John Kerry's Former Commanding Officer Retracts Criticism

A wise man I know once said this:

"Fuggit. We're all infidels in one way or another. Have another drink!"

 

He got threatened with ketchup!...Still, the drum beats multiplicity against Kerry's shady, unethical, repugnant military behavior...What gets me is that Democrats call for the administration for disassociation when they can't do the same thing as they pair Fat boy Moore, with far-left ineffective ex-President Carter at the DNC...Of course the hedonistic neo-demos, can't stand the equity of living in a glass house...

 

please document ANY "shady, unethical" or "repugnant" behavior Kerry displayed while in the military

oh wait, you can't, this is just GOP talking point b s that you will hope stick in someone's mind

 

The documentation in it's entirety will be available August 15th, 2004...reserve your copy now!

 

Distribute the truth any way you can...

 

ROXRAN likes his heroes coked up and out of their commander's hair in the deep South. Hey, if he wants his kids to grow up in a U.S.A. with more attacks like 9/11, let him. I for one will be voting for a hero who volunteered to go to Vietnam. I want my future kids to grow up in a safe U.S.A., not one where we have to scare the citizens everytime our opponents are getting too much news coverage.

Jeez, it's easy to post this crap! No wonder ROXRAN does it so much!

 

seriously, how ignorant can you be? how utterly blinded by your biases?

you just have proven that you have zero interest in the truth, that book is absolutely nothing but "dishonest and dishonorable", but yet you still cling to it

John Kerry has plently to be critized about without the need to lie

 

Is the book politically slanted? Probably, but if direct evidence is pronounced from persons associated with Kerry, and listed as such, it then is an issue worthy of examination in light of the truth...Especially when the information via persons related to Kerry's military venture are from multiple sources and in agreement with what I ascertain as definite acts of being shady, unethical, and downright repugnant!....It seems to be cited that two of John Kerry's three Purple Heart decorations resulted from self-inflicted wounds, not suffered under enemy fire....Is this not shady? repugnant?, unethical?...

It is cited that all three of Kerry's Purple Hearts were for minor injuries, not requiring a single hour of hospitalization...This clearly taints the merits of earning these purple hearts...Why not give them out to all the veterans who get blisters in harm's way?...

What about the culmination of Kerry's reckless behavior which convinced his colleagues that he had to go -- becoming the only Swift Boat veteran to serve only four months...This is alarming in view of his unusual mannerisms as cited thus far...The thing is there is more...A lot more, that comes from multiple sources which summize the point of Kerry being unfit for command...I am in dire need of the truth, so I suggest everyone to stop the ignorant snippets...Get the information August 15th...Learn the facts of how we cannot allow this person with so much lacking into the Presidential office...

 

Hmmmm. According to Brinkley, the guy who is saying Kerry's Bronze Star was not earned actually earned a Bronze Star himself for the same mission. I don't recall any stories of Thurlow giving back his medals...

Here's a transcript from yesterday, followed by the Brinkley article.
________________
WOODRUFF: We've been reporting on the debate between Vietnam veterans for and against John Kerry. With me now, two central figures in this debate. Larry Thurlow, he's with me here in Washington. Like John Kerry, he commanded a swift boat in Vietnam. He appears in that anti-Kerry television ad that we showed you a little earlier.

In Eugene, Oregon, is Jim Rassmann. He served under John Kerry's command and he credits Kerry with saving his life. Rassmann, you may remember, spoke at last week's Democratic convention.

Larry Thurlow, I want to -- I want to begin with you. You essentially, as I understand it, you, too, won a Bronze Star, like John Kerry did. The incident in which John Kerry pulled Jim Rassmann out of -- out of the river...

LARRY THURLOW, APPEARS IN ANTI-KERRY AD: Yes? WOODRUFF: ... in Vietnam, Kerry says that this happened under enemy fire, that Rassmann had been knocked in the water, he went back and was the first to get to Rassmann and pulled him out of the water. You essentially said that's not what happened. What are you saying?

THURLOW: My recollection of that day is still pretty vivid after all these years. And what I remember, Judy, is that the incident involving Mr. Rassmann, five boats had come out of the river after running an operation up in the canal earlier that day. Three boats were going through a fishing weir on the left side of the river that had put in place between the time we entered and when we were leaving.

