To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (195768 ) 7/25/2004 10:55:52 AM From: Alighieri Read Replies (3) | Respond to You must have been particularly unimpressed by the following: Few voters knew the story of how he won his Bronze Star for saving a man’s life until that man, a lifelong Republican named Jim Rassmann, showed up in Des Moines during the last days of the Iowa primary race and returned the favor, helping to save Kerry’s political life by describing how Kerry, wounded and under fire, pulled him, hand over hand, from the water after he was blown off another American boat. Even then, Kerry said almost nothing about the incident, leaving the talking to Rassmann, with whom he’d had no contact in the intervening thirty-five years. He also resists speaking publicly about the incident that won him the Silver Star, but his surviving crewmates have told how, when they were ambushed by a Vietcong guerrilla firing rockets from the riverbank, Kerry made an instantaneous decision that evasive action was impossible, turned his boat directly into the fire, beached it, and leaped ashore, to the astonishment of the man with the rocket launcher, who popped up from his spider hole and fled. Kerry chased him and killed him. Navy men were not supposed to leave their ships during combat, and before recommending Kerry for the medal his commanding officer quipped that he wasn’t sure whether he shouldn’t court-martial him instead.
