THE DINNER THAT NEVER HAPPENED (Kerry)
Kerry’s Fictitious Journal Account
In Kerry’s account of the An Thoi transfer, he makes up an entire conversation with the skipper of the landing ship tank (LST) who Kerry claims invited him and Peck for dinner on their way to An Thoi. As Kerry told the story in Tour of Duty, the LST captain launched into a discussion about his role in what had become known as the “Bo De massacre.” According to the version of the story told by Kerry, the LST captain presented a defensive account, attempting to correct a Stars and Stripes story criticizing him for LST covering fire that had supposedly fallen short, exposing Swiftees on the mission to unnecessary casualties.
But according to Captain Peck’s recollection and that of Kerry’s crewman Steven Gardner, he and Kerry were at the LST only a few minutes for refueling, not enough time for a comfortable dinner with the LST captain—and there was no conversation about “the massacre”as described by Kerry. Even more significant, Kerry’s account of the “BoDe massacre” is a breathtaking lie. In Tour, Kerry presents the first Swift incident on the Bo De as a “massacre” of Swiftees with seventeen wounded caused by the incompetence of all commanders whom he chose to blame rather than the vagaries of war or the enemy. Kerry’s fabrication comes even though he was not there. Joe Ponder was there as a Swiftee on the mission in question. Today, still badly disabled and on crutches from the incident, Ponder says, “There were only three persons wounded—not seventeen as Kerry states—and I was the first. I do not understand his criticism of our officers. I’ve always been proud of our officers.”
Ponder maintains today that the person who truly shamed and offended him was John Kerry, whose fraudulent account of war crimes in Tour of Duty has led his own grandchildren to ask him, “Did you commit the war crimes John Kerry describes?” At the press conference held by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in Washington, D.C., on May 4, 2004, Ponder was in tears, not from his wounds or the agony of standing with his braces, but from the wounds that Kerry’s lies in Tour of Duty had left upon his heart and his family.
THE BRIEF ASSIGNMENT IN AN THOI: KERRY’S VERSION
As Kerry has admitted in Tour of Duty, he was ordered against his will to Coastal Division 11 in An Thoi in December 1968. Tedd Peck recalls Kerry’s constant griping about the transfer. In Tour of Duty, Brinkley writes that both Kerry and Peck were opposed to their assignment. Following Kerry’s account, Brinkley quotes Peck telling his men, “There was no way I was leaving Cam Ranh Bay voluntarily to go up the rivers. That was a suicide mission.” Brinkley relates a tortured explanation of why Kerry was finally forced to accept the assignment: He claims that he missed one of the division meetings held to solicit volunteers because he was at the Air Force PX. Peck remembered Kerry distinctly objecting, saying that he had not volunteered for the war that was occurring in the Nam Can and U Minh forests. Peck believed that Kerry did not belong in the Navy. In Brinkley’s account, the one guy who got Peck’s ire up the quickest was John Kerry, who he found standoffish and condescending.
“I didn’t like anything about him,” Peck proclaimed, “Nothing.” For his part, Kerry liked Peck, and decades later recalled none of this supposed animosity between them.17 At any rate, Kerry’s time at An Thoi was short. Within a week, Kerry and the crew of PCF 44 were on their way to the less hazardous CosDiv 13, at Cat Lo. Kerry has tried to make it appear that he was disappointed at being so quickly reassigned from An Thoi. Here is the account he gave to biographer Douglas Brinkley:
“I tried to fight the change—not because we wanted to stay in An Thoi and be shot at, but because we didn’t want to have to move and resettle again,” Kerry noted. “Our mail was already lost, and the trip back against the monsoon seas promised to be nothing but a bitch. It was just that.” |