I'm the third boat in that column left. In the column right, there are two boats. The lead boat is John Kerry's.

He's going through a rather small opening on the right bank that (ph) had been left in his boat. The boat leading our column, as it goes through that small opening almost simultaneously, is blasted completely out of the water by a command detonated mine.

WOODRUFF: This is another boat?

THURLOW: This is a 3-boat (ph) -- this is on the opposite side of the river of John Kerry's boat. At this point, John Kerry speeds out of the area, I assume to clear the kill zone. The rest of the boats, however, went to the aid of the 3-boat (ph), which was completely disabled. Two members of that crew are in the water, the rest are badly wounded and basically incapacitated on board that boat.

WOODRUFF: You're basically saying he fled when there was...

(CROSSTALK)

THURLOW: I am saying he fled the area on the explosion under the 3-boat (ph).

WOODRUFF: All right. Well, before -- and let me ask Jim Rassmann about that part of the story before we ask what happened to him.

Jim Rassmann, what -- what do you say happened that day in March, 1969?

JIM RASSMANN, KERRY SUPPORTER: Well, first, I was not part of John Kerry's command. I was a Special Forces officer who happened to be on his boat at that time.

Mr. Thurlow's recollection of what occurred is not accurate. We had the boat hit the mine to our left. And John immediately had his driver, Del Sandusky (ph), turn to the left and head towards it.

And it was at that time that our gunner on the bow got his gun knocked out and he started screaming for another weapon. I ran another weapon up to me, and we hit something or something hit us. There was an explosion, and I was blown off the boat to the right.

WOODRUFF: And you ended up in the water how?

RASSMANN: I was blown into the water, and I had boats coming up behind me. So, I went to the bottom of the river.

WOODRUFF: Now, as I understand it, Larry Thurlow, you have a different version of how Jim Rassmann was in the water.

THURLOW: Yes, I do. My thought is that since no mine was detected on the other side of the river, no blast was seen, no noise heard, there's two things that are inconsistent with my memory.

Our boats immediately put automatic weapons fire on to the left bank just in case there was an ambush in conjunction with the mine. It soon became apparent there was no ambush.

The rescue efforts began on the 3-boat (ph). And at this time, the second boat in line, mine being the third boat on the left bank, began to do this.

Now, two members in this boat, keep in mind, are in the river at that time. They're picked up. The boat that picks them up starts toward Lieutenant Rassmann at this time, that's the 23-boat (ph). But before they get there, John does return and pick him up. But I distinctly remember we were under no fire from either bank.

WOODRUFF: Jim Rassmann, what about that? You hear Mr. Thurlow saying there was no enemy fire at that point.

RASSMANN: Mr. Thurlow is being disingenuous. I don't know what his motivation is, but I was receiving fire in the water every time I came up for air. I don't recall anybody being in the area around us until I came up maybe five or six times for air and Kerry came back to pick me up out of the water.

WOODRUFF: Disingenuous. He says you are being disingenuous in not recalling what happened.

THURLOW: Let me ask Mr. Rassmann this question: I also ended up in the water that day during the rescue efforts on the 3-boat (ph). And my boat, the 51-boat (ph), came up, picked me up, business as usual. I got back on board, went about the business at hand.

I received no fire. But the thing I would like to ask is, we have five boats now, John's returning, and four boats basically dead in the water, working on the 3-boat (ph). If we were receiving fire off the bank, how come not one single boat received one bullet hole, nobody was hit, no sign of any rounds hitting the water while I was in it?

WOODRUFF: What about that, Jim Rassmann, quickly?

RASSMANN: There were definitely rounds hitting the water around me. If Mr. Thurlow feels that what his story is purported to be was the case, he had ample opportunity 35 years ago to deal with it. He never did, nor did anyone else. John Kerry did not tell this story. I told this story when I put him in for a Silver Star for coming back to rescue me. The Navy saw fit to reduce it to a Bronze Star for valor.

That's OK with me. But If Mr. Furlow had a problem with that, he should have dealt with it long, long ago. To bring it up now, I think, is very disingenuous. I think that this is partisan motivation on his part and for the part of his whole organization.

WOODRUFF: Mr. Thurlow, why didn't you bring this up earlier?

THURLOW: For one thing, I did not know that John had been put in for a Bronze Star, a Silver Star or, for that matter, a Purple Heart on that day. I did not see the after-action report, which, in fact, was written by John. And as the years went by, John was not running for the highest office in the free world.

WOODRUFF: What about Mr. Rassmann's point that he thinks you're doing this for partisan purposes?

THURLOW: Well, this is not true because, the fact of the matter is, I have not been active in any political party since I got out of the service. In fact, I basically turned my back on politics because of my experience in the service.

WOODRUFF: But this -- you feel strongly enough about this to be out?

THURLOW: I certainly do. My point is, is that John Kerry, because of the actions he's taken, and then the fantastic stories he made up about this, when many people beside myself know this not to be true, negates him being the leader he claims to be. And I would hate to have him be the commander-in-chief over my grandchildren.

WOODRUFF: Jim Rassmann, you want to respond to that?

RASSMANN: I sure do. I have two wonderful kids. They're very bright, they're compassionate people. I'm here today not just because John Kerry pulled me out of that water. I'm here today because if those two kids of mine were in the military, I would want John Kerry to be the commander-in-chief, not George Bush.

I think that Mr. Thurlow has a very unusual recollection of the events. I think that it's important to note that even today John McCain has come out and called this ad that they have produced dishonest and dishonorable. And I think I would have to agree with him.

WOODRUFF: Well, gentlemen, we are going to have to leave it there. Mr. Jim Rassmann, we thank you for joining us from Eugene, Oregon.

Larry Thurlow, we thank you for joining us here in Washington. We know you're from Kansas. We appreciate it.

And I have a sense we're going to continue to hear more about this story in the days and the weeks to come. Gentlemen, thank you very much.

THURLOW: You're welcome.

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0408/05/ip.01.html
______________________

John Kerry's Final Mission in Vietnam
American History Magazine

By Douglas Brinkley

March 13, 1969, would prove among the worst and best days John Kerry spent in Vietnam. Three years earlier, with the main thrust of the antiwar movement yet to come, Kerry had graduated from Yale University, delivering his class oration. Although he had just signed up with the U.S. Navy, in that address he questioned U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. After completing several assignments and being trained to command a patrol craft fast (PCF), or "Swift" boat, Lieutenant junior grade Kerry was ordered to patrol the Viet Cong–infested rivers of Vietnam's Mekong Delta as part of Operation Sealords.

By that March day he had been on Swift boat duty for only four months, but had already been wounded in action twice and was increasingly frustrated with the course of the river war. It seemed senseless to motor up a river, presenting an easy target on the open water, and then exchange fire with usually unseen enemies safely ensconced in the heavy growth on shore -- only to motor downriver and repeat those same actions the following day. Uncooperative allies and interservice rivalries only added to his frustrations. Yet Kerry, like so many others involved in the conflict, did the best he could to follow orders.

The March 13 mission, Kerry's last in Vietnam, was no exception. By the time it was over, he would have earned a Bronze Star, plus his third Purple Heart, and with it the last punch on his ticket out of Southeast Asia.

At 6 a.m. Kerry's PCF-94, along with fellow Lt. j.g. Rich McCann's PCF-24, left their supporting LST (landing ship, tank) to join three other Swifts for Operation Sealords Mission XCVIII -- a raid on the Bay Hap River. The day dawned gray and sunless, which made forming up particularly difficult. The humid air hung stagnant, and the radars worked spottily, if at all, through the unusually dark morning. PCF-94 was in far from tiptop shape. "All the windows on my boat and on [Larry Thurlow's PCF-53] boat had been blown out in the ambush two days earlier, and water slopped into the main cabins as the Gulf of Thailand sloshed us back and forth," Kerry recalled. "Each boat had its quota of Chinese-Cambodian [Nung] mercenaries on board, and speed was reduced because of the extra weight."

Near the entrance to the Bay Hap River, McCann's boat developed engine trouble and had to stop. "We transferred his troops to our boats and continued into the river," Kerry reported, his PCF-94 now so weighted down with men and gear it looked like a World War II Higgins boat heading for the Normandy beaches. Also aboard were U.S. Special Forces teams of Green Berets and SEALs being transported into enemy territory.

For the first time during Kerry's many trips up the Bay Hap, the river was choked with early-morning traffic. Swarms of fishing boats of all shapes and sizes were bobbing around. The sampans and motorized junks were crowded with old men and women and the usual smattering of children. In those dawn hours on the Bay Hap, if Kerry had felt like enforcing the no-movement rule to the letter, he could have ordered his men to shoot every Vietnamese on the sampans. The dead would have been matter-of-factly written off as VC trafficking goods during the U.S.–ordained curfew time.

Instead, Kerry slowed his boat down so that its wake wouldn't swamp the locals' shallow-draft rivercraft, and the men proceeded with guns cocked just in case anything unfriendly came their way. "They looked at us and we at them -- each staring with mistrust and fear," he remembered. Finally PCF-94 arrived at the opening to the small Dong Cung canal, where it was to rendezvous with the Swifts skippered by Lieutenants Skip Barker, Don Droz and Larry Thurlow, who would join them bearing the South Vietnamese Popular Forces members (called "Ruff-Puffs") they had picked up in Cai Nuoc.

Barker arrived leading the other boats, and the Swifts got in line headed for the tiny entrance to the Dong Cung canal. At its mouth the PCFs stopped and waited anxiously while Barker cut the wire connecting the fish stakes to make a hole wide enough for the Swifts to pass through. "Only a week earlier I had personally cut that same line," Kerry recalled. "But then, we had learned not to place any particular suspicion in any quarter. Everything could turn around and kill you, and any omen was suspect. And then, an innocent fisherman could easily have replaced it."

The canal was so narrow that the first two boats roiled the waterway around the fish stakes, causing the others to roll wildly from one side to the other. Ridiculously overburdened by the additional troops they had taken aboard from the crippled PCF-24, Kerry's Swift could make only about 10 knots. Fortunately, every so often the rebounding wakes from the boats in front of them would combine into just enough of a wave to pick PCF-94 up and send it hurtling forward.

As PCF-94 twisted and turned up the river, its crew occasionally losing sight of the other Swifts around the waterway's sharp turns, the Special Forces captain in the pilothouse with Kerry glanced at him knowingly as he intently scrutinized the banks for any sign of movement. But none appeared, in part because the mangroves rose so thick about them on both sides that they could barely see through them. "Christ, they can hear us coming for miles," the captain pointed out, "and I can't remember any ****in' thing in the history of war that runs like this -- taking friendly boats smack into VC territory so that they can be shot at." Then, "with a sigh that said '****,'" as Kerry put it, the captain returned to staring out the pilothouse door.

PCF-94 slowly approached the area where it had been ambushed a few weeks before, and they began to look for the place where they were supposed to deposit the ground troops. Lieutenant Skip Barker continued upriver, seeking to drop off the South Vietnamese troops at a point some 2,000 yards past the position of the drop-off point for the Cambodian Nung mercenaries. Kerry found the spot, and the boats nosed ashore into a small clearing, where the troops began moving onto the banks. A few minutes after all the Nung were ashore, the Swift crews heard a loud but muffled explosion inland. A voice came over the radio: "Can you come back in here and pick up a body? I've got one of my boys killed by a booby trap."

Mike Medeiros jumped ashore to join PCF-53's Thurlow, taking a couple of U.S. military-issue ponchos to carry back the mercenary's remains. Kerry secured his boat and followed the others ashore. "The Nung seemed to be wandering around almost aimlessly, unaware that one of them had bought the ticket," Kerry wrote in his journal. Their leader came up to him and told him where the dead body was. "I remembered easily who he was," Kerry wrote, "the loud, boisterous, fat, impish man who was something of a ringleader among the Nung and who had endeared himself to everyone by his funny face." The Americans started down to where Bac She De, the Nung mercenary, had died. Moments earlier Kerry had asked, "Is it bad?" The Nung leader had replied "that you could put him in 'a bucket,'" Kerry wrote. "I walked more carefully, looking where each step went so that I wouldn't trigger another trap."

Kerry and Medeiros came upon the crumpled remains of the Cambodian. "I never want to see anything like that again," Kerry confided in his diary. "What was left was human, and yet it wasn't -- a person had been there only moments earlier and… now was a horrible mess of torn flesh and broken bones; bent and bloody, limbs contorted and distorted as if they could never be alive. Most of his stomach was hollowed out and there was a huge hole that went through his mouth and nose to the other side. I didn't really want to look and so I concentrated on looking right through him, avoiding contact with any personality."

