August 20, 2004

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  JOHN KERRY’S 1ST PURPLE HEART (The real story?)

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  From the website Swift Boat Veterans For Truth

  KERRY’S VERSION
  The
  action that led to John Kerry’s first Purple Heart occurred on December
  2, 1968, during the month that he was undergoing training with Coastal
  Division 14 at Cam Ranh Bay. While waiting to receive his own Swift
  boat command, Kerry volunteered for a nighttime patrol mission
  commanding a small, foam-filled “skimmer” craft with two enlisted men.
  The purpose of the patrol, which Kerry later described as “a half-assed
  action that hardly qualified as combat,” was to find Vietcong guerillas
  moving contraband around a peninsula north of the bay on sampans.

  At the target location Kerry saw a group of
  sampans unloading something on the shore, and lit a flare to illuminate
  the area. The men from the sampans ran, and Kerry and his crew opened
  fire. At that point, according to Kerry, “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.” (page 147, “Tour of
  Duty”) Kerry and his men strafed the beach, shot up the sampans and
  returned to Cam Ranh Bay.

  HIS COMMANDING OFFICER’S VERSION
  As
  an officer in command (OIC) in training, Kerry reported during this
  mission to William Schachte, who eventually retired as a Rear Admiral.
  Schachte flatly contradicts Kerry’s claim to have been wounded by enemy
  fire, saying that after his M-16 jammed, Kerry picked up an M-79
  grenade launcher and fired a grenade that exploded too close to the
  boat, causing a small piece of shrapnel to stick in the skin of his
  arm. Kerry himself did not report receiving hostile fire that night,
  which would have been required, and there is no record of hostile fire
  for the mission.

  Kerry succeeded in keeping the
  small piece of shrapnel in his arm until the following day, when he was
  treated by Dr. Louis Letson, whose version of the event matches William
  Schachte’s account rather than Kerry’s:

  THE DOCTOR’S VERSION
  I
  have a very clear memory of an incident which occurred while I was the
  Medical Officer at Naval Support Facility, Cam Ranh Bay. John Kerry was
  a (jg), the OinC or skipper of a Swift boat, newly arrived in Vietnam.
  On the night of December 2, he was on patrol north of Cam Ranh, up near
  Nha Trang area. The next day he came to sick bay, the medical facility,
  for treatment of a wound that had occurred that night.
  

  The story he told was different
  from what his crewmen had to say about that night. According to Kerry,
  they had been engaged in a fire fight, receiving small arms fire from
  on shore. He said that his injury resulted from this enemy action.
  

  Some of his crew confided that
  they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a
  mortar round at close range to some rocks on shore. The crewman thought
  that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar
  round when it struck the rocks.
  

  That seemed to fit the injury which I treated.
  

  What I saw was a small piece of
  metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry’s arm. The metal
  fragment measured about 1 cm. in length and was about 2 or 3 mm 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 3 or 4 mm. It did not require probing to find it,
  did not require any anesthesia to remove it, and did not require any
  sutures to close the wound.
  

  The wound was covered with a bandaid.
  

  No other injuries were reported and I do not recall that there was any reported damage to the boat.
  

  REQUEST DENIED
  The
  following morning, John Kerry arrived at the office of Coastal Division
  14 Commander Grant Hibbard to apply for a Purple Heart. Having already
  been informed by Schachte that Kerry’s injury was self-inflicted rather
  than the result of hostile fire, Commander Hibbard told him to “forget
  it.” Hibbard recently said of Kerry’s minor scratch, “I’ve seen worse
  injuries from a rose thorn.”

  THEN, WHO GAVE IT TO HIM, IF ANYONE?
  Nevertheless,
  John Kerry managed to obtain his coveted Purple Heart for this incident
  nearly three months later after being transferred to Coastal Division
  11. The circumstances remain obscure, as there are no written records
  of this award on file at the Naval Historical Center. Various other
  documents that might shed light on this award remain unavailable due to
  Senator Kerry’s refusal to release his complete military records.

  IF HE REALLY RECEIVED IT, DID HE DESERVE IT?
  Military
  regulations state that to qualify for a Purple Heart, an injury must
  come “from an outside force or agent,” and treatment for the wound must
  “have been made a matter of official record.” While John Kerry managed
  to satisfy the second criterion by insisting that an amused Dr. Letson
  provide an official Band-Aid, nicking himself with a fragment from his
  own poorly-aimed grenade fails to meet the first qualification.

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  I THINK I WOULD HAVE THROWN IT AWAY TOO!

  • 8:36 am
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