Democrats tried to create a legend out of nothing and it did not work. Kerry is transparent and that is why he is not taken seriously.
Kerry reported to Navy doctor Louis Letson the next morning after duty hours began at 8 AM. Schachte had told him, "No enemy action, no purple heart." Kerry's appeal to Hibbard brought the rejoinder "I have seen rose thorn injuries worse than that. No enemy action, no purple heart." Surely a doctor would be more understanding, not that it mattered. Only Kerry's direct commanders could approve the award.
Kerry lay down on Letson's examination table and told Letson: "We were involved in a fire fight and we received fire from shore." One of the four or five men hanging around the dispensary out of Kerry's sight lowered his head and began to wag an emphatic "no" and stifle a laugh. Letson found ¼ inch fragment sticking out of Kerry's upper arm. It looked like wire about the diameter of a toothpick, he pulled it out with his forceps and flipped it with a tiny "klink" into a steel basin held by his Hospitalman, Jesus Carreon, to the applause of the appreciative audience. Letson was so amused he took a photo of Carreon holding the basin with the ½ inch fragment barely visible in the bottom of it.
As usual, whether Letson prescribed APC pills, ointment for a burn, cut out an ingrown toenail or any other medical action, Carreon dutifully noted in the medical record form Letson's treatment: "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."
Letson says he slapped a bandaid on the wound. When he looked back in a few minutes later, Carreon was winding layers of gauze over the bandaid achieving quite a dramatic effect. Why? According to Letson "Carreon said Kerry was afraid the bandaid would come off." Tedd Peck was dying to see "the purple heart wound" but Kerry wouldn't show it to him.
Kerry got his first Purple Heart after he got shrapnel in his left arm above his elbow, and it was treated with an antibiotic dressing on Dec. 3, 1968. The second came when he was wounded by a piece of shrapnel on Feb. 20, 1969, this time on his left thigh.
Doctors decided to leave the shrapnel in place rather than make a wider opening to remove it. Doctors removed damaged tissue and the entry wound was closed with sutures, and no infection developed around the shrapnel, according to the records.
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