As the two enlisted men bundled up Bac She De, Kerry wrote: "I looked at the small green sack that had been booby-trapped, and was awed by visions of the blast that must have ensued when it had been grabbed at. Half a hootch had been blown out by the concussion and there was a frightening hole in the ground." The situation was too dangerous for further on-site reflection, however, and the Navy men started back to their boats. "We had to extricate this body by carrying him in a poncho," Medeiros remembered. "I was carrying the front end, and somebody else was carrying the back. We had to go through a mangrove swamp, tramping through all this mud. I had a [grenade launcher] strung over my back, my radio was inoperable, and we had to deposit this poncho on the stern of the boat."

As the landing party turned back up the path, "light fire suddenly started to rake up from a field over the trees to the left," Kerry recorded. "Everyone dove instantly into the ditch by the side of our dike and I landed in water and mud up to my waist with the muzzle of my M-16 firmly planted in the crap. A whole line of mercenaries had already formed in the ditch, all shooting madly at what seemed like nothing. However, the whiz of the bullets over our heads that was visually nothing was clearly lethal." Kerry continued: "And Bac She De lay in front of us crumpled in the poncho while this holocaust went on. His feet were sticking out of one end, and I couldn't take my eyes off the boots -- one going one way and the other the opposite direction -- and the whole thing just silhouetted where he had been dropped suddenly when the shooting began. The alive shooting over the dead to remain alive.

"I was amazed at how detached I was from the whole scene," Kerry went on. "I just lay in the ditch, not firing because I wanted to save ammo and because I couldn't see what I was firing at, and I thought about what was happening in New York at that very moment, and if people really felt that I was doing something worthwhile while they went down to Schrafft's and had another ice cream sundae, or while some fat little old man who made another million in the past months off defense contracts was charging another $100 call girl to his expense account. And then, when the shooting stopped, I came back to where I was."

Suddenly all was quiet, and everyone stayed low in the ditch while a call was placed to the LST to report what had happened and to request some helicopters to support the sweep-through area. Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, aboard the LST, requested the choppers, but the word came back that none were available. At that, "I swore," Kerry declared. "We had been promised that when the shooting got heavy, we would have helos to help us out. But the headquarters just said that they were otherwise disposed and we would have to do the best we could."

Unrattled, Elliott played the whole thing down, but he proceeded to send a couple of small flanking groups out on either side to feel out the enemy. The flankers and North Vietnamese immediately met and expanded the huge volume of fire, and more enemy fire started to come Kerry's way.

By this time Kerry had called the South Vietnamese out of their insertion area and asked them to come and help. Their insertion had been a fiasco anyway.

The Navy SEAL team sent to deploy in the area earlier that morning, to wait in ambush for VC to be flushed out by South Vietnamese troops, got lost. When it stumbled upon a friendly outpost, the allies mistakenly began firing at each other, leaving one of the SEALs hurt and several of the South Vietnamese badly wounded. In the course of their sweep, the South Vietnamese troops had actually flushed out some VC, but since no one had been there to intercept them, nothing had come of their efforts.

Using a walkie-talkie after the radio went dead, Kerry contacted his second-in-command, Del Sandusky, who was running things on PCF-94 . Kerry told the petty officer to take the Swift downstream and beach it at a spot parallel to theirs. Then they sneaked up onto the dike and pulled the poncho down with them into the ditch on the other side. Thurlow and one of his crewmen dragged Bac She De's body through the knee-deep mud as the group slogged through the mangroves toward the river.

The PCFs had beached almost directly behind them, but the team's movement through the mud proved so arduous it took another 10 minutes before they could haul the mutilated corpse on board. After they had a quick rinse in the canal and a few moments of rest, the other Swifts, bearing the South Vietnamese Popular Forces troops they had collected, joined PCF-94 . Together the boats proceeded 50 yards downstream, where a bigger clearing in the mangroves allowed the Swifts to train their twin .50-caliber machine guns more accurately at the area from where the earlier firing had come. Meanwhile, Elliott had moved his troops downstream on a parallel course through the mangroves' cover. "With a few small flanking teams covering them on either side, we powwowed there to decide the next move," Kerry recorded.

