KERRY'S MEDAL
By NILES LATHEM
April 15, 2004 -- John Kerry was facing questions about his celebrated war record yesterday after his former commanding officer in Vietnam said Kerry didn't deserve his first Purple Heart medal because his injuries were just a scratch.
Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, who was division commander of then-Lt. j.g. Kerry's Navy unit, told The Post he opposed Kerry's petition for the Purple Heart, awarded to service people wounded in combat, for an encounter with Viet Cong smugglers Dec. 2, 1968.
"There was just a little scratch on his forearm and he was holding a small piece of shrapnel [in his hand]. It didn't look like much of a wound to me," said Hibbard, who says he spoke with Kerry hours after the mission was completed.
"I didn't think he deserved a Purple Heart," Hibbard said in a telephone interview from his Gulf Breeze, Fla., home.
The story was reported yesterday in the Boston Globe.
Kerry also received the Silver and Bronze stars during his Vietnam service, and the three Purple Hearts he was awarded qualified him to leave the war zone six months early.
Kerry, campaigning in New York yesterday, suggested that Hibbard's charges are politically motivated.
"[The medal] hasn't been questioned in 35 years . . . I'm proud of what I did on that particular night," Kerry said.
Kerry campaign spokesman David Wade called the charges "35-year old revisionist history by a political antagonist."
Hibbard, who is a registered Republican, would not say why he decided to come forward now.
Hibbard said that despite his initial objections to the Purple Heart, Kerry apparently went over his head to petition Navy authorities for the medal.
It was not until last year, when Kerry began campaigning for the presidency and details of his war record were being written about, that Hibbard discovered Kerry had, in fact, been awarded the Purple Heart for that mission, he said.
Kerry received medical treatment for the wound, a requirement for the Purple Heart, but he was not hospitalized.
Kerry denied that he "politicked" for the medal.
"Look, the Navy made a decision 35 years ago to make an award based on normal procedures, and those of us who were there know what happened," Kerry said yesterday.
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