6/19/2022 UPDATE and REPOST with Gary King’s Newly Reedited Video of the “Remember the Liberty” song by David Neal, First Published Here . . . Again!

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FIND THE LINK TO THE LATEST VIDEO AT THE VERY END OF THIS BLOG POST

This is a (6/9/2022) 6/19/2022 repost of my blog originally published in October, 2019. That was shortly after one of my readers, David Neal, used a poem written a few months earlier and published HERE by another one of my readers, David Martin. Now (6/19) Gary King has upgraded the original through new video footage and photos, so please check this out! The combination of their unique, God-given talents resulted in this beautiful tribute to the men who were killed as well as the survivors who were undoubtedly mostly still awake from the night before.

Because on this very morning 55 years ago, the brave and courageous survivors of the brutal attack had waited — since mid-afternoon of yesterday, through the evening and into the night. It was not until the next morning that help would arrive. Today’s the anniversary of that event. It is hard for anyone who wasn’t there to imagine the carnage and destruction they had to deal with, while waiting 18 hours for help to arrive. During that long night, they waited nervously, on a severely damaged, listing ship that all of them expected to sink at any point, as the stresses of the broken hull were already being stretched to the limit. But for the men who were there, it’s easy for them to remember, they’ve done it practically every day for 55 years. What many of them want to do is to forget it, yet what they saw cannot be unseen.

(Mr. Neal adapted the lyrics from the poem of the same name written by David Martin (a.k.a. DCDave) published here on February 2, 2019)

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David Neal, a musician of the “pop-folk” genre where the names of Bob Dylan, John Prine, and John Cougar Mellencamp dominate, has created a terrific song memorializing the men who died or were injured during the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. Unlike many of the songs by others in that genre, Mr. Neal’s song, and Mr. Martin’s poetry, memorializes an actual tragic event that still remains unknown to most American citizens.

The survivors’ suffering was greatly exacerbated by the brutal orders issued by Lyndon B. Johnson for them to keep their lips sealed forever, and the promise of prison “or worse” if they talked to anyone about it: Not their parents, wives — and, implicitly — not even a psychologist could ever hear of this abominable “war crime.”

Please listen to this 3 1/2 minute tribute to the men who survived, and the 34 who didn’t, this 20th Century exemplar of combined Orwellian/Shakespearian tragedy:

The first version:

The second (latest version) by Gary King:

2ND UPDATE: 6/19/2022 Gary King Joins the Collaborators with New, Improved Video!+ Click on THIS LINK to see the new version.