The mission had called for the Nung troops to make a sweep for Viet Cong through several thousand yards of jungle before being picked up in another canal on the other side. "When the Nung were on board Swifts, the VC stayed away," Fred Short of PCF-94 recalled. "They were terrified of them." The AK-47 fire had proved the enemy's presence, and the Nung, who were paid by the kill, wanted to sweep the area and find them. The South Vietnamese Popular Forces troops, however, were far less motivated to risk their lives. "We wanted the Ruff-Puffs to join us in order to create a force that definitely outclassed what we assessed the firepower of the enemy to be," Kerry wrote in his notebook. "They unloaded from the Swifts but then froze on the bank and refused to go any farther. What followed was disgusting and disheartening. At first they refused to go in because they said they would be fighting under an American commander and that this wasn't their bag. But I thought of the other times that we had gone in here, and that had to be bull****."

Mike Miggins, the U.S. Army adviser to the local ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam), told Kerry the problem was most likely that the Popular Forces didn't want to fight alongside the mercenaries. Then the Ruff-Puffs' leader got on the radio with the ARVN district chief and spent the next half-hour arguing in frenzied Vietnamese about something. An agitated Kerry and crew just stood by helplessly as the bureaucrats on hand engaged in a political debate over the present situation. Having had enough of this, the mercenaries' leader "called his perimeter men and told them to fake a firefight, hoping this might excite our Viet colleagues into battle," Kerry reported. "The next few minutes were filled with tremendous thunder, as though the whole war was being fought in front of them, but it was to no avail. Some of the South Vietnamese got up and looked around and some others cocked their single-fire rifles, but by and large they just milled around. Then they just walked back and got onto the boats and sat down."

While most of the "Cream Puffs" -- as Kerry liked to call the Popular Forces after that -- scampered back to the boats, a few of the bravest made little forays around the area in front of them, where they turned up a substantial cache of Chinese-made grenades, ammunition and one or two land mines. One group found some wire leading down into the water and pulled it up slowly and carefully. No mine was attached, but there was a string of batteries at the other end. "They were American-issue, and we realized that the VC had been planning a reception for us in this very spot should we have tried sometime in the future to make a landing," Kerry recorded. "I could just see us beaching and unloading troops into a volley of claymores and underwater mines."

When AK-47 fire started to rake them again, Miggins and several of Kerry's men finally got so angry that they leaped off the Swifts and joined the mercenaries to start a sweep of their own. The impromptu squad moved through a string of surprisingly prosperous huts and fields, and then back on small paths toward a large open field. Kerry suddenly found himself walking through tall grass with a few of the Cambodian Nung, unable to communicate. "I don't think I ever felt so alone," Kerry remembered of that moment. "I could just see VC jumping out on us, and these guys running away or all of us getting rubbed [out]. I breathed a lot easier when we joined up with [the unit leader's] number-two man, who had been on another path over to the right of me. We found a small hut on the outskirts of the field, and there we regrouped and rested until moving back toward the boats. The hut was full of chickens and rustic implements, and a small pot was cooking on a fire that was still hot. As usual, the occupants were nowhere to be seen, having probably run away as soon as they heard the boats congregating in their area earlier in the morning." The Nung blew up some huge bins of rice they had found, since it was assumed, as always, that these were the local stockpiles earmarked to feed the hungry VC moving through the delta smuggling weapons.

Once back to their boats, "we moved full-speed out of the zone, as we had been there for a dangerously long time now and the chance of something greeting us on exit was pretty good," Kerry wrote. Every man on the mission fully expected to get hit on the thin stretch of the Dong Cung canal on the way out, but somehow they all made it to the Bay Hap unscathed. The Swifts rounded the point toward the village of Cai Nuoc, anxious to get rid of their "Cream-Puff" passengers, out of the river and back to the LST. For the first time that Kerry could remember, however, there were no children there to greet them as they went into Cai Nuoc -- in fact, the pier was practically deserted. "Had we been paying attention," Kerry noted, "the obvious clue that something was up would have hit full force in the face, but, because we were all pissed off and anxious to clear out, we just unloaded and moved away."

