9thIDdoc
Gold Member
- Aug 8, 2011
- 7,956
- 3,113
- 325
JULY 26, 2013
What John Kerry Really Did in Vietnam
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
What John Kerry Really Did in Vietnam
...On December 2, Kerry went on his first patrol up one of the canals. It was near midnight when the crew caught sight of a sampan. Rules of engagement required no challenge, no effort to see who was on board the sampan. Kerry sent up a flare, signal for his crew to start blazing away with the boat’s two machineguns and M16 rifles. Kerry described the fishermen “running away like gazelles”.
Kerry sustained a very minor wound to his arm, probably caused by debris from his own boat’s salvoes. The scratch earned him his first Purple Heart, a medal awarded for those wounded in combat. Actually there’s no evidence that anyone had fired back, or that Kerry had been in combat,...
He received two more Purple Hearts, both for relatively minor wounds. Indeed Kerry never missed a day of duty for any of the medal-earning wounds....
t last a note of contrition, but not from Kerry. Wasser describes to Brinkley how he saw that he’d killed an old man leading a water buffalo. “I’m haunted by that old man’s face. He was just doing his daily farming, hurting nobody. He got hit in the chest with an M-60 machinegun round. It may have been Christmas Eve, but I was real somber after that… to see the old man blown away sticks with you.” It turned out that Kerry’s boat had shot up one of the few “friendly” villages, with a garrison of South Vietnamese ARV soldiers, two of whom were wounded
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. Fishy.
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.
The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star make no sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 (rocket propelled grenade) 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 (caliber machine guns), Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off, shoots Charlie, and retrieves 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 (away) balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic integrity of a Frisbee after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so between you and the beach and begin raking it with your .50′s. ( 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.
“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 couldn’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 very fishy.”
What John Kerry Really Did in Vietnam
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
What John Kerry Really Did in Vietnam
...On December 2, Kerry went on his first patrol up one of the canals. It was near midnight when the crew caught sight of a sampan. Rules of engagement required no challenge, no effort to see who was on board the sampan. Kerry sent up a flare, signal for his crew to start blazing away with the boat’s two machineguns and M16 rifles. Kerry described the fishermen “running away like gazelles”.
Kerry sustained a very minor wound to his arm, probably caused by debris from his own boat’s salvoes. The scratch earned him his first Purple Heart, a medal awarded for those wounded in combat. Actually there’s no evidence that anyone had fired back, or that Kerry had been in combat,...
He received two more Purple Hearts, both for relatively minor wounds. Indeed Kerry never missed a day of duty for any of the medal-earning wounds....
t last a note of contrition, but not from Kerry. Wasser describes to Brinkley how he saw that he’d killed an old man leading a water buffalo. “I’m haunted by that old man’s face. He was just doing his daily farming, hurting nobody. He got hit in the chest with an M-60 machinegun round. It may have been Christmas Eve, but I was real somber after that… to see the old man blown away sticks with you.” It turned out that Kerry’s boat had shot up one of the few “friendly” villages, with a garrison of South Vietnamese ARV soldiers, two of whom were wounded
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. Fishy.
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.
The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star make no sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 (rocket propelled grenade) 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 (caliber machine guns), Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off, shoots Charlie, and retrieves 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 (away) balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic integrity of a Frisbee after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so between you and the beach and begin raking it with your .50′s. ( 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.
“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 couldn’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 very fishy.”
Last edited: