SwiftVets.com

[1968Recondo]

Douglas Brinkley, the author of the biography, “Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War,” told the Financial Times on election day that the mainstream media “exposed Kerry’s critics as liars and frauds.” Obviously a poor judge of character, Brinkley’s role as publicist for John Kerry’s status as a “highly decorated hero” Vietnam Veteran is open to much criticism. Much of the Liberal press has acknowledged the book is a “flattering” portrayal. Brinkley voluntarily traded in his reputation as a historian for the job of political pimp. He is in no position to question the veracity of others.

Brinkley’s adoring biography of Kerry is a model for weak research, liberal revisionism, poor editing, sophomoric writing, and a gross display of misplaced adulation. The book is peppered with examples of sappy PC homilies to the “highly decorated hero.” And it is rife with contradictions. The book relies too heavily on John Kerry’s faulty and politically-updated memory of events. Brinkley abandons scholarship for the role as Kerry propaganda minister. And he’s grievously inexperienced when it comes to things military. He brings no skepticism to his work and there is a nagging lack of intellectual curiosity. With blinders firmly in place, Brinkley glosses over some of the most troubling contradictions in the Kerry saga.

One theme that comes through strong in the book is John Kerry as a whiner. He complains about everything. Strangely, 35 years after he served this very short tour in Vietnam, he’s still whining about it. The stories coming out now about his campaign performance indicate that he’s still a whiner.

Kerry disparages everyone around him, including his chain of command, most other US servicemen, the South Vietnamese, and ARVN. Only a few favorites, some journalists, anti-war types at home, and the VC get any praise.

Several times he claims to have been ready to take someone to task for something, but never does. He claims strong convictions but never stands up for them when it might count. He is a legend in his (and Brinkley’s) own mind.

Brinkley intended to craft a glowing tribute to Kerry, but failed to recognize the pitfalls inherent in making a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Steeped in the victim culture himself, Brinkley failed to understand that Kerry’s constant whining would be perceived by most veterans for what it was. And this alone would fuel suspicion that Kerry’s status as a “highly decorated hero” benefited from manipulating the system. And the SwiftVets subsequently and clearly laid out how most of Kerry’s medals resulted from his authoring embellished after-action reports.

These are just a few of the gaffs, lapses, and howling examples of unprincipled writing in this book:

Liberal Revisionism:

A flaming bit of Liberal revision is the Brinkley statement in reference to Kerry’s performance in 1971 before a Senate Committee (page 14) when; “renowned pacifist magazine writer I.F. Stone leaped to his feet in the gallery to set off yet another standing ovation for John Kerry.” Except the release of the Venona Tapes several years ago revealed that Stone was a Soviet agent dating back to the 1940s and continued to support the Soviet Union and the spread of communism through the 1970s. Communists have always been part of Kerry’s support group.

There are few heroes, besides John Kerry, in this book. Brinkley however finds one (page 13) in ”Senator Case, a courageous antiwar Republican.” A person of courage is obviously defined by Brinkley as someone who belongs to a group with a viewpoint opposed to his, but who breaks with that group and comes over to Brinkley’s point of view.

On Max Cleland, Brinkley states (page 15), “Cleland lost both legs and his right arm during the siege of Khe Sanh, when a grenade exploded next to him as he stepped off a helicopter.” The Liberals use language to suggest fellow Democrat and Kerry supporter Cleland was a combat casualty. Cleland’s injuries were the result of a grenade accident (possibly one of his own that slipped from his belt) in a non-hostile situation on a friendly base. He wasn’t at the siege of the Marine base at Khe Sanh, but part of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division’s “relief” of Khe Sanh. Cleland served honorably with the US Army and suffered terrible wounds, regardless of the cause. That should be enough. Why does the Brinkley and the Liberal Media need to make the circumstances sound heroic?


Sloppy Writing and Editing:

Brinkley sets the stage for our “hero” with this (page 2), “Between December 1968 and March 1969, Kerry led PCF-44 and PCF-94 on scores of dangerous raids up the rivers and canals of South Vietnam’s Mekong delta, including the dangerous territories along the Cambodian border.” I guess using “dangerous” twice in the same sentence is supposed to impress the soccer moms.

Contradictions:

When Kerry is performing in front of the Senate Committee, he states (page 7), “I am here as one member of a group of a thousand.” But, according to another quote, “outside the Capitol thousands of veterans were chanting for peace.” There may have been a thousand VVAW members (including non-veterans) present in Washington that weekend, but any suggestion that there were thousands is pure hallucination.

