by Mr. Ronald Kukal

Liberty Veterans Association Chaplain and Secretary

Chaplain for the Silver Star Families of America

I enlisted in little Rushville, Nebraska in 1959. I was one of those who grew up needing discipline, and really never getting any. My mother told me one day that I could no longer live there, and it made me angry, so I went straight down and enlisted in the Navy that afternoon. Best thing I ever did. I was sent to San Diego for training, and this little disciplined boy learned a lot in 9 weeks. My duty stations started with CT training at Imperial Beach, then on to advanced school at Goodfellow AFB, where I learned the “T” Branch part of the training. After this training I received orders to San Miguel, in the Philippines. I re-enlisted there, and was sent to further training at NSA, Fort George G. Meade, and then I got to use that training at Kamiseya, Japan. From Japan I ended up in Cheltenham, and from there to the USS Liberty. I guess you would say my career was ended when the attack on the Liberty took place. I was a first class petty officer, and ready to take the Chief’s test when the attack occurred.

Changed my life, in a little over two hours, although I didn’t know it would then. After the attack I was sent to CincLantFlt Headquarters to be discharged. I couldn’t wait to get away from the U.S. Navy, and on Aug 25th. 1967, that did happen. I didn’t work for over five years, but I did finally get a job with the Nebraska State Patrol. I decided I needed more training and so went to another school to learn the journeyman electrical trade. I finished, got my license, and after a time went into partnership with another fellow, and we had our own company. We did well for several years, but I wanted to get a job with the government, and I got one at the VA Medical Center in Sheridan, WY. I worked there until retirement, and that brings me up to date, as I have been retired now since 2001. Always felt bad that I couldn’t wear the Chief’s uniform, and I didn’t miss it by far. My department head who was severely injured during the attack told me I would have made a fine LDO. I sure would have liked that.

I am forever indebted to the US Navy for the training I received at Imperial Beach California in the 50’s, and at Goodfellow AFB during the early 60’s. That training made a man of me, and believe me I wasn’t that man when I came there. A wide eyed young male, with no idea what was going to happen to me.

I was the POIC of the body recovery after the attack on the USS Liberty, June 8, 1967. I am not sure to this day which affected me more, that event, or the attack itself.

This was a surprise attack, and it happened just after a GQ drill, after we had stood down, and were relaxing from it all. The time was 1401 as I remember, and I had just came back to my work space, which was two decks down below the main deck, and was beginning my usual afternoon work. I wasn’t there long, maybe less than five minutes, when a sound that I had never heard before came from above my head, on the main deck. That sound reminded me of when I was a small boy back home in Nebraska, of a hail storm on a tin roof, and I was astounded by it, to say the least. I tried to explain it away, even to the point of thinking maybe we had run aground. A ridiculous explanation, but never the less, it did cross my mind. What is was, was the first strafing run by the jet planes that were attacking our ship. The sound came again maybe three or four minutes later, and again, and again. Little did I know that those strafing runs killed 9 of my shipmates, who were top side. This was the beginning of a vicious attack, meant to put us to the bottom with all hands on board.

There has been a lot of information recovered about the attack in the last fifty years, and I am not remiss in saying, we were all meant to die.

My next recollection as we went through the strafing runs, was the captain coming on the 1MC (ships intercom) and saying, “Prepare for torpedo attack”. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and remember thinking this only happens in the movies, this can’t be happening to me. I think the shock of it all really begin to sit in with the announcement by the captain. As I said I grew up in NW Nebraska in a farming community, and was sent out the door each Sunday to go to Sunday School, and to church, and so my first instinct was to pray for my life. I did so, promising the good Lord that I would do anything to save my own life. After the prayer I came back to my desk, and just sort of stood there, frozen in time, waiting for what was going to happen next. Here is what happened as I remember it.

As I stood there waiting, a voice seemed to come out of nowhere, and it said simply, “Get down, and get down now”!! I know I didn’t move fast enough, but somehow I found myself flat on the steel deck, nose to the steel, and then the explosion occurred. My best guess as to my proximity to the torpedo, is somewhere around forty feet. I could hear the shrapnel flying over my head, and little did I know it was killing almost every one of my shipmates, all around me.

