Gunny
Gold Member
I was under the impression that comment was directed at MM, not me.
Bill Maher Insults Troops - Again
- Thread starter red states rule
- Start date
I was under the impression that comment was directed at MM, not me.
- Banned
- #282
That had to suck.
I am sure it did.... he couldn't sit on it for a month or so....
and you are right about vets at bars....when I say I am just a black shoe sailor and that I have never actually killed anyone with my bare hands, they all laugh.
S
Shattered
Guest
Was it? I misread something, then.
In either case, I'll watch anyway, because eventually it's liable to snap back. You don't compare any sane person to Kerry and walk away unscathed..
- Banned
- #284
I think that in time you will see that we have much we agree upon.
Gunny
Gold Member
Fortunately, I have a good poker face. I like being on the receiving end of the mentality that "he'll believe me if I buy him drinks."
Most of the actual combat vets I know are like the ones on this board. If you weren't there, no explanation will do, and if you were, none is necessary.
Gunny
Gold Member
LOL ... but MM has RSR on ignore. Not to mention from reading his posts, I doubt MM takes it as the insult RSR intends it to be.
red states rule
Senior Member
- May 30, 2006
- 16,011
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- Thread starter
- #287
John Kerry's 'self-inflicted'
Purple Heart, Bronze Star
Vietnam Swift Boat vets reveal new details of charges against presidential candidate
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: August 10, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON – In a letter to television station managers they hope to convince to air their blistering 60-second commercial opposing John Kerry for president, the Swift Boat Vets for Truth reveal new details of their politically sizzling charges against the candidate who made his war experience the cornerstone of his convention acceptance speech.
Attempting to bolster their accusations that Kerry misrepresented slight injuries to win Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, the vets cite a March 13, 1969, incident for which the young lieutenant was decorated.
Two injuries – a small bruise on his right arm and a minor injury to his buttocks – won Kerry his Third Purple Heart and a trip home. However, the vets say, the wound to his buttocks was self-inflicted and should never have received Purple Heart consideration.
While Kerry claims the injury came from shrapnel from an underwater mine, Larry Thurlow, an officer on shore with Kerry that day, insists the wound was the result of Kerry's decision to throw a concussion grenade into a rice pile. The "shrapnel," he says, was actually rice pellets.
As further evidence, the vets say, Kerry himself reflected in his own journal that his buttocks' wound came, not from a mine but, rather, from a grenade tossed into a rice cache.
Sworn statements of those present say there was no hostile fire involved in this incident for which Kerry received his third Purple Heart and the coveted Bronze Star.
"The conclusion is inescapable: that Kerry lied by reporting to the Navy that he had been wounded by shrapnel in his backside from an enemy mine when in reality he negligently wounded himself and then lied about the wound in order to secure a third Purple Heart and a quick trip home," reads the letter.
The letter continues: "Kerry's operating report, Bronze Star story, and subsequent 'no man left behind' story are a total hoax on the Navy and the nation," they say.
As to the daring rescue discussed in the documentary video shown to the nation at the Democratic convention, the vets say the rescue was well underway under the leadership of others when Kerry returned to the scene where Special Forces soldier Jim Rassman was plucked out of the water. Eyewitnesses have signed affidavits explaining when Kerry returned, there was no more hostile fire. He just merely leaned over the boat and assisted Rassman out of the water.
"Kerry's account of this action, which was used to secure the Bronze Star and a third Purple Heart, is an extraordinary example of fraud," they say.
The letter also recounts the incident that occurred Dec. 2, 1968, that led to Kerry receiving his first Purple Heart.
Once again, the vets insist there was no hostile fire involved, and, again, they say, Kerry's very minor wound was self-inflicted.
According to the vets' account, Kerry, Navy Lt. William Schachte, and an enlisted man were on a whaler.
"Seeing movement from an unknown source, the sailors opened fire on the movement," the letter says. "There was no hostile fire. When Kerry's rifle jammed, he picked up an M-79 grenade launcher and fired a grenade at a nearby object. This sprayed the boat with shrapnel from Kerry's own grenade, a tiny piece of which embedded in Kerry's arm."
Upon examining Kerry's injury, Dr. Lewis Letson says he asked Kerry why he was there.
Kerry reportedly told him he had been wounded by hostile fire. Letson removed the tiny fragment with tweezers and placed a Band-Aid over the scratch.
The next morning, Kerry went to see Division Commander Grant Hibbard to ask for the Purple Heart. Hibbard had already spoken to Schachte and conducted an investigation. Hibbard's investigation revealed that Kerry's "rose thorn" scratch had been self-inflicted in the absence of hostile fire. Hibbard denied the award.
Some three months later, Kerry managed to obtain his first Purple Heart from an officer with no connection to Coastal Division 14 or knowledge of the Dec. 2, 1968, event, they say.
"All normal documentation supporting a Purple Heart is missing," the letter says. "There is absolutely no casualty report (i.e., spot report) or hostile fire report or after-action report in the Navy's files to support this 'Purple Heart' because there was no casualty, hostile fire, or action on which to report. The sole document relied upon by Kerry is a record showing the band aid and tweezers treatment by Dr. Letson recorded by deceased corpsman, Jess Carreon.
"There are no witnesses who claim to have seen hostile fire – necessary for a Purple Heart (even a rose thorn Purple Heart) – that day. At least three witnesses, Dr. Letson (who spoke to the participants and removed the M-79 fragment), Lt. Bill Schachte (on the boat), and Cmdr. Grant Hibbard (whose investigation revealed Kerry's application for a Purple Heart to be fraudulent), are able to testify directly or based upon contemporaneous investigation that Kerry's first Purple Heart was a fraud," says the letter.
Swift Boat Vets for Truth claims a membership of 254 sailors from Coastal Squadron One, ranging from vice admirals to seamen. They claim 16 of the 23 surviving officers who served with Kerry in swift boats in Vietnam and who could be found have joined.
Related offer:
"Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related stories:
Anti-Kerry cover altered on Barnes & Noble
Vets say Kerry made up Cambodia story
Vet denies retraction of Kerry war criticism
Book: Kerry took no enemy fire for medal
Dems press TV stations to shun vets' ad
White House avoids criticism of Vets' ad
Vets: Kerry lied to get Silver Star
Kerry's Viet comrades call him a liar in TV ad
Kerry's wounds self-inflicted?
Kerry flip-flop on war footage
Controversy over Kerry's re-enacted war scenes
Anti-Kerry vets to sue candidate?
Kerry honored at communist museum
'Kerry lied while good men died'
Vets to Kerry: Stop using photos
Vet: Officers told Kerry to leave Vietnam
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39889
Gunny
Gold Member
Here's the problem with this. These are former Sailors Kerry maligned to the US Congress and the US public in general. In other words, they have an axe to grind.
I'm not saying the Swifties aren't telling the truth. What I am saying is, as is, you have presented hearsay from biased sources with no factual evidence to support it.
When I say factual evidence, I mean after-action reports, unit logs, awards recommendations and/or citations.
Base on what I am reading here ... http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/navawards/blpurpleheart.htm ... I do not see why Kerry would not technically rate the rice cache PH.
I'm not sure about the grneade launcher because a dtermination would have to be made as to whether believing you are engaging an enemy force is the same as actually engaging an enemy force. To the man on the ground scared shitless and firing the weapon, there is no difference.
This has nothing to do with my opinion of anyone who wants to cheapen the PH by collecting on superficial wounds, but the technicality of the law allows it, so you can't call it illegal.
I have also read an account from the man Kerry scooped out fo the water that contradicts the one told above. Again, biased hearsay with no factual evidence to support it.
