part2

The Purple Heart Hunter
from, and the vision of the men running like gazelles haunted
me. It seemed stupid. My gunner didn’t know where the people
were when he first started firing. The M-16 bullets had kicked
up the sand way to the right of them as he sprayed the beach,
slowly walking the line of fire over to where the men had been
leaping for cover. I had been shouting directions and trying to
unjam my gun. The third crewman was locked in a personal
struggle with the engine, trying to start it. I just shook my head
and said, ‘Jesus Christ.’ It made me wonder if a year of training
was worth anything.” Nevertheless, the episode introduced
Kerry to combat with the VC and earned him a Purple Heart.8
THE Boston Globe’s ACCOUNT

A somewhat different version is recounted in the Kerry biography
written by the Boston Globe reporters. In this account, Kerry had
emphasized that he was patrolling with the Boston Whaler in a freefire
curfew zone, and that “anyone violating the curfew could be considered
an enemy and shot.”9
By the time the Globe biography was written, questions had been
raised about whether the incident involved any enemy fire at all. The
Globe reporters covered this point as follows:
The Kerry campaign showed the Boston Globe a one-page document
listing Kerry’s medical treatment during some of his service
time. The notation said: “3 DEC 1968 U.S. NAVAL SUPPORT
FACILITY CAM RANH BAY RVN FPO Shrapnel in left arm
above elbow. Shrapnel removed and apply Bacitracin dressing. Ret
to duty.”
The Globe asked the campaign whether Kerry was certain that he
received enemy fire and whether Kerry remembers the Purple Heart
UNFIT FOR COMMAND
being questioned by a superior officer. The campaign did not respond to
those specific questions and, instead, provided a written statement about
the fact that the Navy did find the action worthy of a Purple Heart.10
The two men serving alongside Kerry that night had similar memories
of the incident that led to Kerry’s first wartime injury. William
Zaldonis, who was manning an M-60, and Patrick Runyon, operating
the engine, said they spotted some people running from a sampan to
a nearby shoreline. When they refused to obey a call to stop, Kerry’s
crew began shooting. “When John told me to open up, I opened up,”
Zaldonis recalled. Zaldonis and Runyon both said they were too busy
to notice how Kerry was hit. “I assume they fired back,” Zaldonis
said. “If you can picture me holding an M-60 machine gun and firing
it—what do I see? Nothing. If they were firing at us, it was hard for
me to tell.”

Runyon, too, said that he assumed the suspected Viet Cong fired
back because Kerry was hit by a piece of shrapnel. “When you have a
lot of shooting going on, a lot of noise, you are scared, the adrenaline
is up,” Runyon said. “I can’t say for sure that we got return fire or
how [Kerry] got nicked. I couldn’t say one way or the other. I know he
did get nicked, a scrape on the arm.”11
In a separate conversation, Runyon related that he never knew
Kerry was wounded. So even in the Globe biography accounting, it
was not clear that there was any enemy fire, just a question about
how Kerry might have been hit with shrapnel.

The Globe reporters noted that, upon the group’s return to base,
Kerry’s commander, Grant Hibbard, was very skeptical about the
injury. The Globe account also quoted William Schachte, the officer
in command for the operation. As the Globe reporters recount,
Another person involved that day was William Schachte, who oversaw
the mission and went on to become an admiral. In 2003,
Schachte responded: ‘It was not a very serious wound at all.’12

The Purple Heart Hunter
Still, on Sunday, April 18, 2004, when NBC correspondent Tim
Russert questioned Kerry on national television about the skimmer
incident, Kerry described the incident as “the most frightening night”
of his Vietnam experience. The Globe reporters noted that Kerry had
declined to be interviewed about the Boston Whaler incident for their
book. Kerry’s refusal to be interviewed may well have been because
witnesses such as Commander Hibbard, Dr. Louis Letson, Rear Admiral
William Schachte, and others had begun to surface, and Kerry’s
fabricated story of “the most frightening night” had begun to unravel.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
The truth is that at the time of this incident Kerry was an officer in
command (OinC) under training, aboard the skimmer using the call
sign “Robin” on the operation, with now-Rear Admiral William
Schachte using the call sign “Batman,” who was also on the skimmer.
After Kerry’s M-16 jammed, Kerry picked up an M-79 grenade
launcher and fired a grenade too close, causing a tiny piece of shrapnel
(one to two centimeters) to barely stick in his arm. Schachte
berated Kerry for almost putting someone’s eye out. There was no
hostile fire of any kind, nor did Kerry on the way back mention to
PCF OinC Mike Voss, who commanded the PCF that had towed the
skimmer, that he was wounded. There was no report of any hostile
fire that day (as would be required), nor do the records at Cam Ranh
Bay reveal any such hostile fire. No other records reflect any hostile
fire. There is also no casualty report, as would have been required had
there actually been a casualty.
Following “the most frightening night” of his life, to the surprise of
both Schachte and the treating doctor, Louis Letson, Kerry managed
to keep the tiny hanging fragment barely embedded in his arm until
he arrived at sickbay a number of miles away and a considerable time
later, where he was examined by Dr. Letson. Dr. Letson, who has

UNFIT FOR COMMAND
never forgotten the experience, reported it to his Democratic county
chairman early in the 2004 primary campaign. When Kerry appeared
at sickbay, Dr. Letson asked, “Why are you here?” in surprise, observing
Kerry’s unimpressive scratch. Kerry answered, “I’ve been wounded
by hostile fire.” Accompanying crewmen then told Dr. Letson that
Kerry had wounded himself. Dr. Letson used tweezers to remove the
tiny fragment, which he identified as shrapnel like that from an M-79
(not from a rifle bullet, etc.), and put a small bandage on Kerry’s arm.
The following morning Kerry appeared at the office of Coastal
Division 14 Commander Grant Hibbard and applied for the Purple
Heart. Hibbard, who had learned from Schachte of the absence of hostile
fire and self-infliction of the “wound” by Kerry himself, looked
down at the tiny scratch (which he said was smaller than a rose thorn
prick) and turned down the award since there was no hostile fire.13
When we interviewed Grant Hibbard for this book, he was equally
emphatic that Kerry’s slight injury, in his opinion, could not possibly
merit the Purple Heart:

Q: When did you first meet John Kerry?
GH: Kerry reported to my division in November 1968. I didn’t
know him from Adam.