The compartment became an instant swimming pool, and the water was up to my shoulders. I could see the battle lantern that was above the hatch where I needed to get to, and started making my way to that area. When I got there and went through the hatch, there were many of my shipmates trying to get up the ladder to the deck above, as I was. The scuttle hole was all that was open in the hatch to the deck above, and when I reached my turn on the ladder, a very strong arm came through the hole, and pulled me straight up, and out of there. I couldn’t believe the strength it was taking to get one body after another out of the watery grave down below. When I finally got my legs underneath me I headed to the main deck, and it was a slippery mess all the way up. I was sliding on a mixture of blood and water, in every step I took. I reached the hatch to the main deck, and standing there by the emergency generators was Lt. George Golden. He looked at me, and said, “Ron you turn around and go back down there, and make sure everyone got out”. I hesitated, but since it was going to become an order, if I didn’t comply, I did as he said. When I got back to the hatch that I had been pulled through, it was all the way open. I looked into the darkness down below, and could see nothing. I yelled into that deep hole, and did so several times, to which there was no answer. I assumed that everyone who could get out, got out.

When I reached the hatch to the main deck, I reported to Lt. Golden that no one answered. He was satisfied with that. You know men talk about strange things that happen during combat, and I am just about to tell you only one of them from that day. I call them miracles today, but back then I was oblivious to most anything going on around me. One of the men from engineering was watching us come out of the hatch onto the main deck. He said we were congratulating one another, and slapping each other on the back, and all the while they were machine gunning the main deck where we were. I told him that would be impossible not to notice the fifty caliber machine gun bullets flying around, but after thinking about it, I guess we didn’t notice. I think it could be attributed to being elated over escaping death from down below. Again right here, I would like to bring up the subject of our training that we received in boot camp, and in schools after boot camp.

I would like to say again, there is absolutely nothing that should have ever been changed with our training, and I mean nothing. Everyone acted as they should have, there was no panic that I know of, but everyone went about their duties with a discipline, such as I have never observed before. We were the US Navy, and we acted as such. The IDF did leave, and we began to try and help the wounded, and the dying. Every table on the mess deck seemed to have a body on it. I have no idea how many tables there were on the mess deck, but there were many. Our Executive Officer lay dying on one of them, and I tried to talk to him, and asked if I could do anything. He said just get me a cigarette, and go on and help the others. Well that was Commander Armstrong for sure, as he did like his cigarettes. He never made it through the day. There were men who were doing the work of a doctor, or a medic, and I myself bandaged a lot of wounds. One man came up to me later, and thanked me for bandaging his head, and I looked at the job I had done. It looked professional to me, and I told him, it must not have been me. He said it was.

So moving forward to the trip to Malta, and on that trip, so many things went on. We had to turn the rudder manually as we had lost our after steering. I was a part of the team, and it amounted to turning the capstan that was connected to the rudder with nothing but brute strength. That rudder didn’t want to go, and we were working against a lot of opposition, but we got it done. We tuned the rudder, when we were told, by orders from the bridge.

We were slow in answering, and so in inspecting our wake, after I was relieved, I found that it looked very familiar to a snake, slithering across the Med. So in the first hours of our trip, we probably doubled the distance we had to travel. Thank God for the USS Davis, which came along side us, the following morning. I was on the fantail when she came over the horizon, like an angel walking on the water. Help had finally got there, and still, yes still, we were afloat. Now I know why the old time worn clique, “There are no atheists in foxholes”. I understand that in depth. I meant a man who was a Medal of Honor winner right here in Sheridan, Wyoming, many years ago. I am trying to recall his name. I think it was Mitchell Paige. He heard my testimony in our church, and the miracles that occurred that day. He sat me down, and looked me right in the eye, and said, “Ron I believe every word you said, and I mean everything”. He was a Colonel in the Marine Corps, and believe me it was very healing to hear him say that. What happens in combat, and how one survives, is almost a story that is impossible to tell, without someone thinking you need a strait jacket. I will be telling this story to another church on Veteran’s Day this year, and it is in Custer, South Dakota, almost in the shadow of Mount Rushmore. I am so happy, and honored to do this, especially in this place.