Whether or not they were still activiely engaged with an enemy they had been engaged with is splitting hairs to me. Under those circumstances of only minutes separating actual contact and breakoff of engagement, I'm going to be locked and cocked and amped as Hell, and NOBODY better move too fast.
I am more than willing to question Kerry, his motives and his actions. I don't like the man. I don't like what he represents.
However, it is neither fair nor objective to accuse him of anything that cannot be supported by actual fact and/or evidence, IMO.
red states rule
Senior Member
- May 30, 2006
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- #289
With all the lies and distortions in what Kerry has said about his war record - I find it hard to take anything he says seriously
Also, with his sliming and insulting remarks about the US militray - it is just more reason not to believe him unless there is hard evidence to back up his claims
Also, with his sliming and insulting remarks about the US militray - it is just more reason not to believe him unless there is hard evidence to back up his claims
- Banned
- #290
and we know for a fact that two of the more prominent Swifties are liars. Jim Thurlow and George Elliott can be proven quite easily as liars....and their stories are top of the list.... you would think that the authors would have led with their top stuff, not easily provable slander.
Gunny
Gold Member
Insofar as his decorations are concerned, the evidence DOES support his claims, and there has been no evidence produced to refute them.
My point here is that Kerry has done enough questionable crap that hurts his credibility that there is no need to heap coonjecture on top. Once you start down that road, it then makes everything YOU say less credible thus requiring evidence to back up each and every thing. If, on the other hand, your accusations are unimpeachable, your credibility cannot be questioned.
red states rule
Senior Member
- May 30, 2006
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- Thread starter
- #292
THE PURPLE HEART HUNTER
“Many took exception to the Purple Hearts awarded to Kerry. His ‘wounds’ were suspect, so insignificant as to not be worthy of the award of such a medal. That Kerry would seek the Purple Heart for such ‘wounds’ is a mockery of the intent of the Purple Heart and an abridgement of the valor of those to whom the Purple Heart had been awarded with justification.”
WILLIAM FRANKE
Swift Boat veteran
A normal tour of duty in Vietnam was at least one year for all personnel. Many sailors, like Tom Wright (who would later object to operating with Kerry in Vietnam) and Steven Gardner (the gunnerÂ’s mate who sat behind and above Kerry for most of his Vietnam stay and came to regard him as incompetent and dishonest), stayed for longer periods either because of the special needs of the Navy or because they had volunteered to do so. With very few exceptions in the history of Swift Boats in Vietnam, everyone served a oneyear tour unless he was seriously wounded. One exception was John Kerry, who requested to leave Vietnam after four months, citing an obscure regulation that permitted release of personnel with three Purple Hearts. John Kerry is also the only known Swiftee who received the Purple Heart for a self-inflicted wound.
None of Kerry’s Purple Hearts were for serious injuries. They were concededly minor scratches at best, resulting in no lost duty time. Each Purple Heart decoration is very controversial, with considerable evidence (and in two of the cases, with incontrovertible and conclusive evidence) that the minor injuries were caused by Kerry’s own hand and were not the result of hostile fire of any kind. They are a subject of ridicule within our unit. “I did get cut a few times, but I forgot to recommend myself for a Purple Heart. Sorry about that,” wrote John Howland, a boat commander with call sign “Gremlin.”1
Moreover, many Swiftees have now come forth to question Kerry’s deception. “I was there the entire time Kerry was and witnessed two of his war ‘wounds.’ I was also present during the action [in which] he received his Bronze Star. I know what a fraud he is. How can I help?” wrote Van Odell, a gunner from Kerry’s unit in An Thoi.2 Commander John Kipp, USN (retired), of Coastal Division 13 also volunteered, “If there is anything I can do to unmask this charlatan, please let me know. He brings disgrace to all who served.”
Swiftees have remarked that, if Kerry faked even one of these awards, he owes the Navy 243 additional days in Vietnam before he runs for anything. In a unit where terribly wounded personnel like Shelton White (now an undersea film producer who records specials for National Geographic) chose to return to duty after three wounds on the same day, Kerry’s actions were disgraceful. Indeed, many share the feelings of Admiral Roy Hoffmann, to whom all Swiftees reported: Kerry simply “bugged out” when the heat was on.
For military personnel no medal or award (with the exception of the Congressional Medal of Honor) holds the significance of the Purple Heart. John O’Neill remembers witnessing, as a five-year-old child, the presentation of the Purple Heart to his widowed aunt, standing with her five children, at a memorial service for his uncle, a fighter pilot lost in Korea. Many remember the Purple Heart pinned on the pillows of the badly wounded in military hospitals throughout the world during America’s wars in defense of freedom. For this reason, there were those in Coastal Division 11 who turned down Purple Hearts because, when the medals were offered, these honorable men felt they did not really deserve them. Veteran Gary Townsend wrote, “I was on PCF 3 [from] 1969 to 1970 . . . I also turned down a Purple Heart award (which required seven stitches) offered to me while in Nam because I thought a little cut was insignificant as to what others had suffered to get theirs.”3
To cheat by getting a Purple Heart from a self-inflicted wound would be regarded as befitting the lowest levels of military conduct. To use such a faked award to leave a combat sector early would be lower yet. Finally, to make or use faked awards as the basis for running for president of the United States, while faulting oneÂ’s political opponents for not having similar military decorations, would represent unbelievable hypocrisy and the truly bottom rung of human conduct. Anyone engaging in such conduct would be unfit for even the lowest rank in the Navy, to say nothing of the commander in chief.
The Purple Heart Adventure
in the Boston Whaler
JOHN KERRYÂ’S STORY
John Kerry’s website presents his first Purple Heart incident in typical heroic fashion: “December 2, 1968—Kerry experiences first intense combat; receives first combat related injury.”4
As Kerry described the situation to Brinkley, who recounts the event in Tour of Duty, he grew bored in his first two weeks in Vietnam while awaiting the assignment of his own boat. So he volunteered for a “special mission” on a boat the Navy calls a skimmer but which Kerry knew as a “Boston whaler.” The craft was a foam-filled boat, not a PCF Swift Boat. Kerry and two enlisted men were patrolling that night, as Kerry described it, “the shore off a Viet Cong–infested peninsula north of Cam Ranh.” Kerry claims that he and his two crew members spent the night being “scared shitless,” creeping up in the darkness on fishermen in sampans. They feared that the fishermen in sampans with no lights might be Viet Cong.
According to Kerry, the action started early in the morning, around 2 or 3 a.m., when it was still dark. Here are KerryÂ’s words, quoted by Brinkley:
The jungle closed in on us on both sides. It was scary as hell. You could hear yourself breathing. We were almost touching the shore. Suddenly, through the magnified moonlight of the infrared “starlight scope,” I watched, mesmerized, as a group of sampans glided in toward the shore. We had been briefed that this was a favorite crossing area for VC trafficking contraband.5
Kerry reports that he turned off the motor and paddled the Boston Whaler out of the inlet into the bay. Then he saw the Vietnamese pull their sampans onto the beach; they began to unload something. Kerry decided to light a flare to illuminate the area.
The entire sky seemed to explode into daylight. The men from the sampans bolted erect, stiff with shock for only an instant before they sprang for cover like a herd of panicked gazelles [Kerry] had once seen on TV’s “Wild Kingdom.” We opened fire . . . The light from the flares started to fade, the air was full of explosions. My M-16 jammed, and as I bent down in the boat to grab another gun, a stinging piece of heat socked into my arm and just seemed to burn like hell. By this time one of the sailors had started the engine and we ran by the beach, strafing it. Then it was quiet.6
That was the entire action. As Kerry explained to Brinkley, he was not about to go chasing after the Vietnamese running away. “We stayed quiet and low because we did not want to illuminate ourselves at this point,” Kerry explains.
