we shouldn't fuck with John Kerry outside of his political career
Military honors
During the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of
Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift Boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading
sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first
Purple Heart Medal.
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Kerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the
Bồ Đề River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift Boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift Boats reached the
Cửa Lớn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a
B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of
shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the
Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with
sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel.
[42] Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.
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Silver Star
Eight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his
Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift Boat and two other Swift Boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy
sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story
The Death Of PCF 43.
[45] Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry "directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the
Viet Cong positions" and he "expertly directed" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral
Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat
hove to and
beached, a Viet Cong ("VC") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a
spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.
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Kerry's commanding officer,
Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to
Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original
medal citation signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.
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Bronze Star
On March 13, 1969, on the Bái Háp River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift Boats that were returning to their base after performing an
Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at
Cái Nước and
MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing
weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 "about 2–3 ft out of water".
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James Rassmann, a
Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the
Bronze Star Medal with
Combat "V" for "heroic achievement", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.
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