In Hawaii, Kerry states, “how it made him feel like James Bond to speed along the treacherous roads,” but by the end of the paragraph says, “I can’t describe the pleasure as we drove slowly through the countryside.” As usual, Kerry wants it both ways.

In May, Kerry wrote to his parents (page 94), “The war drags on—air attacks every day and special operations up and down the coast and generally attacks very day. Most of what we are doing and what is going [on] I can’t put on paper. The Viet Cong have tremendously increased their counter batteries along the coast and there is not a ship on the shore bombardment that does not encounter opposition.” Except Brinkley also states (page 74). “Kerry maintains that he never spoke much about the USS Gridley simply because nothing much of note took place during his [one-year] tour aboard this vessel. Clearly Kerry exaggerates in his letter to his parents.

Brinkley notes that Kerry volunteered for a patrol off the Cam Ranh Bay coast in a Boston Whaler and remarks that that such patrols regularly bumped into unarmed Vietnamese fishermen at night (page 146-147). Except this night, they were looking for VC trafficking contraband. And this night some sampans beached on the shore and Kerry and crew opened fire. This is when Kerry got a tiny piece of shrapnel probably from his own misaimed M-79 round. He put himself in for and was later awarded a Purple Heart for a tiny scratch from what he calls “a half-assed action that hardly qualified as combat.” No one except Kerry claims that there was any hostile fire, and some certify there was none. Brinkley states, “Nevertheless, the escapade introduced Kerry to combat with the VC and earned him a Purple Heart.” His Purple Heart is suspect and combat usually requires hostile fire. Brinkley is clueless on this issue. Or perhaps his ignorance is calculated.

Kerry mentions several times that the Swift boat engines put out lots of noise and provided ample warning to the VC about their presence. However, on page 267, “Kerry’s favorite group was the Doors, and he would blast ‘Light My Fire’ and ‘Love Me Two Times’ while patrolling the Delta rivers, finding empowerment in Jim Morrison’s powerful baritone to send the VC fleeing.” Perhaps the engines weren't loud enough after all!

Kerry’s Recovered Memory:

On a trip to the huge Marine base at Da Nang in 1968, Kerry claims (page 93) he was “shocked by the sight of a pile of dead VC awaiting mass burial” along the docks. This would certainly be an odd sight in the city. Based on this one-day visit by a wet-behind-the-ears and instant expert LT. jg., Brinkley notes, “The main theme in John Kerry’s correspondence from Vietnam during that short visit in the Spring of 1968 was how disturbing it felt to be an unwelcome soldier in a foreign land.” He claims he saw “hostile stares at his uniform.”

At the stateside Coronado training base for Swift boat duty, Kerry relates a conversation with an instructor on interrogation techniques, that purportedly includes a description of throwing VC from helicopters to get their captured buddies to speak (page 114). According to Brinkley, “Kerry didn’t believe him but later was shown pictures published in Life magazine of a man being purposefully pushed out of a helicopter. ‘I was glad that I didn’t know the name of the SOB who had told me,’ Kerry avowed. ‘I would have hung him out to dry.” I can find no reference to these Life pictures as Kerry claims. Is he making it up (again)? Another theme surfaces here and that is the many moments in the book Kerry claims to have been on the verge of taking someone on, but never ever does. He's a legend in his own mind.

Kerry describes an incident when some American aircraft allegedly dropped ordinance “close by” to his boat (page 192) and then relates a story of when, “not too many months before I had arrived in Vietnam, one of the Swift boats had been shot right out of the water by an Air Force jet mistakenly identifying it as a North Vietnamese PT boat. The jet fired one rocket into the Swift and only the skipper and one crewman survived. The skipper is now disabled for life.” Friendly fire happens, but there are no attributions, corroboration, or notes validating this story. With Kerry’s propensity to make up stories and Brinkley’s slavish willingness to believe everything he’s told, there is reason to question whether this is true. And this is another opportunity for Kerry to whine about another danger he faced in Vietnam.

Blowing PC Kisses to the “Highly Decorated Hero:

“Like RFK, for a young man of privileged background, Kerry always displayed an instinct for siding with the underdog.” Kerry lauded Cassius Clay for shedding his “slave name.” This excerpt (page 66) and others try to impress the reader with Kerry’s sensitivity and depth. It’s very PC.

A purported story (page 127) of another officer’s dressing down of a recruit, caused Kerry to “grow determined to remain true to himself rather than the military system.” This is another of many sappy stories involving unnamed individuals that are used to illustrate Kerry’s superior qualities; in this case his singular individualism and exceptional moral conduct. Whether the incident is true or not remains a question.

After several pages of Kerry’s disparaging the Vietnamese military and its servicemen, Brinkley then notes that (page 141-142), “as frustrated as Kerry grew with the behavior of so many South Vietnamese sailors, he felt even more disgusted by some of his own countrymen’s bigotry toward their so-called allies.” This also comes with a purported story involving an unnamed US officer aptly portraying the bad behavior that Kerry admirably refrained from.

Brinkley informs us that Kerry was “too curious and reflective to be snookered by unrealistic pro-war propaganda like John Wayne’s [movie The Green Berets]. He preferred the more skeptical perspective of in country journalists such as Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam…” Here, Kerry blows a kiss to Liberal journalists. And once again Kerry is sooooo much smarter than his fellow sailors are.

“Indeed, standing in the middle of the group shot, with Mike Bernique on his right, Kerry did look vaguely like a lankier young John F. Kennedy, in his Navy khakis and thick thatched officers haircut" (page 255). Is it possible anyone missed the many comparisons of JFK to Kerry during this campaign.

The Whiny Hero

During SERE training in the US, Kerry engages in more whining. He’s unable to sleep on the ground. Poor baby! In an evasion exercise he complains (pages 120-124) about the “aggressors” who “spared no insult.” Close to the ‘detention camp,’ he spotted a guard who “looked like a reincarnation of a German or Gestapo soldier. For a moment, I wondered if I was still in the US.” Kerry spends nearly four pages on a snapshot training event that was undergone in one form or another by tens of thousands of servicemen destined for Vietnam. This definitely was seared into the memory of our hero.

On arriving in Vietnam to command a Swift boat, Kerry states (page 129), “I am already counting the days.” Kerry is constantly mentioning how much time he has left in-country.

On being asked if he’d like to leave his comfortable berth at Cam Ranh Bay for Swift boat duty in the Mekong Delta (page 150), hero Kerry asks, “Do I have any choice?” This is a story played out through the book that reflects our hero’s angst at having volunteered for Swift boats only to find out that the mission had change and would now involve real combat.

“Charlie had .51s, we had .50s [machine guns],’ [crewman] Wasser later griped, speaking of the Viet Cong’s relative firepower. “Charlie had an 82[mm] mortar, we had an 81. Those bastards—Charlie was always a millimeter ahead of us. It ticked me off.” We also had field artillery, aircraft, and helicopter gunships in the Delta. Unless I missed it, there is no incident in this book in which Kerry’s Swift boat was ever outgunned by the VC, but Kerry’s whining appears to have been contagious.

On finding out that he was to be transferred to An Thoi, another Naval base with a reputation for action, Kerry, “went to bed pissed. There was no way to release the frustration I felt; everything just welled up inside of me. In those instants, I hated the military for its impersonality. I felt like a Ping-Pong ball, cracked and relentlessly smashed from one side of the table to the other. I even pictured myself being killed in An Thoi, without knowing anyone.” (page 232)

“With death on his mind, the self-proclaimed ‘uncommitted soldier’ could simply not fathom the reckless nature of the mission he was on. They would be taking 50-foot aluminum boats up tiny rivers into the heart of Viet Cong territory and would sit there on those narrow streams making tempting targets for ambush.” Certainly a great many men at the Battle of Midway had done things much braver, but then they were attacked and it was not the kind of risk they were asked to take every day.” This is truly pathetic. Anyone familiar with the risks and casualties suffered by the US Navy carrier pilots against the Japanese fleet at Midway and elsewhere early in the war would be appalled at this congenital whiner’s suggestion that he faced greater danger (page 245). Kerry needs to read of the courageous TBD pilots of VT-8 squadron who went in alone against the enemy fleet and were all shot down, with only one surviving pilot. Kerry cannot even fathom their bravery, let alone emulate it.

“According to Lieutenant Larry Thurlow of PCF 53, the entire powwow [with Zumwalt and Abrams] occurred because a few lieutenants ‘whined’ about being shot at regularly. ‘The whole thing smacked of a high school pep talk,’ Thurlow recalled.” This book clearly identifies Kerry as one of those whiners.

Head and Shoulders Above Everyone Else:

A constant theme is that John Kerry was more thoughtful, better read, and more enlightened than those around him were.