In the dead of night, without any knowledge of what kind of force was there, we were not all about to go crawling on the beach to get our asses shot off. We were unprotected; we didnÂ’t have ammunition; we didnÂ’t have cover; we just werenÂ’t prepared for that. . . . So we first shot the sampans so that they were destroyed and whatever was in them was destroyed.7
In the introduction of the incident in the book, Kerry said that it “was a half-assed action that hardly qualified as combat, but it was my first, and that made it exciting.” Kerry and his crew loaded their gear in the Swift Boat that was there to cover them, and with the Boston Whaler in tow, they headed back to Cam Ranh Bay. Brinkley ends his discussion by quoting Kerry’s summary, an account that again paints a larger-than-life picture:
“I felt terribly seasoned after this minor skirmish, but since I couldn’t put my finger on what we had really accomplished or on what had happened, it was difficult to feel satisfied,” Kerry recalled. “I never saw where the piece of shrapnel had come from, and the vision of the men running like gazelles haunted me. It seemed stupid. My gunner didn’t know where the people were when he first started firing. The M-16 bullets had kicked up the sand way to the right of them as he sprayed the beach, slowly walking the line of fire over to where the men had been leaping for cover. I had been shouting directions and trying to unjam my gun. The third crewman was locked in a personal struggle with the engine, trying to start it. I just shook my head and said, ‘Jesus Christ.’ It made me wonder if a year of training was worth anything.” Nevertheless, the episode introduced Kerry to combat with the VC and earned him a Purple Heart.8
THE Boston GlobeÂ’s ACCOUNT
A somewhat different version is recounted in the Kerry biography written by the Boston Globe reporters. In this account, Kerry had emphasized that he was patrolling with the Boston Whaler in a freefire curfew zone, and that “anyone violating the curfew could be considered an enemy and shot.”9
By the time the Globe biography was written, questions had been raised about whether the incident involved any enemy fire at all. The Globe reporters covered this point as follows:
The Kerry campaign showed the Boston Globe a one-page document listing Kerry’s medical treatment during some of his service time. The notation said: “3 DEC 1968 U.S. NAVAL SUPPORT FACILITY CAM RANH BAY RVN FPO Shrapnel in left arm above elbow. Shrapnel removed and apply Bacitracin dressing. Ret to duty.”
The Globe asked the campaign whether Kerry was certain that he received enemy fire and whether Kerry remembers the Purple Heart being questioned by a superior officer. The campaign did not respond to those specific questions and, instead, provided a written statement about the fact that the Navy did find the action worthy of a Purple Heart.10
The two men serving alongside Kerry that night had similar memories of the incident that led to Kerry’s first wartime injury. William Zaldonis, who was manning an M-60, and Patrick Runyon, operating the engine, said they spotted some people running from a sampan to a nearby shoreline. When they refused to obey a call to stop, Kerry’s crew began shooting. “When John told me to open up, I opened up,” Zaldonis recalled. Zaldonis and Runyon both said they were too busy to notice how Kerry was hit. “I assume they fired back,” Zaldonis said. “If you can picture me holding an M-60 machine gun and firing it—what do I see? Nothing. If they were firing at us, it was hard for me to tell.”
Runyon, too, said that he assumed the suspected Viet Cong fired back because Kerry was hit by a piece of shrapnel. “When you have a lot of shooting going on, a lot of noise, you are scared, the adrenaline is up,” Runyon said. “I can’t say for sure that we got return fire or how [Kerry] got nicked. I couldn’t say one way or the other. I know he did get nicked, a scrape on the arm.”11
In a separate conversation, Runyon related that he never knew Kerry was wounded. So even in the Globe biography accounting, it was not clear that there was any enemy fire, just a question about how Kerry might have been hit with shrapnel.
The Globe reporters noted that, upon the group’s return to base, Kerry’s commander, Grant Hibbard, was very skeptical about the injury. The Globe account also quoted William Schachte, the officer in command for the operation. As the Globe reporters recount, Another person involved that day was William Schachte, who oversaw the mission and went on to become an admiral. In 2003, Schachte responded: ‘It was not a very serious wound at all.’12
Still, on Sunday, April 18, 2004, when NBC correspondent Tim Russert questioned Kerry on national television about the skimmer incident, Kerry described the incident as “the most frightening night” of his Vietnam experience. The Globe reporters noted that Kerry had declined to be interviewed about the Boston Whaler incident for their book. Kerry’s refusal to be interviewed may well have been because witnesses such as Commander Hibbard, Dr. Louis Letson, Rear Admiral William Schachte, and others had begun to surface, and Kerry’s fabricated story of “the most frightening night” had begun to unravel.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
The truth is that at the time of this incident Kerry was an officer in command (OinC) under training, aboard the skimmer using the call sign “Robin” on the operation, with now-Rear Admiral William Schachte using the call sign “Batman,” who was also on the skimmer. After Kerry’s M-16 jammed, Kerry picked up an M-79 grenade launcher and fired a grenade too close, causing a tiny piece of shrapnel (one to two centimeters) to barely stick in his arm. Schachte berated Kerry for almost putting someone’s eye out. There was no hostile fire of any kind, nor did Kerry on the way back mention to PCF OinC Mike Voss, who commanded the PCF that had towed the skimmer, that he was wounded. There was no report of any hostile fire that day (as would be required), nor do the records at Cam Ranh Bay reveal any such hostile fire. No other records reflect any hostile fire. There is also no casualty report, as would have been required had there actually been a casualty.
Following “the most frightening night” of his life, to the surprise of both Schachte and the treating doctor, Louis Letson, Kerry managed to keep the tiny hanging fragment barely embedded in his arm until he arrived at sickbay a number of miles away and a considerable time later, where he was examined by Dr. Letson. Dr. Letson, who has never forgotten the experience, reported it to his Democratic county chairman early in the 2004 primary campaign. When Kerry appeared at sickbay, Dr. Letson asked, “Why are you here?” in surprise, observing Kerry’s unimpressive scratch. Kerry answered, “I’ve been wounded by hostile fire.” Accompanying crewmen then told Dr. Letson that Kerry had wounded himself. Dr. Letson used tweezers to remove the tiny fragment, which he identified as shrapnel like that from an M-79 (not from a rifle bullet, etc.), and put a small bandage on Kerry’s arm.
The following morning Kerry appeared at the office of Coastal Division 14 Commander Grant Hibbard and applied for the Purple Heart. Hibbard, who had learned from Schachte of the absence of hostile fire and self-infliction of the “wound” by Kerry himself, looked down at the tiny scratch (which he said was smaller than a rose thorn prick) and turned down the award since there was no hostile fire.13
When we interviewed Grant Hibbard for this book, he was equally emphatic that KerryÂ’s slight injury, in his opinion, could not possibly merit the Purple Heart:
Q: When did you first meet John Kerry?
GH: Kerry reported to my division in November 1968. I didnÂ’t know him from Adam.
Q: Can you describe the mission in which Kerry got his first Purple Heart?
GH: Kerry requested permission to go on a skimmer operation with Lieutenant Schachte, my most senior and trusted lieutenant, using a Boston Whaler to try to interdict a Viet Cong movement of arms and munitions. The next morning at the briefing, I was informed that no enemy fire had been received on that mission. Our units had fired on some VC units running on the beach. We were all in my office, some of the crew members, I remember Schachte being there. This was thirty-six years ago; it really didn’t seem all that important at the time. Here was this lieutenant, junior grade, who was saying “I got wounded,” and everybody else, the crew that were present were saying, “We didn’t get any fire. We don’t know how he got the scratch.” Kerry showed me the scratch on his arm. I hadn’t been informed that he had any medical treatment. The scratch didn’t look like much to me; I’ve seen worse injuries from a rose thorn.
Q: Did Kerry want you to recommend him for a Purple Heart?