I cannot go into the body recovery very deep. I can only say that we had to recover twenty five of our shipmates. I compared it to putting together a jigsaw puzzle, as we looked for parts to try and make a body out of a torso, or a head that needed a body. I am not kidding about that, and my trauma doctor told me once, that the reason I couldn’t remember, was because the brain will not record such horror. I am not sure if I buy that one, simply because I am acutely aware that some situation, some place in time, the right circumstances might just bring it all back. I don’t want it to, but I feel that it could. So folks enough about the body recovery, as I know I did it, I knew I was the POIC in charge, and I did the job as best I could. When it was over, we were expected to go into these men’s lockers, retrieve their personal goods, and send them home. Another strange experience for me, but nothing like what I saw down below.

When we were done cleaning up the ship, we were allowed to fly home. We left Madrid one day, and arrived in New York City the same night. We came in as the last flight that evening, and it was because they wanted no reporters talking to us. We were threatened about talking, and warned what would happen. In my personal opinion, there is no man or woman on God’s green earth that could keep this inside, and try to do it, until their own demise happens. My first wife will tell you, my second will tell you, and my third will tell you, what it was like living with a man like me. I will say right here, that I loved this nation too much to never say anything, I loved your family, and mine, and most of all I wanted our kids to grow up in complete happiness as I did. The fifties were great for me.

The aftermath of the attack, the Naval Board of Inquiry resulting in a decision that this attack was accidental, my own government ignoring what we had to say, has been devastating for me.

I was a mess when I got home in August of 1967. My mother and my wife said they hardly knew me. My mother didn’t even recognize me, as I got off the plane in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and she said I had lost so much weight, my face had a look like she had never seen before. That is what she said anyway.

I spent five years just doing nothing, except trying to get my health back, not knowing what was wrong, and when I finally went to a VA Hospital for help, they didn’t believe my story, and they actually called Washington D.C. to confirm what I told them. PTSD wasn’t even on the diagnostic manual at the time, and so the doctor that I saw, made a diagnosis of a neurological disorder. I went home after spending 44 days there. It took me a long time to come around, and even try to get a job, but I did get one. To make this short and concise, I will just say that I walked away from my first wife, leaving her everything, with the idea of committing suicide with alcohol. Circumstances that I couldn’t overcome, and seemed unsurmountable overwhelmed me. I failed at the alcohol/suicide thing. Just couldn’t do it. I left my first wife, with the idea of making it alone. I did manage to get a license as an electrician, and begin my own business with a partner. I then got remarried, and four children came out of that marriage. My second wife had enough of me after ten years, and divorced me, and she ended up with all the kids. She claimed that I was a combat veteran that no one could be around. My fixation on the truth never left me, even to this day. So I ended up alone again, but remarried one more time, and this marriage has lasted 27 years. Guess I finally got it right, and regained enough of my health, that I could function. A couple of things before I close off from this, as it is still painful to talk about.

First there is nothing like being drug into a court room knowing what I knew, and having the judge take away my children, being treated like a criminal, and I had never been in jail, or in trouble in my life. The Wyoming courts raked me over the coals, and then again I was left with nothing. Lost my home, and ended up paying a lot of child support. Secondly I just want to say that in this society, telling the truth, and fighting to make things right can put you in a terrible situation. I have been called names, that I am not, been threatened for telling the truth, and pushed out of two churches for telling them the story. The ugly treatment has been endless for over fifty two years, but I have no remorse for standing tall for the truth, and for the welfare of this nation, and I suppose someday they will know. I doubt if I will be here to see that.

As I said, no remorse, as I did the right thing. I never got to wear the Chief’s uniform, and eventually I was hoping to be an LDO. That was all taken away by the attack, and I was too sick to stay in the service, and all I wanted was away. I was honorably discharged, and was finally diagnosed after many years with severe PTSD, a physical back injury, and various other things. I still love my country, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Funny thing is, I still would like to have what I earned. That Chief’s uniform meant the world to me, and one of my shipmates who was a second class was made an honorary Chief, when he worked at NSA. To say I wasn’t envious would be an understatement, as I most certainly was. There is really nothing more to say. I stood my ground; my training demanded that I do so. I am still alive at 78 years of age. Not moving very well, but never the less, very thankful to our creator, for my life. I hope this little testimony will pass to those who love this nation as I did. Time is short for me, I suppose, but I don’t care. I did the right thing. My moral compass is still intact.