Kerry -- WAY WAY OFF THREAD BUT INTERESTING.

I spent 3 months in the 'Delta" which inluded providing CAS to the
Navy operations in the Mekong in 1967. Met and worked with Seal teams
and other Navy operations. This sounds like a true account from what I
saw and heard.

I wonder if he really flies his (wifes) bird or just rides and logs
time?

Big John
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By a USNA grad ('59) and Rear Admiral (Ret.)

I was in the Delta shortly after he left. I know that area well. I
know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and
the doctrine used. I know the equipment. Although I was attached to
CTF-116 (PBRs) I spent a fair amount of time with CTF-115 (swift
boats), Kerry's command.

Here are my problems and suspicions:

(1) Kerry was in-country less than four months and collected, a Bronze
Star, a Silver Star and three purple hearts. I never heard of anybody
with any outfit I worked with (including SEAL One, the Sea Wolves,
Riverines and the River Patrol Force) collecting that much hardware so
fast, and for such pedestrian actions. The Swifts did a commendable
job. But that duty wasn't the worst you could draw. They operated
only along the coast and in the major rivers (Bassac and Mekong). The
rough stuff in the hot areas was mainly handled by the smaller, faster
PBRs.

(2) Three Purple Hearts but no limp. All injuries so minor that no
time lost from duty. Amazing luck. Or he was putting himself in for
medals every time he bumped his head on the wheel house hatch? Combat
on the boats was almost always at close range. You didn't have minor
wounds. At least not often. Not three times in a row. Then he used
the three purple hearts to request a trip home eight months before the
end of his tour. Fishy.

(3) The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star
make no sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 was fired at the boat and
missed. Charlie jumps up with the launcher in his hand, the bow
gunner knocks him down with the twin .50, Kerry beaches the boat,
jumps off, shoots Charlie, and retreives the launcher. If true, he
did everything wrong.
(a) Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put your
stern to the action and go balls to the wall. A B-40 has the
ballistic integrity of a frisbie after about 25 yards, so you put 50
yards or so between you and the beach and begin raking it with your
..50's.
(b) Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50 caliber
round and get up? The guy was dead or dying. The rocket launcher was
empty. There was no reason to go after him (except if you knew he was
no danger to you just flopping around in the dust during his last few
seconds on earth, and you wanted some derring do in your after-action
report). And we didn't shoot wounded people. We had rules against
that, too.
(c) Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of standing
procedures. Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a boat in a hot area.
EVER! The reason was simple. If you had somebody on the beach your
boat was defenseless. It coudn't run and it couldn' t return fire. It
was stupid and it put his crew in danger. He should have been
relieved and reprimanded. I never heard of any boat crewman ever
leaving a boat during or after a firefight.

Something is fishy.

Here we have a JFK wannabe (the guy Halsey wanted to court martial for
carelessly losing his boat and getting a couple people killed by
running across the bow of a Jap destroyer) who is hardly in Vietnam
long enough to get good tan, collects medals faster than Audie Murphy
in a job where lots of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight
months early, requests separation from active duty a few months after
that so he can run for Congress, finds out war heros don't sell well
in Massachsetts in 1970 so reinvents himself as Jane Fonda, throws his
ribbons in the dirt with the cameras running to jump start his
political career, gets Stillborn Pell to invite him to address
Congress and Bobby Kennedy's speechwriter to do the heavy lifting,
winds up in the Senate himself a few years later, votes against every
major defense bill, says the CIA is irrelevant after the Wall came
down, votes against the Gulf War, a big mistake since that turned out
well, decides not to make the same mistake twice so votes for invading
Iraq, but oops, that didn't turn out so well so he now says he really
didn't mean for Bush to go to war when he voted to allow him to go to
war.

I'm real glad you or I never had this guy covering out flanks in
Vietnam. I sure don't want him as Commander in Chief. I hope that
somebody from CTF-115 shows up with some facts challenging Kerry's
Vietnam record. I know in my gut it's wildy inflated. And fishy.