GH: Yes, that was his whole point. He had this little piece of shrapnel in his hand. It was tiny. I was told later that Kerry had fired an M-79 grenade and that he had misjudged it. He fired it too close to the shore, and it exploded on a rock or something. He got hit by a piece of shrapnel from a grenade that he had fired himself. The injury was self-inflicted, that’s what made sense to me. I told Kerry to “forget it.” There was no hostile fire, the injury was self-inflicted for all I knew, besides it was nothing really more than a scratch. Kerry wasn’t getting any Purple Heart recommendation from me.
Q: How did Kerry get a Purple Heart from the incident then?
GH: I don’t know. It beats me. I know I didn’t recommend him for a Purple Heart. Kerry probably wrote up the paperwork and recommended himself, that’s all I can figure out. If it ever came across my desk, I don’t have any recollection of it. Kerry didn’t get my signature. I said “no way” and told him to get out of my office.14
Amazingly, Kerry somehow “gamed the system” nearly three months later to obtain the Purple Heart that Hibbard had denied. How he obtained the award is unknown, since his refusal to execute Standard Form 180 means that whatever documents exist are known only to Kerry, the Department of Defense, and God. It is clear that there should be numerous other documents, but only a treatment record reflecting a scratch and a certificate signed three months later have been produced. There is, of course, no “after-action” hostile fire or casualty report, as occurred in the case of every other instance of hostile fire or casualty. This is because there was no hostile fire, casualty, or action on this “most frightening night” of Kerry’s Vietnam experience. Dr. Louis Letson agreed with Grant Hibbard. Kerry’s injury was minor and probably self-inflicted:
The incident that occasioned my meeting with Lieutenant Kerry began while he was patrolling the coast at night just north of Cam Ranh Bay where I was the only medical officer for a small support base. Kerry returned from that night on patrol with an injury.
Kerry reported that he had observed suspicious activity on shore and fired a flare to illuminate the area. According to Kerry, they had been engaged in a firefight, receiving small arms fire from on shore. He said that his injury resulted from this enemy action.
The story he told was different from what his crewmen had to say about that night. Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a grenade round at close range to the shore. The crewman who related this story thought that the injury was from a fragment of the grenade shell that had ricocheted back from the rocks.
That seemed to fit the injury I treated.
What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of KerryÂ’s arm. The metal fragment measured about one centimeter in length and was about two or three millimeters in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from a rifle. I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than three or four millimeters. It did not require probing to find it, nor did it require any anesthesia to remove it. It did not require any sutures to close the wound. The wound was covered with a band-aid. No other injuries were reported and I do not recall that there was any injury to the boat.
http://www.learnedhand.com/kerryunfit.htm
“Many took exception to the Purple Hearts awarded to Kerry. His ‘wounds’ were suspect, so insignificant as to not be worthy of the award of such a medal. That Kerry would seek the Purple Heart for such ‘wounds’ is a mockery of the intent of the Purple Heart and an abridgement of the valor of those to whom the Purple Heart had been awarded with justification.”
WILLIAM FRANKE
Swift Boat veteran
A normal tour of duty in Vietnam was at least one year for all personnel. Many sailors, like Tom Wright (who would later object to operating with Kerry in Vietnam) and Steven Gardner (the gunnerÂ’s mate who sat behind and above Kerry for most of his Vietnam stay and came to regard him as incompetent and dishonest), stayed for longer periods either because of the special needs of the Navy or because they had volunteered to do so. With very few exceptions in the history of Swift Boats in Vietnam, everyone served a oneyear tour unless he was seriously wounded. One exception was John Kerry, who requested to leave Vietnam after four months, citing an obscure regulation that permitted release of personnel with three Purple Hearts. John Kerry is also the only known Swiftee who received the Purple Heart for a self-inflicted wound.
None of Kerry’s Purple Hearts were for serious injuries. They were concededly minor scratches at best, resulting in no lost duty time. Each Purple Heart decoration is very controversial, with considerable evidence (and in two of the cases, with incontrovertible and conclusive evidence) that the minor injuries were caused by Kerry’s own hand and were not the result of hostile fire of any kind. They are a subject of ridicule within our unit. “I did get cut a few times, but I forgot to recommend myself for a Purple Heart. Sorry about that,” wrote John Howland, a boat commander with call sign “Gremlin.”1
Moreover, many Swiftees have now come forth to question Kerry’s deception. “I was there the entire time Kerry was and witnessed two of his war ‘wounds.’ I was also present during the action [in which] he received his Bronze Star. I know what a fraud he is. How can I help?” wrote Van Odell, a gunner from Kerry’s unit in An Thoi.2 Commander John Kipp, USN (retired), of Coastal Division 13 also volunteered, “If there is anything I can do to unmask this charlatan, please let me know. He brings disgrace to all who served.”
Swiftees have remarked that, if Kerry faked even one of these awards, he owes the Navy 243 additional days in Vietnam before he runs for anything. In a unit where terribly wounded personnel like Shelton White (now an undersea film producer who records specials for National Geographic) chose to return to duty after three wounds on the same day, Kerry’s actions were disgraceful. Indeed, many share the feelings of Admiral Roy Hoffmann, to whom all Swiftees reported: Kerry simply “bugged out” when the heat was on.
For military personnel no medal or award (with the exception of the Congressional Medal of Honor) holds the significance of the Purple Heart. John O’Neill remembers witnessing, as a five-year-old child, the presentation of the Purple Heart to his widowed aunt, standing with her five children, at a memorial service for his uncle, a fighter pilot lost in Korea. Many remember the Purple Heart pinned on the pillows of the badly wounded in military hospitals throughout the world during America’s wars in defense of freedom. For this reason, there were those in Coastal Division 11 who turned down Purple Hearts because, when the medals were offered, these honorable men felt they did not really deserve them. Veteran Gary Townsend wrote, “I was on PCF 3 [from] 1969 to 1970 . . . I also turned down a Purple Heart award (which required seven stitches) offered to me while in Nam because I thought a little cut was insignificant as to what others had suffered to get theirs.”3
To cheat by getting a Purple Heart from a self-inflicted wound would be regarded as befitting the lowest levels of military conduct. To use such a faked award to leave a combat sector early would be lower yet. Finally, to make or use faked awards as the basis for running for president of the United States, while faulting oneÂ’s political opponents for not having similar military decorations, would represent unbelievable hypocrisy and the truly bottom rung of human conduct. Anyone engaging in such conduct would be unfit for even the lowest rank in the Navy, to say nothing of the commander in chief.
The Purple Heart Adventure
in the Boston Whaler
JOHN KERRYÂ’S STORY
John Kerry’s website presents his first Purple Heart incident in typical heroic fashion: “December 2, 1968—Kerry experiences first intense combat; receives first combat related injury.”4
As Kerry described the situation to Brinkley, who recounts the event in Tour of Duty, he grew bored in his first two weeks in Vietnam while awaiting the assignment of his own boat. So he volunteered for a “special mission” on a boat the Navy calls a skimmer but which Kerry knew as a “Boston whaler.” The craft was a foam-filled boat, not a PCF Swift Boat. Kerry and two enlisted men were patrolling that night, as Kerry described it, “the shore off a Viet Cong–infested peninsula north of Cam Ranh.” Kerry claims that he and his two crew members spent the night being “scared shitless,” creeping up in the darkness on fishermen in sampans. They feared that the fishermen in sampans with no lights might be Viet Cong.
