The awarding of Kerry's first Purple Heart
has been challenged by a former surgeon at the Navy base at Cam Ranh Bay. "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury," Dr. Louis Letson said in the television ad.
In a Times interview in May, the retired Alabama doctor said he recalled administering treatment to Kerry for a flesh wound incurred on Dec. 2, 1968.
Kerry had been on a mission in a "skimmer" boat north of Cam Ranh Bay. Noticing Viet Cong on a beach, Kerry fired on the guerrillas. Two crewmates, Bill Zaladonis and Pat Runyon, have confirmed that they also fired on the fleeing guerrillas.
That same night, Jim Wasser, who was stationed on a boat near Kerry's and who would later serve on Kerry's Swift boat, heard a radio report from Kerry's boat that "someone had a slight wound."
The next morning, according to Letson, Kerry showed up at the Cam Ranh Bay medical unit asking for treatment. Letson said the wound was slight and that he removed a tiny shard of shrapnel with tweezers. He said Kerry reported being in a firefight with "Viet Cong guerrillas."
But later, Letson said, he learned from some medical corpsmen that other crewmen had confided that there was no exchange of fire and that Kerry had accidentally wounded himself as he fired at the "guerrillas."
Letson said he didn't know if the crewmen giving this account were in the boat with Kerry or on other boats. The crewmen "were just talking to my guys," Letson said. "We weren't prying into it. There was not a firefight — that's what the guys related. They didn't remember any firing from shore. It's Kerry who made the issue of him being a war hero. That opens it up for some question."
In a June interview, Kerry described taking fire from the guerrillas but was unsure whether he was wounded by others or by himself. "I didn't see where it came from," he said.
The Kerry campaign has questioned Letson's role, noting that a medical account detailing Kerry's treatment is signed by a "J. Carreon" — not Letson. But Letson insisted he was the one who treated Kerry. Carreon was a Filipino corpsman, a "hospitalman first class," not a doctor, Letson said, and routinely made entries on his behalf.
Kerry won the Purple Heart for the wound, but Letson said he did not deserve it because it was too slight and reportedly self-inflicted. Letson conceded in The Times interview that he made no effort then to officially question Kerry's account.
Navy rules during the Vietnam War governing Purple Hearts did not take into account a wound's severity — and specified only that injuries had to be suffered "in action against an enemy."
Self-inflicted wounds were awarded if incurred "in the heat of battle, and not involving gross negligence." Kerry's critics insist his wound would not have qualified, but former Navy officials who worked in the service's awards branch at the time said such awards were routine.
A Times review of Navy injury reports and awards from that period in Kerry's Swift boat unit shows that many other Swift boat personnel won Purple Hearts for slight wounds of uncertain origin.
When Kerry reported the injury to his commander, Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, he only asked Hibbard to file an injury report, Kerry told The Times.
In a Swift Boat Veterans for Truth affidavit, Hibbard said Kerry came into his office "to apply for a Purple Heart," but that he turned down Kerry's "Purple Heart request." He said he was "shocked to later learn that [Kerry] subsequently received an undeserved Purple Heart for his wound."
But in a conflicting interview this summer, Hibbard said Kerry did not directly ask for the medal but a medical report. (The report would have been automatically forwarded to Navy administrators in Saigon who oversaw Purple Heart awards.) Hibbard said he believed the wound was too minor to warrant a report but that later he "took some heat" from military superiors for refusing to write it up.
Kerry acknowledged to The Times that he later asked about the Purple Heart. He said he "asked a guy where it was or something," but could not recall whom he pressed for the award.
The decoration was approved by Navy administrators in Saigon before he left Vietnam in March 1969. |
