December 1, 1968 Kerry reported for duty at Coastal Squadron One of Coastal Division 14 at the Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam (a port base considered the safest assignment in Vietnam), taking command of Swift boat No. 44, operating in the Mekong Delta.
December 2, 1968 Kerry experienced first intense combat, and is slightly wounded by shrapnel in the arm. He was awarded a Purple Heart.
There is, however, no after-action report released by the Kerry campaign. The attending physician, Louis Letson says “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 firefight. . . 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. . .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 band-aid.”
Kerry applied for a Purple Heart. His request was initially denied by his superior Grant Hibbard, as Purple Heart eligibility requirements that “the wound for which the award is made must have required treatment by a medical officer” and Purple Hearts are not to be awarded for “accidents. . .not related to or caused by enemy action” or for “self-inflicted wounds. . .involving gross negligence.” Hibbard later acquiesced.
There is a good summary of the Kerry's medals controversy in the report: "Forging a Paper Hero: The Mystery of Kerry's Medals."
(Note: In Kerry's own journal written 9 days later, he writes that he and his crew, "hadn't been shot at yet." Kerry's 2004 campaign said it is possible his first Purple Heart was awarded for unintentionally self-inflicted wounds.)
December 6, 1968 Kerry was transferred to a more dangerous unit, Coastal Division 11 at An Thoi on Phu Quoc Island, an isolated base on an island near an enemy position. Kerry was opposed to this reassignment.
December 13, 1968 Kerry was transferred on December 13 to Coastal Division 13 in Cat Lo, which had wider, less dangerous rivers. There he joined a unit which provided support to Zumwalt’s Operation SEALORDS.
December 24, 1968 Kerry claimed that he was involved in combat in waters off Cambodia during Christmas Eve of 1968. Kerry said he ordered his crew to open fire, silencing the machine gun barrage aimed at them.
"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."
(Note: Kerry has since altered his claim to say he was in Cambodia in early 1969. This claim in unsubstantiated. The story changes by the day and unfolding.)
December 1968 Within a few weeks Kerry was reassigned back to An Thoi.
Crewman Steve Gardner states that he filed a false after-action report to cover up a January incident involving the accidental shooting of a child.
(Kerry’s fellow officer George Bates similarly states that Kerry habitually overreacted to threatening situations by using excessive force, including on one occasion burning down a random village where there was no sign of enemy presence.)
January 22, 1969 Kerry and other Swift boat commanders travel to Saigon for meeting with Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, Commander Naval Forces Vietnam (COMNAVFORV), and Gen. Creighton Abrams, Commander United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam (COMUSMACV)
On June 6, 1971, John Kerry described the work of the Swift boats to the Washington Star as follows:
"We established an American presence in most cases by showing the flag and firing at sampans and villages along the banks. Those were our instructions, but they seemed so out of line that we finally began to go ashore, against our orders, and investigate the villages that were supposed to be our targets. We discovered we were butchering a lot of innocent people, and morale became so low among the officers on those 'swift boats' that we were called back to Saigon for special instructions from Gen. Abrams. He told us we were doing the right thing. He said our efforts would help win the war in the long run. That's when I realized I could never remain silent about the realities of the war in Vietnam."
January 30, 1969 Kerry took over command of the PCF-94 swift boat.
February 20, 1969 Kerry and crew come under automatic weapon and rocket fire while on patrol in South Vietnam. Kerry was hit by shrapnel in his left thigh. He is awarded a second Purple Heart.
(Note: Kerry's account is disputed by the Swift Boat Veterans, some of whom state there was no enemy fire.)
February 28, 1969 Kerry and crew again drew intense enemy fire. Kerry charged Viet Cong positions, grounded his boat, pursued a Viet Cong fighter into a small hut, killed him, and retrieved his loaded rocket launcher. Kerry then led an assault party to secure the area, killing 10 Viet Cong with no American casualties. He is awarded a Silver Star "for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action."
"In addition to Kerry's Silver Star PCF-94's performance on February 28 also earned Bronze Stars for Tommy Belodeau and Mike Medeiros and Navy Commendation Medals with Combat V Devices for Del Sandusky, Fred Short, and Gene Thorson," wrote author Douglas Brinkley (Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War).
There were actually three citations issued for Kerry's Silver Star. They are all available on johnkerry.com. See this table for comparisons.
FrontPage Magazine.com also reviewed the Silver Star controversy in the article, "John Kerry's Puzzling Silver Star Citations": "Now, on the heels of yet another revelation—that Kerry’s DD 214 (“Report of Transfer or Separation”), displayed on his website, shows his Silver Star embellished with an unauthorized “V” for valor—which makes it facially false and at variance with official government records (see our article, John Kerry’s Mysterious Combat “V”)—it has come to light that his Silver Star award is fraught with other peculiarities."
(Note: Former Navy Secretary John Lehman stated on August 27, 2004 that he no idea where a Silver Star citation displayed on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's campaign Web site came from. The citation appears over Lehman's signature.
(Note: Kerry's account is disputed by the Swift Boat Veterans.)
March 13, 1969 Patrolling the Bay Hap River with five other swift boats, Kerry's group is ambushed. Kerry is hit in the arm by an exploding mine while another boat is blown out of the water. Kerry turns his boat back toward the ambush to rescue survivors. "We were still under fire, and he was wounded at the time" recalled Jim Rassmann. Kerry pulled the Rassman into his boat, saving his life, and was awarded a third Purple Heart and a Bronze Star "For heroic achievement [and] great personal courage under fire."
There is a detailed summary of the contradictory accounts of this event in the report, "Forging a Paper Hero: The Mystery of Kerry's Medals": "Where the reports state that Kerry’s buttocks injury occurred when the mine exploded, Brinkley’s biography records the account of Kerry’s war journal that the shrapnel in Kerry’s buttocks came from throwing a grenade into a rice cache—as Kerry wrote, 'I got a piece of small grenade in my ass from one of the rice bin explosions.' Rassmann recalls the rice explosion incident occurring prior to the incident where Kerry pulled him out of the water. Kerry’s fellow officer Larry Thurlow reports that Kerry’s buttocks injury was a self-inflicted wound caused by Kerry setting off a grenade too close to a stock of rice he was trying to destroy. The after-action report mentions 'TWO TONS GRAIN AND RICE DESTROYED.'"
(Note: Kerry's account is disputed by the Swift Boat Veterans.)
March 17, 1969 The policy of Coastal Squadron 1, the swift boat command, was to send home any individual who is wounded three times in action. After sustaining his third wound from enemy action in Vietnam, Kerry was granted relief under this policy.
Lucky for John Freaking Kerry (who served in Vietnam) that he was able to apply and receive 3 purple hearts in roughly 3 months to get out of Vietnam, what a hero, what a gem
http://www.archive-news.net/Kerry/JK_timeline.html
the website has a full detail of the time line from birth to date but this was the roughly three months I am speaking of.