According to Kerry, the action started early in the morning, around 2 or 3 a.m., when it was still dark. Here are KerryÂ’s words, quoted by Brinkley:
The jungle closed in on us on both sides. It was scary as hell. You could hear yourself breathing. We were almost touching the shore. Suddenly, through the magnified moonlight of the infrared “starlight scope,” I watched, mesmerized, as a group of sampans glided in toward the shore. We had been briefed that this was a favorite crossing area for VC trafficking contraband.5
Kerry reports that he turned off the motor and paddled the Boston Whaler out of the inlet into the bay. Then he saw the Vietnamese pull their sampans onto the beach; they began to unload something. Kerry decided to light a flare to illuminate the area.
The entire sky seemed to explode into daylight. The men from the sampans bolted erect, stiff with shock for only an instant before they sprang for cover like a herd of panicked gazelles [Kerry] had once seen on TV’s “Wild Kingdom.” We opened fire . . . The light from the flares started to fade, the air was full of explosions. My M-16 jammed, and as I bent down in the boat to grab another gun, a stinging piece of heat socked into my arm and just seemed to burn like hell. By this time one of the sailors had started the engine and we ran by the beach, strafing it. Then it was quiet.6
That was the entire action. As Kerry explained to Brinkley, he was not about to go chasing after the Vietnamese running away. “We stayed quiet and low because we did not want to illuminate ourselves at this point,” Kerry explains.
In the dead of night, without any knowledge of what kind of force was there, we were not all about to go crawling on the beach to get our asses shot off. We were unprotected; we didnÂ’t have ammunition; we didnÂ’t have cover; we just werenÂ’t prepared for that. . . . So we first shot the sampans so that they were destroyed and whatever was in them was destroyed.7
In the introduction of the incident in the book, Kerry said that it “was a half-assed action that hardly qualified as combat, but it was my first, and that made it exciting.” Kerry and his crew loaded their gear in the Swift Boat that was there to cover them, and with the Boston Whaler in tow, they headed back to Cam Ranh Bay. Brinkley ends his discussion by quoting Kerry’s summary, an account that again paints a larger-than-life picture:
“I felt terribly seasoned after this minor skirmish, but since I couldn’t put my finger on what we had really accomplished or on what had happened, it was difficult to feel satisfied,” Kerry recalled. “I never saw where the piece of shrapnel had come from, and the vision of the men running like gazelles haunted me. It seemed stupid. My gunner didn’t know where the people were when he first started firing. The M-16 bullets had kicked up the sand way to the right of them as he sprayed the beach, slowly walking the line of fire over to where the men had been leaping for cover. I had been shouting directions and trying to unjam my gun. The third crewman was locked in a personal struggle with the engine, trying to start it. I just shook my head and said, ‘Jesus Christ.’ It made me wonder if a year of training was worth anything.” Nevertheless, the episode introduced Kerry to combat with the VC and earned him a Purple Heart.8
THE Boston GlobeÂ’s ACCOUNT
A somewhat different version is recounted in the Kerry biography written by the Boston Globe reporters. In this account, Kerry had emphasized that he was patrolling with the Boston Whaler in a freefire curfew zone, and that “anyone violating the curfew could be considered an enemy and shot.”9
By the time the Globe biography was written, questions had been raised about whether the incident involved any enemy fire at all. The Globe reporters covered this point as follows:
The Kerry campaign showed the Boston Globe a one-page document listing Kerry’s medical treatment during some of his service time. The notation said: “3 DEC 1968 U.S. NAVAL SUPPORT FACILITY CAM RANH BAY RVN FPO Shrapnel in left arm above elbow. Shrapnel removed and apply Bacitracin dressing. Ret to duty.”
The Globe asked the campaign whether Kerry was certain that he received enemy fire and whether Kerry remembers the Purple Heart being questioned by a superior officer. The campaign did not respond to those specific questions and, instead, provided a written statement about the fact that the Navy did find the action worthy of a Purple Heart.10
The two men serving alongside Kerry that night had similar memories of the incident that led to Kerry’s first wartime injury. William Zaldonis, who was manning an M-60, and Patrick Runyon, operating the engine, said they spotted some people running from a sampan to a nearby shoreline. When they refused to obey a call to stop, Kerry’s crew began shooting. “When John told me to open up, I opened up,” Zaldonis recalled. Zaldonis and Runyon both said they were too busy to notice how Kerry was hit. “I assume they fired back,” Zaldonis said. “If you can picture me holding an M-60 machine gun and firing it—what do I see? Nothing. If they were firing at us, it was hard for me to tell.”
Runyon, too, said that he assumed the suspected Viet Cong fired back because Kerry was hit by a piece of shrapnel. “When you have a lot of shooting going on, a lot of noise, you are scared, the adrenaline is up,” Runyon said. “I can’t say for sure that we got return fire or how [Kerry] got nicked. I couldn’t say one way or the other. I know he did get nicked, a scrape on the arm.”11
In a separate conversation, Runyon related that he never knew Kerry was wounded. So even in the Globe biography accounting, it was not clear that there was any enemy fire, just a question about how Kerry might have been hit with shrapnel.
The Globe reporters noted that, upon the group’s return to base, Kerry’s commander, Grant Hibbard, was very skeptical about the injury. The Globe account also quoted William Schachte, the officer in command for the operation. As the Globe reporters recount, Another person involved that day was William Schachte, who oversaw the mission and went on to become an admiral. In 2003, Schachte responded: ‘It was not a very serious wound at all.’12
Still, on Sunday, April 18, 2004, when NBC correspondent Tim Russert questioned Kerry on national television about the skimmer incident, Kerry described the incident as “the most frightening night” of his Vietnam experience. The Globe reporters noted that Kerry had declined to be interviewed about the Boston Whaler incident for their book. Kerry’s refusal to be interviewed may well have been because witnesses such as Commander Hibbard, Dr. Louis Letson, Rear Admiral William Schachte, and others had begun to surface, and Kerry’s fabricated story of “the most frightening night” had begun to unravel.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
The truth is that at the time of this incident Kerry was an officer in command (OinC) under training, aboard the skimmer using the call sign “Robin” on the operation, with now-Rear Admiral William Schachte using the call sign “Batman,” who was also on the skimmer. After Kerry’s M-16 jammed, Kerry picked up an M-79 grenade launcher and fired a grenade too close, causing a tiny piece of shrapnel (one to two centimeters) to barely stick in his arm. Schachte berated Kerry for almost putting someone’s eye out. There was no hostile fire of any kind, nor did Kerry on the way back mention to PCF OinC Mike Voss, who commanded the PCF that had towed the skimmer, that he was wounded. There was no report of any hostile fire that day (as would be required), nor do the records at Cam Ranh Bay reveal any such hostile fire. No other records reflect any hostile fire. There is also no casualty report, as would have been required had there actually been a casualty.
Following “the most frightening night” of his life, to the surprise of both Schachte and the treating doctor, Louis Letson, Kerry managed to keep the tiny hanging fragment barely embedded in his arm until he arrived at sickbay a number of miles away and a considerable time later, where he was examined by Dr. Letson. Dr. Letson, who has never forgotten the experience, reported it to his Democratic county chairman early in the 2004 primary campaign. When Kerry appeared at sickbay, Dr. Letson asked, “Why are you here?” in surprise, observing Kerry’s unimpressive scratch. Kerry answered, “I’ve been wounded by hostile fire.” Accompanying crewmen then told Dr. Letson that Kerry had wounded himself. Dr. Letson used tweezers to remove the tiny fragment, which he identified as shrapnel like that from an M-79 (not from a rifle bullet, etc.), and put a small bandage on Kerry’s arm.
The following morning Kerry appeared at the office of Coastal Division 14 Commander Grant Hibbard and applied for the Purple Heart. Hibbard, who had learned from Schachte of the absence of hostile fire and self-infliction of the “wound” by Kerry himself, looked down at the tiny scratch (which he said was smaller than a rose thorn prick) and turned down the award since there was no hostile fire.13
When we interviewed Grant Hibbard for this book, he was equally emphatic that KerryÂ’s slight injury, in his opinion, could not possibly merit the Purple Heart:
Q: When did you first meet John Kerry?
