Military service
worldhistory.com
First tour of duty
After an application for a twelve month deferment to study in Paris was denied,
Kerry enlisted in the United States Navy on February 18, 1966. He was ordered into active duty on October 19, and received his Navy commission on December 16. After completing a year of training, in December of 1967 he began his first tour of duty, serving as a lieutenant in the electrical department on the guided-missile frigate USS Gridley (DLG-21).
In February 1968, the Gridley sailed into war to support aircraft carriers in the Tonkin Gulf, but was far removed from combat. Kerry had no contact with the enemy during that time. According to Kerry's profile in the Boston Globe Kerry recalled: "I didn't have any real feel for what the heck was going on [in the war]," His ship returned to port in Long Beach, California, on June 6, 1968.
Second tour of duty
Initially, according to the Boston Globe profile, Kerry had hoped to keep a relatively safe distance from most of the fighting by obtaining an assignment as commander of a Swift Boat:
:"I didn't really want to get involved in the war," Kerry said in a little-noticed contribution to a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing."
:But two weeks after he arrived in Vietnam, the swift boat mission changed -- and Kerry went from having one of the safest assignments in the escalating conflict to one of the most dangerous. Under the newly launched Operation SEALORD, swift boats were charged with patrolling the narrow waterways of the Mekong Delta to draw fire and smoke out the enemy. Cruising inlets and coves and canals, swift boats were especially vulnerable targets. boston.com
He commanded his Swift Boat Patrol Craft Fast-94 during several operations, including Operation Sea Lords (raids on the Viet Cong-controlled Cua Long River in the Mekong Delta near the Cà Mau province), and proved an aggressive commander: "To his crew, Kerry was one of the most daring skippers in the US Navy, relentlessly and courageously engaging the enemy" [ibid.]
In reference to an incident in which Kerry's boat hit a mine, the Globe reported that "Kerry often would go beyond his Navy orders and beach his boat, in one case chasing and killing a teenage Viet Cong enemy who wore only a loin cloth and carried a rocket launcher. Kerry's aggressiveness in combat caused a commanding officer to wonder whether he should be given a medal or court-martialed" [ibid.]
Yet despite his aggressiveness, "Kerry would watch in despair as a crewmate killed a boy who may or may not have been an innocent civilian. He would angrily challenge a military policy that risked the death of noncombatants" [ibid.]
Kerry lost five friends in war, including his Yale classmate Richard Pershing who was killed in action on February 17, 1968. The death had a devastating impact on Kerry, who expressed his grief in a wrenching letter to his parents, writing: "If I do nothing more, and if I convince the others to do nothing more, it will be to give every effort we can to somehow make this a better world to live in and to end once and for all this willingness to expend ourselves in this stupid, endless self-distruction [sic]." boston.com
Combat wounds
Kerry was awarded a Purple Heart for an injury incurred during his first combat experience (on December 2, 1968). According to his commanding officer at the time (who is a registered republican and commented on the incident 36 years after it happened), the injury resembled a scrape from a fingernail .
On February 20, 1969, he earned a second Purple Heart when his left thigh was hit with shrapnel. Eight days later, on February 28, 1969, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket. After beaching his boat, Kerry chased down and killed a wounded Viet Cong, who had been shot in the leg by a crew-mate and was fleeing with another B-40 rocket. Kerry came back to the boat with the rocket and launcher. He was awarded the Silver Star medal for his actions. On March 13, 1969, Kerry's boat detonated a mine (as his position took heavy fire) and his arm was wounded. For his injury and rescuing U.S. Army Green Beret James Rassmann on the same occasion, Kerry was awarded a third Purple Heart and the Bronze Star with Combat V. One of his three injuries cost him "about two days" of active service and the other two did not interrupt his duty. Kerry has refused to authorize the release of his Vietnam medical records for independent verification.
Anti-war activism
Kerry returned to America in 1969. In 1968, Kerry's first cousin, Brice Lalonde, had become President of the National Student's Union at the Sorbonne, and had actively participated in the May 1968 student uprisings in France, which showed all of Europe (and America) the power of student protest and confrontation. Kerry took this knowledge, and with the political tide in America moving distinctly to an anti-war footing, decided to become an anti-war activist and organizer. |
