He'll find you a place to sleep up there." Uh we're kind of chatting. It was getting on late in the afternoon, and he said, "You're welcome to There are three bunks there." He said, "You're welcome sleeping whichever one you want." I said, "I hope that doesn't get to stinking in there." And I said, "What's that, Tom?" There was a box in the corner of the 18-in square. It was labeled unidentified human body parts. That's what's buried in the mass grave in Arlington National Cemetery, and I slept over it. And I
>> Ugh.
>> Two of the men that worked for me were in that box. Both of us laughed about that.
>> Were you told by the the US military, by the Marine Corps, by the Navy, uh not to talk about this?
>> Um Well, mind you, we're in intelligence business, and you just don't talk about it. There's an old saying, "What you see here, what you see say here, when you leave here, leave it here. Uh I did not talk about it outside of secure spaces. When I got back to my home base in Bremerhaven, I was put on 12 on, 12 off watch. I talked about it rather freely in the secure spaces. My wife didn't know what happened to me. Um I was not supposed to tell anyone I was aboard the ship, but no one bothered to tell me I wasn't. When I first got aboard her, the uh petty officer of the deck was a long-time friend of mine, Ronnie Campbell. I said, "Ronnie, I need to let Lois know where I'm at. Can you give me the address of the ship?" Well, he gave me the APO address, and I got a postcard, wrote it on told my wife I'd be aboard her, don't know how long. I'll let you know sometime in the future. Dropped it in the mail. She'd received that card, knew I was aboard it. Um on the 9th of June, uh a dear friend of hers that lived across the street in Bremerhaven waved to her to come over. She went over, said, "Did you hear about that US ship being attacked?" I was, "No." She said, "Yeah, USS Liberty." Well, I said, "I think Bryce is aboard that ship." Well, that set a panic button. Um when I got back home, um I was a mess. I had to borrow a uniform from one of the Marines aboard the carrier America. There happened to be a African-American Marine same build that I was, real gentleman, uh same rank as I was, loaned me a khaki uniform. I had to wear that uniform the next 5 days, and part of that was when I got back to the ship, that oil was everywhere. Every where you went, it you get drops of that oil all over you. So, I stunk from that. I had fever blisters in my face and this yellowish pus was oozing out and dripping over the front of me. The morning I got back, couldn't get any apartment, a second floor apartment. The neighbor, Betty Bryant, came to the door. Said, "Oh, Bryant." Said, "Lois went out to the base to get the mail." Said, "Come on in. I'll get you a cup of coffee." She sat me around behind the door. Gave me a cup of coffee. A while later, she said, "Oh, here she is now." She just got in the mail and she'd just gotten a letter from her mother that her grandfather passed away. My wife didn't get along very well with her mother, but she was her grandfather's pride and joy. She's all broken up about that. Betty says, "Lois, you need to come in here." The three kids are there. See, Marsha, our oldest one, was six. Dorothy was four. John was uh three. And uh I was the ugliest mess. Stunk to high heavens. Kids are screaming, my wife crying. The Marine commander calls me to his office the next day and says, "The thing for you to do to forget about this is go to work." Put me on 12 hours on, 12 hours off watch standing. I had to go to the doctor on my time off, get my wounds taken care of. Um the Navy sent a JAG officer, a lieutenant commander, all the way from Washington with a sheaf of papers for me to sign. He never bothered to tell me personally, "You are not to talk about this." I talked about it freely in the secure spaces cuz these fellows many of them had been aboard the Liberty. And or ships of her class doing the same task. If they weren't, they would be in the near future, likelihood. So, they all were aware of it. So, I talked freely about it, but I did not tell my wife anything. She had no idea what was wrong with me. I'd wake up screaming and crying. And she had no idea. And it wasn't until um I think it was January of 1981. I was in Bible College in Springfield, Missouri. Class was broken up over the Christmas holidays. I'm sitting in Homiletics class waiting for the class to start on Monday morning and one of my classmates comes in. He says, "Bryce, were you aboard ship when it was torpedoed?" I said, "How did you know about that?" Well, he had been in Texas over Christmas holiday. He was on his way back late in the evening listening National Public Radio. Program used to run called Radio Reader. They were reading a book by James M. Ennes Jr., Assault on the Liberty. And it was on page 86, the narration about what I had done that day. And my name was there. And it wasn't until I think the following year I taken a position as assistant pastor at church in Key West and uh the city library librarian was a member of the church and I asked her if she had a copy of that book. She said, "Yeah, but there's a 6-months long waiting list for us." Well, put me on the list. When it became available, I immediately wrote a letter to uh Random House Publishers and said I'd like to get a hold of the author, James Ennes. They said, "Well, we can't give you his information, but we'll forward your letter to him." Uh just a few days after that I got a thick packet of mail from Mr. Ennis. Had copies of the the the ship had a newsletter that they put out and mailed to all the crew, but they didn't know where I was until then. Back issues and um a list of survivors, their contact information. I immediately started calling the crew, but it wasn't until I think 1986 we had a reunion in uh Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That was the first one that I went to. There was a library in Grafton, Wisconsin about 30 mi north of Milwaukee. Um the town had built a new high school. The old high school was old building that roughly a century old, but perfectly serviceable and the town wanted to make that public library. So, they had a committee to raise funds. Um there are a couple of industrial donors, the Grob brothers. Uh Ted Grob was one of them, gave a six-figure donation, mind you, 40 years ago was pretty high sum of money. So, the committee said, "Well, we'll give you the privilege of naming the library." And he said, "Well, I'd like it to be named the USS Liberty Memorial Library." Well, during World War II, not far from Grafton, Wisconsin was a Nazi youth camp. Could you imagine what that implied for the Jewish population of city Milwaukee? That raised a fire storm.
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