GH: Kerry reported to my division in November 1968. I didnÂ’t know him from Adam.
Q: Can you describe the mission in which Kerry got his first Purple Heart?
GH: Kerry requested permission to go on a skimmer operation with Lieutenant Schachte, my most senior and trusted lieutenant, using a Boston Whaler to try to interdict a Viet Cong movement of arms and munitions. The next morning at the briefing, I was informed that no enemy fire had been received on that mission. Our units had fired on some VC units running on the beach. We were all in my office, some of the crew members, I remember Schachte being there. This was thirty-six years ago; it really didn’t seem all that important at the time. Here was this lieutenant, junior grade, who was saying “I got wounded,” and everybody else, the crew that were present were saying, “We didn’t get any fire. We don’t know how he got the scratch.” Kerry showed me the scratch on his arm. I hadn’t been informed that he had any medical treatment. The scratch didn’t look like much to me; I’ve seen worse injuries from a rose thorn.
Q: Did Kerry want you to recommend him for a Purple Heart?
GH: Yes, that was his whole point. He had this little piece of shrapnel in his hand. It was tiny. I was told later that Kerry had fired an M-79 grenade and that he had misjudged it. He fired it too close to the shore, and it exploded on a rock or something. He got hit by a piece of shrapnel from a grenade that he had fired himself. The injury was self-inflicted, that’s what made sense to me. I told Kerry to “forget it.” There was no hostile fire, the injury was self-inflicted for all I knew, besides it was nothing really more than a scratch. Kerry wasn’t getting any Purple Heart recommendation from me.
Q: How did Kerry get a Purple Heart from the incident then?
GH: I don’t know. It beats me. I know I didn’t recommend him for a Purple Heart. Kerry probably wrote up the paperwork and recommended himself, that’s all I can figure out. If it ever came across my desk, I don’t have any recollection of it. Kerry didn’t get my signature. I said “no way” and told him to get out of my office.14
Amazingly, Kerry somehow “gamed the system” nearly three months later to obtain the Purple Heart that Hibbard had denied. How he obtained the award is unknown, since his refusal to execute Standard Form 180 means that whatever documents exist are known only to Kerry, the Department of Defense, and God. It is clear that there should be numerous other documents, but only a treatment record reflecting a scratch and a certificate signed three months later have been produced. There is, of course, no “after-action” hostile fire or casualty report, as occurred in the case of every other instance of hostile fire or casualty. This is because there was no hostile fire, casualty, or action on this “most frightening night” of Kerry’s Vietnam experience. Dr. Louis Letson agreed with Grant Hibbard. Kerry’s injury was minor and probably self-inflicted:
The incident that occasioned my meeting with Lieutenant Kerry began while he was patrolling the coast at night just north of Cam Ranh Bay where I was the only medical officer for a small support base. Kerry returned from that night on patrol with an injury.
Kerry reported that he had observed suspicious activity on shore and fired a flare to illuminate the area. According to Kerry, they had been engaged in a firefight, receiving small arms fire from on shore. He said that his injury resulted from this enemy action.
The story he told was different from what his crewmen had to say about that night. Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a grenade round at close range to the shore. The crewman who related this story thought that the injury was from a fragment of the grenade shell that had ricocheted back from the rocks.
That seemed to fit the injury I treated.
What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of KerryÂ’s arm. The metal fragment measured about one centimeter in length and was about two or three millimeters in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from a rifle. I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than three or four millimeters. It did not require probing to find it, nor did it require any anesthesia to remove it. It did not require any sutures to close the wound. The wound was covered with a band-aid. No other injuries were reported and I do not recall that there was any injury to the boat.
http://www.learnedhand.com/kerryunfit.htm
- Banned
- #293
bingo....Kerry was definitely not my favorite candidate, but attacking HIS record and Jack Murtha's record on one hand while complaining that democrats are sliming our troops is pretty silly.
red states rule
Senior Member
- May 30, 2006
- 16,011
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- Thread starter
- #294
continued............
Lieutenant KerryÂ’s crew related that he had told them that he would be president one day. He liked to think of himself as the next JFK from Massachusetts. I remember that Jess Carreon was present at the time and he, in fact, made the entry into Lieutenant KerryÂ’s medical record.15
Both Hibbard and Letson wondered why Kerry had even bothered to go to the dispensary. KerryÂ’s report of the injury as a combat injury seemed at best to be exaggerated. The crewmen present maintained that there was no evidence of enemy fire, and their conclusion was that Kerry had been hit by a fragment of his own grenade.
Kerry’s proponents have also pointed to a fitness report for Kerry that was filed by Hibbard rating Kerry “excellent” as proof that Kerry’s service in Cam Ranh was unusually good. In reality, the Kerry fitness report (which leaves fourteen of the eighteen categories, including “integrity,” marked “unobserved”) is a marginal report. Hibbard has stated that he wished to provide in the report a mediocre evaluation without permanently destroying Kerry, given his short four-week period of evaluation. At the time the report was made, Hibbard did not know of Kerry’s later-finagled first Purple Heart.
Most Swiftees who were with Kerry at Cam Ranh Bay never knew until Kerry decided to run for president that he had somehow successfully maneuvered his way to this undeserved Purple Heart. But in Kerry’s own unit, Coastal Division 14, his attempt to gain the award through fraud marked him as someone who could never be trusted. When Kerry was dispatched to go to An Thoi with Lieutenant Tedd Peck (now Captain, USNR, retired), Peck told him, “Kerry, follow me no closer than a thousand yards. If you get any closer, I’ll teach you what a real Purple Heart is.”
A Trip to An Thoi
In contrast to the pretty beaches and placid existence at Cam Ranh Bay where Kerry was stationed, Coastal Division 11 was engaged in a gritty struggle against a North Vietnamese base area, deep in the mangrove swamps in the extreme south and west of Vietnam. This area, commonly known as the U Minh and Nam Can forests, had been under North Vietnamese control since the 1940s and was used for POW camps. Most POWs never left these camps. The city of Nam Can, one of the few free outposts in the area, had been overrun by the North Vietnamese in February 1968. Swift operations in the area were supported from an offshore outpost at An Thoi, located on an island off the coast.
The ultimate commander of United States Naval and Coast Guard forces in Vietnam, Admiral Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt III developed a strategy—with enthusiastic support of then-Captain Roy Hoffmann— to use underutilized offshore naval assets to rip control of area waterways from the North Vietnamese. His model was the Mississippi River campaigns of the Civil War, which had effectively used specialized craft.
Zumwalt was deeply admired by almost all Swiftees. A hero in World War II, Zumwalt was also later known as the man who brought women to the Naval Academy and into full participation in the Navy. He was also recognized as a crusader against racism. Zumwalt was a visionary whose sponsorship of missile ships and other innovations mark todayÂ’s Navy. He also often rode into danger with the Swiftees. KerryÂ’s later charge on Meet the Press in April 1971 that Zumwalt and others were war criminals cut deeply at the heart of Swiftees. Perhaps part of KerryÂ’s unjustifiable attack on Zumwalt was motivated by the fact that it was ZumwaltÂ’s decision to use Swift Boats on dangerous riverine missions that ended with KerryÂ’s hopes of avoiding action.
THE DINNER THAT NEVER HAPPENED
KerryÂ’s Fictitious Journal Account
In Kerry’s account of the An Thoi transfer, he makes up an entire conversation with the skipper of the landing ship tank (LST) who Kerry claims invited him and Peck for dinner on their way to An Thoi. As Kerry told the story in Tour of Duty, the LST captain launched into a discussion about his role in what had become known as the “Bo De massacre.” According to the version of the story told by Kerry, the LST captain presented a defensive account, attempting to correct a Stars and Stripes story criticizing him for LST covering fire that had supposedly fallen short, exposing Swiftees on the mission to unnecessary casualties.