Q: Can you describe the mission in which Kerry got his first
Purple Heart?
GH: Kerry requested permission to go on a skimmer operation
with Lieutenant Schachte, my most senior and trusted lieutenant,
using a Boston Whaler to try to interdict a Viet Cong
movement of arms and munitions. The next morning at the
briefing, I was informed that no enemy fire had been received on
that mission. Our units had fired on some VC units running on
the beach. We were all in my office, some of the crew members,
The Purple Heart Hunter
I remember Schachte being there. This was thirty-six years ago;
it really didn’t seem all that important at the time. Here was
this lieutenant, junior grade, who was saying “I got wounded,”
and everybody else, the crew that were present were saying, “We
didn’t get any fire. We don’t know how he got the scratch.”
Kerry showed me the scratch on his arm. I hadn’t been informed
that he had any medical treatment. The scratch didn’t look like
much to me; I’ve seen worse injuries from a rose thorn.

Q: Did Kerry want you to recommend him for a Purple Heart?
GH: Yes, that was his whole point. He had this little piece of
shrapnel in his hand. It was tiny. I was told later that Kerry had
fired an M-79 grenade and that he had misjudged it. He fired it
too close to the shore, and it exploded on a rock or something.
He got hit by a piece of shrapnel from a grenade that he had fired
himself. The injury was self-inflicted, that’s what made sense to
me. I told Kerry to “forget it.” There was no hostile fire, the
injury was self-inflicted for all I knew, besides it was nothing
really more than a scratch. Kerry wasn’t getting any Purple
Heart recommendation from me.

Q: How did Kerry get a Purple Heart from the incident then?
GH: I don’t know. It beats me. I know I didn’t recommend him for
a Purple Heart. Kerry probably wrote up the paperwork and recommended
himself, that’s all I can figure out. If it ever came across
my desk, I don’t have any recollection of it. Kerry didn’t get my
signature. I said “no way” and told him to get out of my office.14
Amazingly, Kerry somehow “gamed the system” nearly three
months later to obtain the Purple Heart that Hibbard had denied.
How he obtained the award is unknown, since his refusal to execute

UNFIT FOR COMMAND
Standard Form 180 means that whatever documents exist are known
only to Kerry, the Department of Defense, and God. It is clear that
there should be numerous other documents, but only a treatment
record reflecting a scratch and a certificate signed three months later
have been produced. There is, of course, no “after-action” hostile fire
or casualty report, as occurred in the case of every other instance of
hostile fire or casualty. This is because there was no hostile fire, casualty,
or action on this “most frightening night” of Kerry’s Vietnam
experience. Dr. Louis Letson agreed with Grant Hibbard. Kerry’s
injury was minor and probably self-inflicted:
The incident that occasioned my meeting with Lieutenant Kerry
began while he was patrolling the coast at night just north of
Cam Ranh Bay where I was the only medical officer for a small
support base. Kerry returned from that night on patrol with an
injury.

Kerry reported that he had observed suspicious activity on
shore and fired a flare to illuminate the area. According to Kerry,
they had been engaged in a firefight, receiving small arms fire
from on shore. He said that his injury resulted from this enemy
action.
The story he told was different from what his crewmen had
to say about that night. Some of his crew confided that they did
not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a
grenade round at close range to the shore. The crewman who
related this story thought that the injury was from a fragment of
the grenade shell that had ricocheted back from the rocks.
That seemed to fit the injury 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 one centimeter in length and was about two or three mil-

The Purple Heart Hunter
limeters in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from
a rifle. I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the
skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than three or
four millimeters. It did not require probing to find it, nor did it
require any anesthesia to remove it. It did not require any
sutures to close the wound. The wound was covered with a
band-aid. No other injuries were reported and I do not recall that
there was any injury to the boat.
Lieutenant Kerry’s crew related that he had told them that he
would be president one day. He liked to think of himself as the
next JFK from Massachusetts. I remember that Jess Carreon was
present at the time and he, in fact, made the entry into Lieutenant
Kerry’s medical record.15

Both Hibbard and Letson wondered why Kerry had even bothered
to go to the dispensary. Kerry’s report of the injury as a combat injury
seemed at best to be exaggerated. The crewmen present maintained
that there was no evidence of enemy fire, and their conclusion was
that Kerry had been hit by a fragment of his own grenade.
Kerry’s proponents have also pointed to a fitness report for Kerry
that was filed by Hibbard rating Kerry “excellent” as proof that
Kerry’s service in Cam Ranh was unusually good. In reality, the Kerry
fitness report (which leaves fourteen of the eighteen categories,
including “integrity,” marked “unobserved”) is a marginal report.
Hibbard has stated that he wished to provide in the report a mediocre
evaluation without permanently destroying Kerry, given his short
four-week period of evaluation. At the time the report was made, Hibbard
did not know of Kerry’s later-finagled first Purple Heart.
Most Swiftees who were with Kerry at Cam Ranh Bay never knew
until Kerry decided to run for president that he had somehow
successfully maneuvered his way to this undeserved Purple Heart.