Almost casually, the Swifts formed up and headed out from the village. The five boats had gone about half a mile when the blast came. Right where they had been hit on an earlier mission, a mine exploded directly beneath Lieutenant James Rassman's PCF-3 near Kerry's port side. Rassman's Swift lifted about two feet up out of the water, engulfed in mud and spray, then settled, rocking so hard from side to side that the boat started zigzagging from the banks to the middle of the river. Everybody on board PCF-3 was wounded. "At the same moment, we came under a hail of small-arms fire from both banks," Kerry recorded in his journal. "I turned the boat into the fire on the left with the intention of trying to get the troops ashore on the outskirts of the ambush, but Sandusky, who was driving the boat and who had his eyes glued on the crippled 3 boat, pointed out to me how badly hit they had been. We veered back toward her then and tried to provide cover from the engaged side. Suddenly another explosion went off right beside us, and the concussion threw me violently against the bulkhead on the door, and I smashed my arm. At the same instant, Jim Rassman was blown overboard, although nobody knew it. But we continued sidling up to the 3, and as we came closer I could see that her twin-.50 mount over the pilothouse had been completely blown out of its stand and had landed on the gunner. No one was moving on the stern. [PCF-3 crewman] Ken Tryner, on his first real river expedition, was kneeling dazed in the doorway with a small trickle of blood down his face, aimlessly firing his M-79."

Thurlow had maneuvered his PCF-53 over by this time, and he hopped aboard PCF-3 to offer assistance. The boat was a shambles, but they were still shooting too hard to assess the damage. "Someone on the fantail must have noticed Jim swimming in back of us, ducking against the fire that was trying to pick him off because I suddenly heard the yell of 'man overboard' and looked back to see the bullets splashing in the water beside him," Kerry reported. "We turned around with the engines screaming against each other -- one full astern, the other full forward -- and then charged the several hundred yards back into the ambush where Jim was trying to find some cover. Everyone on board must have been firing without pause to keep the sniper heads down."

Kerry, thanking God the scramble nets were over the bow, struggled to get Rassman on board. "It must have looked like a comedy," he recalled. "Jim was exhausted from swimming and my right arm hurt and I couldn't pull very hard with it. Everyone else was firing a machine gun or something, except for Sandusky, who was maneuvering the boat, trying not to run over Jim but also trying to get near him as quickly as possible. Christ knows how, but somehow we got him on board and I didn't get the bullet in the head that I expected, and we managed to clear the ambush zone and move down near the 3 boat that was still crawling [on] a snail-like zigzag through the river."

Thurlow was struggling to get PCF-3's wounded gunner out of his hole and onto the deck when the damaged Swift ran aground hard on a shoal on the right side of the river, sending Thurlow somersaulting into the water. At the same moment, the five Swifts came under fire from the right side again, and Kerry remembered thinking that was it -- they were going to get completely cut off and annihilated in a crossfire. Spontaneously, however, every boat there stood its ground and filled the entire right bank of the river with .50-caliber, M-79, M-16 and any other firepower they had, while one of the Swifts moved in and retrieved Thurlow, who had picked himself up out of the mud. PCF-94 then moved in and attached a line to the damaged boat's stern to try to tow PCF-3 out, but the tether snapped. Kerry put another line on, and this one held. "We managed to get her clear of the kill zone," he exulted. Finally, the tumult subsided. "The wounded were transferred to another of the Swifts, which set off at full speed with a cover boat to take them out to the LST to be medevaced."

Thurlow remained on the crippled PCF-3, and the other two boats slowly began a procession out of the Bay Hap River, working desperately to keep the damaged Swift afloat. The overboard discharge pipe had been blown apart inside the engine room, and the hull was quickly filling with water. It became a race against time to get PCF-3 out of the river before it sank. One of the Swifts that had gone out with the wounded was on its way back with a damage-control team from the LST, but if they didn't get back soon there would be no boat to pump. Just as they reached the mouth of the river, the crewmen aboard PCF-94 and the other healthy Swift positioned their boats on either side of their endangered cohort to hold the boat up between them. A bucket brigade of tired and bloody sailors kept bailing for all they were worth and managed to keep PCF-3 afloat despite the water pouring into it. And all this while Bac She De's corpse lay in a poncho on PCF-94 's fantail.

Finally the LST damage team arrived with the pump, and the bucket brigade plopped down, exhausted. Once they caught their breath, the men all sat around and smoked, talking about what they had just gone through. Their chatter was animated, as each man, exuberant to be alive, described how close the shells had fallen and everything else he had seen over the past few hours. One of the Nung troops still aboard, however, displayed no such elations. "Bac She De's closest buddy, who looked like a mouse and whom we called that, was crying now because it had all caught up with him," Kerry said sadly. "I have never seen eyes so wide and so full of tears, and since I couldn't say anything to him I just patted him on the arm and nodded stupidly and then went away to sit down and enjoy the peace and quiet."

