photo by: Elvyn Jones/Journal-World Photo; public domain photo

Veteran Larry Slavens served in the Navy and was aboard the USS Liberty (pictured upon its return to Chesapeake Bay on July 29, 1967) when it was attacked on June 8, 1967.

In early June 1967, Larry Slavens had a sideline view of the Six-Day War from the bridge of the USS Liberty about 12 miles off the coast of the Sinai Peninsula.

“With Navy field glasses, you can see a long way,” he recalled Thursday from his rural Jefferson County home. “You could see men running behind tanks and planes dropping bombs. We were only going about 5 knots. It was very tranquil.”

Slavens was on the Liberty, an electronic surveillance ship, because his father convinced him it was safer to join the Navy when he was about to be drafted following his 1966 graduation from Mulvane High School. The alternative was to be conscripted into the Army during the height of the Vietnam War.

Slavens was about to learn a lesson, which he said all should remember as the country commemorates Veterans Day: The nation’s service members stationed in far-flung posts throughout the globe face peril whether or not they are in active combat.

photo by: Public domain

The USS Liberty is pictured upon its return to Chesapeake Bay on July 29, 1967, after it was attacked on June 8, 1967.

Slavens was a quartermaster on the Liberty. It was a job that had him assigned to the bridge, charting the ship’s navigation. He joined the Liberty’s crew about six months earlier and spent most of that time off the west coast of Africa, where the Liberty’s powerful antennas would track and monitor orbiting satellites.

The Liberty was ordered to the eastern Mediterranean as tensions heightened between Israel and its Arab neighbors of Egypt, Jordan and Syria before the June 5 outbreak of the Six-Day War.

The attack

At about 1 p.m. on June 8, 1967, the war Slavens had watched from the bridge and the ship’s sophisticated equipment had been monitoring would come to the Liberty.

It started when an Israeli jet made repeated strafing runs on the Liberty, firing “rocket cannon” rounds into the ship, Slavens said. The attack ended with an Israeli patrol boat putting a torpedo in the ship’s starboard side. The attack killed 34 Americans and wounded more than 170, including Slavens.

He was in the ship’s barbershop when the jet made its first strafing run, Slavens said. He thought the explosions were part of a drill until the battle stations alarm sounded. With that, he joined the organized scramble to get to his battle station in one of the ship’s gun mounts.

“We were lightly armed,” he said. “We just had four 50-caliber machine gun mounts. They were just to make sure we didn’t get boarded.”

From his vantage point in the gun mount, Slavens saw the jet make a turn for another attack on the ship as it methodically destroyed the Liberty’s communications antennas, he said.

photo by: Public domain

In this photo from June 9, 1967, a wounded USS Liberty crewman is transported on the flight deck of the USS America.

In the second attack, a shell penetrated the gun mount, killing two of its crew and severely wounding Slavens.

“I was hit with shrapnel,” he said. “If I had taken a direct hit, I’d be dead.”

Slavens had wounds in both arms and legs, his chest and back, and he lost a toe. He later found out both his eardrums were perforated.

Although he knew he was severely wounded, Slavens didn’t think he would live long enough for his injuries to kill him.

“There were three torpedo boats around us,” he said. “When they put that torpedo in the side of the ship, we started rolling really bad. I thought it was going to roll upside down.”

Slavens credits the rigorous drills that the ship’s captain, Wichita-born Commander William McGonagle, demanded with saving the ship and the lives of the survivors of the attack.

photo by: Public domain

Wichita-born Commander William McGonagle sits in his cabin on board the USS Liberty in June 1967.

“The captain was what was called a mustang, an enlisted man who made officer,” he said of the man who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions in saving the ship. “He was real stringent on drills. We drilled two or three times a week. We knew what our jobs were. The damage control team was able to get some bulkheads sealed, which saved us from taking on more water and turning over.”

Slavens said he and the other wounded crewmen were placed on tables in the ship’s mess hall and tended to by the Liberty’s one doctor and corpsman. It was a night of horror before he was evacuated to a nearby ship with a hospital bay.

“I vividly remember men calling for their mothers and seeing wounded guys with organs hanging from their bodies,” he said. “The surgeon wrapped them in plastic bags to keep bacteria from spreading into their wounds.”

Continuing controversy

The Israeli government would later apologize for the attack, and it paid $12 million in compensation, Slavens said.

“They said it was an accident. It wasn’t an accident, and everyone who was on the Liberty will tell you that,” he said. “The jet had been circling above us all morning. They had been watching us and taking pictures for six hours. We were waving at them.”

The ship had large markings and was flying the American flag the day of the attack, Slavens said. Israel has said they thought the ship was Egyptian.

“Basically, the U.S. and Israeli governments covered it up,” he said. “We had the goods on them (Israelis). They said they wanted peace, but they were perpetuating the war. We heard it all and had it all documented. They didn’t want that to get out. The torpedo boats shot our life rafts out of the water. That tells you right there they didn’t want any survivor to talk about this thing.”

photo by: Public domain

Damage to the USS Liberty is shown in June 1967.

In his 1999 obituary, the New York Times notes McGonagle had said two years earlier that he didn’t think the attack was a mistake and that it was time for the Israeli and American governments to tell the truth about the incident.

Slavens was in hospitals for five months recovering from his wounds with most of that time spent in Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. When he was released and visited his parents in Mulvane, he still had stainless steel sutures closing his wounds, Slavens said.

“One of the guys killed was from Wichita,” he said. “When I came home, his parents wanted to talk with me. That was hard.”

Slavens spent his remaining active duty time on the Liberty as it was being decommissioned in Norfolk, Va. After his discharge, he became a grocery store manager and later a salesman for Procter & Gamble, a job that brought him to the Lawrence area. He married and had three children, but he never could escape the June day off the Sinai. He has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, which manifests with anxiety attacks, depression and vivid flashbacks of the horrors he witnessed.

“They didn’t know a lot about PTSD back then,” he said. “They know a lot more about it now.”

Helping him cope are regular PSTD group therapy meetings at the Fort Leavenworth hospital, Slavens said.

“There’s about 15 to 20 of us in the sessions – a lot of Vietnam vets,” he said. “Those are very good sessions.”

Although he would like the motivations for the attack revealed, Slavens has no hard feelings toward the Israelis who carried out those orders.

“I don’t have animosity for the people who did it for the simple reason we all have bosses, and they did what they were told to do,” he said. “That pilot was doing what he was told to do.”