But according to Captain Peck’s recollection and that of Kerry’s crewman Steven Gardner, he and Kerry were at the LST only a few minutes for refueling, not enough time for a comfortable dinner with the LST captain—and there was no conversation about “the massacre” as described by Kerry. Even more significant, Kerry’s account of the “Bo De massacre” is a breathtaking lie. In Tour, Kerry presents the first Swift incident on the Bo De as a “massacre” of Swiftees with seventeen wounded caused by the incompetence of all commanders whom he chose to blame rather than the vagaries of war or the enemy. Kerry’s fabrication comes even though he was not there. Joe Ponder was there as a Swiftee on the mission in question. Today, still badly disabled and on crutches from the incident, Ponder says, “There were only three persons wounded—not seventeen as Kerry states— and I was the first. I do not understand his criticism of our officers. I’ve always been proud of our officers.”
Ponder maintains today that the person who truly shamed and offended him was John Kerry, whose fraudulent account of war crimes in Tour of Duty has led his own grandchildren to ask him, “Did you commit the war crimes John Kerry describes?” At the press conference held by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in Washington, D.C., on May 4, 2004, Ponder was in tears, not from his wounds or the agony of standing with his braces, but from the wounds that Kerry’s lies in Tour of Duty had left upon his heart and his family.
THE BRIEF ASSIGNMENT IN AN THOI: KERRYÂ’S VERSION
As Kerry has admitted in Tour of Duty, he was ordered against his will to Coastal Division 11 in An Thoi in December 1968. Tedd Peck recalls Kerry’s constant griping about the transfer. In Tour of Duty, Brinkley writes that both Kerry and Peck were opposed to their assignment. Following Kerry’s account, Brinkley quotes Peck telling his men, “There was no way I was leaving Cam Ranh Bay voluntarily to go up the rivers. That was a suicide mission.”16 Brinkley relates a tortured explanation of why Kerry was finally forced to accept the assignment: He claims that he missed one of the division meetings held to solicit volunteers because he was at the Air Force PX. Peck remembered Kerry distinctly objecting, saying that he had not volunteered for the war that was occurring in the Nam Can and U Minh forests. Peck believed that Kerry did not belong in the Navy. In Brinkley’s account, the one guy who got Peck’s ire up the quickest was John Kerry, who he found standoffish and condescending. “I didn’t like anything about him,” Peck proclaimed, “Nothing.” For his part, Kerry liked Peck, and decades later recalled none of this supposed animosity between them.17
At any rate, KerryÂ’s time at An Thoi was short. Within a week, Kerry and the crew of PCF 44 were on their way to the less hazardous CosDiv 13, at Cat Lo. Kerry has tried to make it appear that he was disappointed at being so quickly reassigned from An Thoi. Here is the account he gave to biographer Douglas Brinkley:
“I tried to fight the change—not because we wanted to stay in An Thoi and be shot at, but because we didn’t want to have to move and resettle again,” Kerry noted. “Our mail was already lost, and the trip back against the monsoon seas promised to be nothing but a *****. It was just that.”18
THE REAL REASON KERRY WAS REASSIGNED
When they got to An Thoi, Kerry continued to object to his placement in this dangerous assignment against his will, so much so that he was given routine offshore patrols not involving any possibility of action until Coastal Division 11 could figure out a way to get rid of him. Within a week, Kerry was transferred to Coastal Division 13, headquartered near the former French resort town of Vung Tau. While Coastal Division 13 had been involved in substantial action, it was less than what Kerry avoided by his transfer. What his fellow Swiftees concluded was that Kerry had a very high regard for his own wellbeing and very little nerve for facing serious combat.
According to Peck, it was simply easier to get Kerry out of An Thoi than to have to listen to his constant bellyaching about how he had not volunteered for this kind of danger. Better just to get rid of Kerry and let him be somebody elseÂ’s problem.
William Franke echoes Tedd PeckÂ’s explanation of why Kerry was so quickly transferred out of An Thoi:
Kerry vigorously protested being transferred to An Thoi, arguing that he had volunteered only for coastal patrol and not for the far more hazardous duty of missions within the inland waterways. Indeed, his objections were so strong that, upon his first assignment to An Thoi, he was transferred out within a week.19
So off Kerry went to Cat Lo, where the patrols were on wider, less dangerous rivers than the treacherous canals of the U Minh forest and Cau Mau peninsula.
http://www.learnedhand.com/kerryunfit.htm
Lieutenant KerryÂ’s crew related that he had told them that he would be president one day. He liked to think of himself as the next JFK from Massachusetts. I remember that Jess Carreon was present at the time and he, in fact, made the entry into Lieutenant KerryÂ’s medical record.15
Both Hibbard and Letson wondered why Kerry had even bothered to go to the dispensary. KerryÂ’s report of the injury as a combat injury seemed at best to be exaggerated. The crewmen present maintained that there was no evidence of enemy fire, and their conclusion was that Kerry had been hit by a fragment of his own grenade.
Kerry’s proponents have also pointed to a fitness report for Kerry that was filed by Hibbard rating Kerry “excellent” as proof that Kerry’s service in Cam Ranh was unusually good. In reality, the Kerry fitness report (which leaves fourteen of the eighteen categories, including “integrity,” marked “unobserved”) is a marginal report. Hibbard has stated that he wished to provide in the report a mediocre evaluation without permanently destroying Kerry, given his short four-week period of evaluation. At the time the report was made, Hibbard did not know of Kerry’s later-finagled first Purple Heart.
Most Swiftees who were with Kerry at Cam Ranh Bay never knew until Kerry decided to run for president that he had somehow successfully maneuvered his way to this undeserved Purple Heart. But in Kerry’s own unit, Coastal Division 14, his attempt to gain the award through fraud marked him as someone who could never be trusted. When Kerry was dispatched to go to An Thoi with Lieutenant Tedd Peck (now Captain, USNR, retired), Peck told him, “Kerry, follow me no closer than a thousand yards. If you get any closer, I’ll teach you what a real Purple Heart is.”
A Trip to An Thoi
In contrast to the pretty beaches and placid existence at Cam Ranh Bay where Kerry was stationed, Coastal Division 11 was engaged in a gritty struggle against a North Vietnamese base area, deep in the mangrove swamps in the extreme south and west of Vietnam. This area, commonly known as the U Minh and Nam Can forests, had been under North Vietnamese control since the 1940s and was used for POW camps. Most POWs never left these camps. The city of Nam Can, one of the few free outposts in the area, had been overrun by the North Vietnamese in February 1968. Swift operations in the area were supported from an offshore outpost at An Thoi, located on an island off the coast.
The ultimate commander of United States Naval and Coast Guard forces in Vietnam, Admiral Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt III developed a strategy—with enthusiastic support of then-Captain Roy Hoffmann— to use underutilized offshore naval assets to rip control of area waterways from the North Vietnamese. His model was the Mississippi River campaigns of the Civil War, which had effectively used specialized craft.
Zumwalt was deeply admired by almost all Swiftees. A hero in World War II, Zumwalt was also later known as the man who brought women to the Naval Academy and into full participation in the Navy. He was also recognized as a crusader against racism. Zumwalt was a visionary whose sponsorship of missile ships and other innovations mark todayÂ’s Navy. He also often rode into danger with the Swiftees. KerryÂ’s later charge on Meet the Press in April 1971 that Zumwalt and others were war criminals cut deeply at the heart of Swiftees. Perhaps part of KerryÂ’s unjustifiable attack on Zumwalt was motivated by the fact that it was ZumwaltÂ’s decision to use Swift Boats on dangerous riverine missions that ended with KerryÂ’s hopes of avoiding action.