After what felt like an eternity, the Swifts neared the LST. The helicopter bearing the wounded was on the landing deck waiting for them to arrive with the body. "Mouse came in with us because he didn't want to have to leave Bac She De, and it didn't occur to any of us at the moment that this would be worse," Kerry recorded. "We pulled alongside the LST, and the helo started its engine and everyone stared over the side. I was determined that they wouldn't have the satisfaction of glaring at the body of this fighter, and so when the body bag was lowered down we put Bac She De in it, poncho and all, and zipped it up. My God, the look on Mouse's face as he saw his friend zipped into a nondescript Marine-green rubber bag and hoisted away forever. The tears ran down his face. How I hated the war and everything about it at that moment -- more than any other."

Kerry and the other wounded men received medical attention aboard a Coast Guard cutter, which was the closest ship capable of treating them. Along with a third Purple Heart for the injury to his right arm, Kerry was also awarded a Bronze Star for his bravery, as was Larry Thurlow.

By any standard, John Kerry had become a bona fide war hero. When the commander of Coastal Division 11, Charles F. Horne, recommended him for the Bronze Star on March 23, 1969, he pointed out that the 25-year-old lieutenant had previously earned two Purple Hearts (on December 2, 1968, and February 20, 1969) and the Silver Star (on March 6, 1969). Kerry became, along with Larry Thurlow, one of the most decorated officers in the "brown water navy." Yet he had also become a more uncommitted soldier than ever in the wake of the combat experiences for which he had earned a chestful of shiny medals and the horrific memories that came with them.

http://www.thehistorynet.com/ah/blkerryinvietnam/index.html

 

rimrocker, it's useless.

The new American hero, according to the RNC and their cronies, is a cokehead who bravely volunteers for service in the South, thousands of miles away from any real combat. President Bush, you're a real American hero.

 

I don't know why you guys bother with Roxran, he has been oiling his shaft and lubing up his firing mechanism, and the fumes from that combined with the thought of delivering a few steaming loads of hot lead at the range tomorrow has driven him into a frenzy where he is unable to think or reason in a rational matter.

 

You guys are right... it's not really about what really happened or a search for the truth. These guys (Hannity, SBVFT, and others) just don't care if they lie or not... all that is required is for whatever they say to be effective on some level and we can see from the threads over the last few days that it is effective as we have a bunch of folks who parrot the RNC/Grover's Group/Limbaugh/Hannity-type talking points.

My Mama raised me differently I guess... I don't think I could lie in order to damage someone.

On another point, I read where Kerry talked with McCain a lot during the South Carolina primary and arranged for some vets to go down there to try and counter the Bush rumors that McCain betreayed the US during his captivity. He also arranged for some vets to hang out with and support Kerrey when he was reliving some of his worst moments in Vietnam a few years ago. So, Kerry is really conniving... even though he didn't acknowledge he did such things for McCain and Kerrey, he had to know that at some point he would win the Dem nomination and it would come out as he was running for President thus making his image look better then the thieving flip-flopping liberal he really is...

 

Odd that you call that the truth, since the author of the book didn't serve with Kerry, one of the contributors of the book has already retracted the statement he made in the book, and the doctor who claims to have treated Kerry isn't even the physician who signed off on it.

The fact is that Kerry is a war hero. He turned the boat around, he risked his life and exposed himself to enemy fire in order to pull a green beret soldier out of the water. Nobody disputes that. That alone makes him a hero.

 

I think the guy just retracted his retraction. Flip flopper.

 

Incorrect. One wound is claimed to have come from richochet of friendly fire. THat's not self inflicted. Even if the purple hearts weren't deserved(I think the were but for the sake of argument let's pretend) that still doesn't reflect Kerry's shadiness just the unworthyness of those who handed the medals out. It's another attack on the brave veterans who awarded our country's medals.

Kerry left Viet Nam because of his three purple hearts, not because his colleagues had to go.

If you are really looking for the truth, you wouldn't be so quick to jump at the word of people who gave him glowing reviews during his service, and then later changed their story.