Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 3, 1993 TAG: 9308030209
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JON FRANK LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But seven days later, Liebenow - skipper of another PT boat - learned the news was wrong. His boat was sent to pick up Kennedy and 10 members of the PT-109 crew.
Liebenow, who now lives in Edenton, N.C., became part of one of America's best-known war stories - a piece of history that helped Kennedy get elected president.
Liebenow, 73, met Monday in Fall River, Mass., with other World War II veterans and members of the Kennedy family to remember when Lt. John Kennedy's PT boat was cut in two by a Japanese warship.
More than 1,000 people were part of the overflow crowd at the PT Boat Museum in Fall River's Battleship Cove to honor the two men who died during the PT-109 incident and all other crewmen of PT boats who didn't survive the war.
Liebenow and the only member of the PT-109 crew still alive - 75-year-old Gerard E. Zinser - recalled for those attending how the most famous PT-109 war story unfolded.
It was a rescue mission that changed the lives of everyone who participated, Liebenow said. Not because it was so extraordinary, but because Kennedy went on to the nation's highest office.
"I think it was because Kennedy became president that the incident grew to such proportions," said Liebenow during a telephone interview on Monday from his sister's home in Monroe, Conn.
"It was the kind of incident that happened during the war many times. But I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. I wouldn't want it to happen again, but I would not trade it for anything."
The Kennedy family never forgot Liebenow's role in the rescue. They included him on a presidential campaign trip to Liebenow's home when he lived in Michigan and invited him to the Inauguration after Kennedy's election in 1960.
At an inaugural ball, Liebenow remembered, Kennedy turned to Lyndon B. Johnson, pointed to Liebenow and told the vice president "I owe this guy a lot."
And when Liebenow retired from his job with the CSX railroad in 1981, Sen. Edward Kennedy sent a congratulatory note.
"The Kennedys keep track of people and they remember things," he said. "I think that's the reason they are so successful politically."
Liebenow's job at the memorial was to recount the rescue. According to Liebenow, the legend of PT-109 goes like this:
Liebenow, Kennedy and two other PT boat commanders had taken their patrol-torpedo boats on patrol to intercept Japanese warships that were in the Solomons to rescue stranded soldiers.
Liebenow, who was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star and many other commendations for his wartime service, and one of the other PT boats encountered the Japanese ships, fired torpedoes and then escaped. They lost contact with Kennedy and the other PT boat.
"It was not until I got back on base the next morning that I first learned that PT-109 had been sunk," Liebenow said. "It was reported that the whole crew was lost."
A week later, when Liebenow and the others at the U.S. base on Rendova Island learned that Kennedy and his men were alive, everyone was elated, Liebenow said. "But there was some discussion that this was a trick by the [Japanese] to get us out."
The rescue itself, Liebenow said, was routine. The crew was some 50 miles from base, according to natives that brought Kennedy's message to the Americans. So Liebenow piloted his PT-157 to a designated location where natives had hidden Kennedy. The future president then guided the boat to the island where Kennedy's crew was holed up.
After PT-109 was sunk, Kennedy saved one of his men by swimming through shark-infested waters towing a seriously burned crewman by a lifeline that Kennedy held in his teeth. That act of heroism and the next week in hiding on the nearly deserted island would become the subject of books and dozens of newspaper articles.
Although some biographers have tried to discount the courage that Kennedy displayed, Liebenow said, the proof of Kennedy's heroism rests with those he commanded.
"Not one of them ever had anything bad to say about JFK," he said about the PT-109 crew. "And they are the ones who know."
by CNB