THE DINNER THAT NEVER HAPPENED
KerryÂ’s Fictitious Journal Account
In Kerry’s account of the An Thoi transfer, he makes up an entire conversation with the skipper of the landing ship tank (LST) who Kerry claims invited him and Peck for dinner on their way to An Thoi. As Kerry told the story in Tour of Duty, the LST captain launched into a discussion about his role in what had become known as the “Bo De massacre.” According to the version of the story told by Kerry, the LST captain presented a defensive account, attempting to correct a Stars and Stripes story criticizing him for LST covering fire that had supposedly fallen short, exposing Swiftees on the mission to unnecessary casualties.
But according to Captain Peck’s recollection and that of Kerry’s crewman Steven Gardner, he and Kerry were at the LST only a few minutes for refueling, not enough time for a comfortable dinner with the LST captain—and there was no conversation about “the massacre” as described by Kerry. Even more significant, Kerry’s account of the “Bo De massacre” is a breathtaking lie. In Tour, Kerry presents the first Swift incident on the Bo De as a “massacre” of Swiftees with seventeen wounded caused by the incompetence of all commanders whom he chose to blame rather than the vagaries of war or the enemy. Kerry’s fabrication comes even though he was not there. Joe Ponder was there as a Swiftee on the mission in question. Today, still badly disabled and on crutches from the incident, Ponder says, “There were only three persons wounded—not seventeen as Kerry states— and I was the first. I do not understand his criticism of our officers. I’ve always been proud of our officers.”
Ponder maintains today that the person who truly shamed and offended him was John Kerry, whose fraudulent account of war crimes in Tour of Duty has led his own grandchildren to ask him, “Did you commit the war crimes John Kerry describes?” At the press conference held by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in Washington, D.C., on May 4, 2004, Ponder was in tears, not from his wounds or the agony of standing with his braces, but from the wounds that Kerry’s lies in Tour of Duty had left upon his heart and his family.
THE BRIEF ASSIGNMENT IN AN THOI: KERRYÂ’S VERSION
As Kerry has admitted in Tour of Duty, he was ordered against his will to Coastal Division 11 in An Thoi in December 1968. Tedd Peck recalls Kerry’s constant griping about the transfer. In Tour of Duty, Brinkley writes that both Kerry and Peck were opposed to their assignment. Following Kerry’s account, Brinkley quotes Peck telling his men, “There was no way I was leaving Cam Ranh Bay voluntarily to go up the rivers. That was a suicide mission.”16 Brinkley relates a tortured explanation of why Kerry was finally forced to accept the assignment: He claims that he missed one of the division meetings held to solicit volunteers because he was at the Air Force PX. Peck remembered Kerry distinctly objecting, saying that he had not volunteered for the war that was occurring in the Nam Can and U Minh forests. Peck believed that Kerry did not belong in the Navy. In Brinkley’s account, the one guy who got Peck’s ire up the quickest was John Kerry, who he found standoffish and condescending. “I didn’t like anything about him,” Peck proclaimed, “Nothing.” For his part, Kerry liked Peck, and decades later recalled none of this supposed animosity between them.17
At any rate, KerryÂ’s time at An Thoi was short. Within a week, Kerry and the crew of PCF 44 were on their way to the less hazardous CosDiv 13, at Cat Lo. Kerry has tried to make it appear that he was disappointed at being so quickly reassigned from An Thoi. Here is the account he gave to biographer Douglas Brinkley:
“I tried to fight the change—not because we wanted to stay in An Thoi and be shot at, but because we didn’t want to have to move and resettle again,” Kerry noted. “Our mail was already lost, and the trip back against the monsoon seas promised to be nothing but a *****. It was just that.”18
THE REAL REASON KERRY WAS REASSIGNED
When they got to An Thoi, Kerry continued to object to his placement in this dangerous assignment against his will, so much so that he was given routine offshore patrols not involving any possibility of action until Coastal Division 11 could figure out a way to get rid of him. Within a week, Kerry was transferred to Coastal Division 13, headquartered near the former French resort town of Vung Tau. While Coastal Division 13 had been involved in substantial action, it was less than what Kerry avoided by his transfer. What his fellow Swiftees concluded was that Kerry had a very high regard for his own wellbeing and very little nerve for facing serious combat.
According to Peck, it was simply easier to get Kerry out of An Thoi than to have to listen to his constant bellyaching about how he had not volunteered for this kind of danger. Better just to get rid of Kerry and let him be somebody elseÂ’s problem.
William Franke echoes Tedd PeckÂ’s explanation of why Kerry was so quickly transferred out of An Thoi:
Kerry vigorously protested being transferred to An Thoi, arguing that he had volunteered only for coastal patrol and not for the far more hazardous duty of missions within the inland waterways. Indeed, his objections were so strong that, upon his first assignment to An Thoi, he was transferred out within a week.19
So off Kerry went to Cat Lo, where the patrols were on wider, less dangerous rivers than the treacherous canals of the U Minh forest and Cau Mau peninsula.
http://www.learnedhand.com/kerryunfit.htm
red states rule
Senior Member
- May 30, 2006
- 16,011
- 573
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- Thread starter
- #295
No one is attacking Murthas war record. Only his plan to fight the war on terror. Like redeploy to Okinawa. What terrorists are there?
Gunny
Gold Member
I recall hearing something about one or two of them doing some tapdancing, but I really never did pay much attention to what they had to say. I tend to discard heavily biased sources of information when and where I can, and in this case, I can make my own argument against Kerry based on chain of events and fact without needing a source no one taking Kerry's side is going to accept anyway.
Gunny
Gold Member
I think going after Kerry's record was legitimate because he tried to run for office with that very record as the basis for his qualification to be President. Like I said, I do not however agree with just throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks.
I don't recall Murtha's military service being attacked. I DO recall many of us going to great lengths to point out the difference between attacking his military service and attacking him as a screwball politician.
I DO find it odd that a Marine LtCol could be so out-of-touch with the military, and so willing to accuse it of illegal activities. That just about IS sliming the troops,
It has been and still remains my opinion that one cannot be against what the troops are doing AND support them. When you break it down into simple English, you are telling that young Marine, Soldier, Sailor or AIrman that you believe what they are doing is wrong. That can be nothing but detrimental to the psyche of someone carrying a lethal weapon and authorized to use deadly force.
IMO, one who is against the war but believes in supporting the troops, is voicing his opinion to his elected representative, who are the ones that can actualy change policy anyway, but isn't ranting to every sensationalist media outlet, trying the war in the media, or participating in protests such as the one held yesterday.
- Banned
- #298
I believe that Jack Murtha had inside dope from active duty marines on Haditha that told him those guys were gonna get charged with murder... I can well imagine that a career marine officer now a hawkish congressman would have plenty of sources at 8th and I. I cannot imagine that he would have accused them of cold blooded murder if he were not pretty damned sure that a court of inquiry would come to the same conclusion.
And how do elected representatives really understand the intensity of their constituent's beliefs without the media to inform them? Certainly they closely monitor and tabulate calls and letters from constituents, but their staffs also closely monitor letters to the editor and editorials in their home states/districts as well as media reports from there describing demonstrations and other noteworthy events in support or in opposition to policies.
Gunny
Gold Member
I think that electd officials ARE getting their understanding of their constituents' beliefs from the media; which, IMO, they may as well get from a Curious George book out of the library.
- Banned
- #300
having spent some time on the staff of the Maine State Senate and House Democrats, I can tell you that they get their understanding from a variety of sources - and the media certainly is one of them.
A lot of attention is paid to letters to the editor - which is why I try to write one every month!
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