Only days in country, Kerry begins quickly to disparage those around him. Observing a group of Vietnamese Rangers, he states (page 130), “I was fascinated by my first view of the troops I had come to fight for and with." There was a remarkable nonchalance in their movements, and the weapons they carried were treated with reckless abandon.” And (page 132), “Inside the Cam Ranh Bay airport terminal, Kerry scrutinized the faces of the South Vietnamese soldiers he saw there, and found in their expressions nothing but the blank stares of the uninspired.”

He also belittles RVNAV sailors (page 141) for dodging duty aboard Swift boats on Cam Ranh Bay during Monsoon Season because of the harsh chop. However, Kerry then regales us with tales of the “five-Dramamine 24-mile trip between Cam Ranh and Da Nang during the monsoons.” And later on pages 233-234, Brinkley relates Kerry’s turning back to Vung Tau because of rough seas, but a day later being ordered to continue his mission despite the conditions. “Those ********, I thought,’ Kerry recalled. ‘What did they know about what it was like out here? I hoped that a huge wave would bowl us over, and then I could go raging back to headquarters and dramatically cuss at and then KO some poor slob watch officer who had not the faintest idea of what it was like to bob around in a fifty-foot aluminum boat in a rough sea.” Kerry made the trip without incident and was therefore was once again saved from confronting someone.

“John Kerry differed from most American soldiers in Vietnam in this regard; he didn’t want to forget a thing. In fact he wanted to learn all he could about his experience and memorize it all. He insisted on thinking and adamantly refused to numb his mind.” This nonsense blubbers on for the entire page 186. Except in all this memorizing, Kerry stored some information, like Christmas in Cambodia, that never happened.

But Not Exactly an Inspiring Gung Ho Hero:

“During Kerry’s entire stint in Vietnam he never found a single piece of contraband on a junk or sampan, unless one counts a US military issue anchor he confiscated from a Vietnamese barge.” (pages 201-202)

“Sometimes [Kerry] got disoriented and misread the navigational maps,’ Wasser allowed. ‘It was easy to do. Once we hit a sandbar and couldn’t get loose. We didn’t call it in because we didn’t want to get John in trouble. We just sat around for hours, waiting for high tide.” (page 230)

“I pulled on two pairs of flak pants,’ Kerry noted. ‘to protect the family jewels, if nothing else—and we laughed.” How many infantrymen had the benefit of even one pair of flak pants? (page 245).

“When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war,’ Kerry said in a little noticed contribution to a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. ‘They were engaged in coastal and that’s what I thought I was going to be doing.’ Now the somewhat easy billet had turned deadly.” (page 254)

“The bus had screens across all the windows to prevent a terrorist tossing a grenade into the passengers’ midst, and the result was that I felt like an animal going to a circus or a prisoner being carted to court from the jailhouse. But it was for my protection, and so I settled down and watched the sights of civilization go by, for Saigon was Vietnamese civilization as we had not seen it in months.” (pages 255-256)

Standing Up to No One:

“…the next day Kerry returned to An Thoi. While there, he also had it out with Commander Charles Horne, who ran the base’s Swift Boat operations.” Except that I believe Horne says this confrontation never occurred. So when Kerry finally gets the gumption to stand up to someone, it turns out it’s all just a figment of his imagination. If fact, reading the text of what Kerry claims to have said (pages 287-288), it sounds a lot like more whining.

And Just Plain Silly Stuff from an Author Grossly Ignorant of Things Military and Things not so Military:

Commenting on a the quarter-inch aluminum hull of the Swift boat (page 176), Brinkley states, “[Commodore] Horne neglected to mention that the hull might not be able to stop a BB at a thousand yards.” I doubt a BB can travel a thousand yards and it certainly can’t penetrate a Swift boat hull at point blank range. This silly statement plays to the theme that the Swift boats were largely lumbering defenseless targets and were a death trap for its crew. Nothing could be further from the truth.

And There are The Exaggerations:

Kerry’s claims (page 287), claims “PCF-94 had taken a rocket-propelled grenade round off the port side, fired at them from the far-left bank. Kerry felt a piece of hot shrapnel bore into his left leg. With blood running down the deck…” Apparently this minor injury that cost him no hospital time has now been spun up into a blood-spurting wound. However, three paragraphs later, “Kerry’s wound was not serious enough to require time off from duty to mend.”

The Bronze Star citation claims (page 317), “[Kerry’s] arm bleeding and in pain,” and Brinkley claims, “Kerry left Sandusky in charge of his own [boat] as he went in to have his gashed arm looked at (page 316).” Except, the Personal Casualty Reports from that action record the “injury” to Kerry’s right forearm as a contusion and contusion (minor). He had a minor bruise. Bruises don’t bleed externally. There was no gash. The bleeding arm is a Kerry fabrication and it was part of the fraudulent third Purple Heart.

[Jack Hetherton, jr]

[DADESID]

>>>Another thing, Da Nang was a long ways from where Kerry ever was as written in the spring of 1968. If I remember. Kerry did not arrive in Country until fall of 68, to CRB for trainging.<<<

It was when he was on the USS Gridley. They pulled into port (Da Nang) for a day. That was his other "tour" in Viet Nam....

By Kerry/Brinkley "standards", I have THREE "tours" in Viet Nam...

...but you have to count two days in the combat zone on a DD in 1963, plus another week in 1964.

[Jack Hetherton, jr]

[Bernard Cullen]

[mtboone]

Kerry describes an incident when some American aircraft allegedly dropped ordinance “close by” to his boat (page 192) and then relates a story of when, “not too many months before I had arrived in Vietnam, one of the Swift boats had been shot right out of the water by an Air Force jet mistakenly identifying it as a North Vietnamese PT boat. The jet fired one rocket into the Swift and only the skipper and one crewman survived. The skipper is now disabled for life.” Friendly fire happens, but there are no attributions, corroboration, or notes validating this story.


Notes from The Virtual Wall
On the night of 16 June 1968, PCF-19 was cruising on a routine patrol offshore northern South Vietnam. A sudden explosion rocked, then sunk, the small ship. Four of its crewmen were lost that night:
QM2 Frank Bowman, Walterboro SC; body not recovered
BM2 Anthony G. Chandler, Warner Robbins GA; body not recovered
EN2 Edward C. Cruz, Inarajan Guam;
GMC2 Billy S. Armstrong, West Helena AR;
Lieutenant (junior grade) John Davis, who commanded PCF-19, and crewman John Anderegg were the only two survivors. Anderegg had kept Bowman's head above water until he determined that Bowman was dead; he then turned his attention to the badly wounded Davis.
There was no certainty about how it happened - some said the PCF was attacked by North Vietnamese helicopters while others believed that a friendly aircraft had attacked the boat by accident. Eventually the US Air Force concluded that one of its aircraft had attacked the swift boat, believing it to be a North Vietnamese PT boat - a "friendly fire" incident.

What was certain was that four men had died, and that two had not been recovered. On 6 October 1993, an armbone fragment was recovered from a grave ashore; a Vietnamese fisherman stated that he had recovered the bone and buried it. It was almost 8 years before the fragment could be positively identified through DNA testing, but once done there was another certainty: Tony Chandler had come home.

All that remained of Petty Officer Chandler was buried in the Centerville (Georgia) City Cemetery on 16 June 2001 - a sailor finally home from the sea.

Petty Officer Frank Bowman, though, has not come home.

True story, it was PCF 19. I know the OinC John Davis very well and it is believed that John Anderegg committed suicide after his return to the states.



_________________
Terry Boone PCF 90
Qui Nhon 68-69

[Bernard Cullen]

[mtboone]

Was it seen then as a friendly fire incident? How frequent were friendly fire episodes? In your opinion is the Kerry story a likely or unlikely occurence? I would have thought that most of the time PCFs would have been easy to recognize and operating in pairs or trios.

At this time, river ops had not began like late in 68. We only ran coastal patrols and it was one boat to one specific area. This happened up North by the DMZ and it was at night and we operated in a blacked out condition. After one previous friendly fire by an aircraft in late 66, we painted a blue and white star on the pilot house for identification. At the time it was believed to have been NV helos. Go to this site
http://swiftboats.net/stories/pcf19.htm
and read the story from a crew member on the boat just south of there. He is writting a book about this episode during his time.

Friendly fires did happen, I think I got shot at by the North Koreans and the South Vietnamese more than I did by the VC or NVA.
_________________
Terry Boone PCF 90
Qui Nhon 68-69

[1968Recondo]

MTBoone: Thanks for providing the information on that sad incident. The Kerry biography is so full of unsourced and unsubstantiated stories that are used to validate Kerry's superiority/humanity/political correctness/anti-war sensibilities that it makes all suspect. I couldn't find any mention of it in Cutler's Brown Water, Black Beret, but may have missed it. --1968Recondo