What I saw...

[crowMAW]

Ripsnorted from yesterday's Chicago Trib.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/elections/chi-0408220342aug22,1,2523679.story?coll=chi-news-hed

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`This is what I saw that day'

By William B. Rood
Chicago Tribune
Published August 22, 2004

There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago--three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969.

One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other.

For years, no one asked about those events. But now they are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential election with a group of swift boat veterans and others contending that Kerry didn't deserve the Silver Star for what he did on that day, or the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for other actions.

Many of us wanted to put it all behind us--the rivers, the ambushes, the killing. Ever since that time, I have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry's service--even those from reporters at the Chicago Tribune, where I work.

But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown. The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there.

Even though Kerry's own crew members have backed him, the attacks have continued, and in recent days Kerry has called me and others who were with him in those days, asking that we go public with our accounts.

I can't pretend those calls had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this. What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it.

I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the Bronze Star.

But on Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of PCF-23, one of three swift boats--including Kerry's PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz's PCF-43--that carried Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in the area.

The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats, each driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down with six crew members, troops and gear, was no secret.

Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no exception.

INSTRUCTIONS FROM KERRY

The difference was that Kerry, who had tactical command of that particular operation, had talked to Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way the boats usually did to an ambush.

We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats' twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching the boats. We told our crews about the plan.

The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush, firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream and putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the ambush site. Often, they were long gone by the time the troops got there.

The first time we took fire--the usual rockets and automatic weapons--Kerry ordered a "turn 90" and the three boats roared in on the ambush. It worked. We routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops, led by an Army adviser, jumped off the boats and began a sweep, which killed another half dozen VC, wounded or captured others and found weapons, blast masks and other supplies used to stage ambushes.

Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream with his, leaving Droz's boat at the first site.

It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded B-40 launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn't fired as two men jumped up from their spider holes.

We called Droz's boat up to assist us, and Kerry, followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and chased a VC behind a hooch--a thatched hut--maybe 15 yards inland from the ambush site. Some who were there that day recall the man being wounded as he ran. Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat's leading petty officer with whom I've checked my recollection of all these events, recalls that, which is no surprise. Recollections of those who go through experiences like that frequently differ.

With our troops involved in the sweep of the first ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my crew, and I also went ashore to search the area. I was checking out the inside of the hooch when I heard gunfire nearby.

Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation.

John O'Neill, author of a highly critical account of Kerry's Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry chased as a "teenager" in a "loincloth." I have no idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore.

The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at that site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank as well. It was not the work of just one attacker.

Our initial reports of the day's action caused an immediate response from our task force headquarters in Cam Ranh Bay.

CONGRADULATORY MESSAGE

Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch," then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the task force commander, fired off a message congratulating the three swift boats, saying at one point that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a "shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy" and that it "may be the most efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of ambushers."

Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry's and now says that what the boats did on that day demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a fault.

Our decision to use that tactic under the right circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all three boat officers.

It was also well within the aggressive tradition that was embraced by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam. Months before that day in February, a fellow boat officer, Michael Bernique, was summoned to Saigon to explain to top Navy commanders why he had made an unauthorized run up the Giang Thanh River, which runs along the Vietnam-Cambodia border. Bernique, who speaks French fluently, had been told by a source in Ha Tien at the mouth of the river that a VC tax collector was operating upstream.

Ignoring the prohibition against it, Bernique and his crew went upstream and routed the VC, pursuing and killing several.

Instead of facing disciplinary action as he had expected, Bernique was given the Silver Star, and Zumwalt ordered other swifts, which had largely patrolled coastal waters, into the rivers.

The decision sent a clear message, underscored repeatedly by Hoffmann's congratulatory messages, that aggressive patrolling was expected and that well-timed, if unconventional, tactics like Bernique's were encouraged.

What we did on Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with the tone set by our top commanders.

Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base at An Thoi off the southern tip of Vietnam to pin the Silver Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze Stars and commendation medals on the rest of us.

[crowMAW]

ERROR IN CITATION

My Bronze Star citation , signed by Zumwalt, praised the charge tactic we used that day, saying the VC were "caught completely off guard."

There's at least one mistake in that citation. It incorrectly identifies the river where the main action occurred, a reminder that such documents were often done in haste and sometimes authored for their signers by staffers. It's a cautionary note for those trying to piece it all together. There's no final authority on something that happened so long ago--not the documents and not even the strained recollections of those of us who were there.

But I know that what some people are saying now is wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying impugns others who are not in the public eye.

Men like Larry Lee, who was on our bow with an M-60 machine gun as we charged the riverbank, Kenneth Martin, who was in the .50-caliber gun tub atop our boat, and Benjamin Cueva, our engineman, who was at our aft gun mount suppressing the fire from the opposite bank.

Wayne Langhoffer and the other crewmen on Droz's boat went through even worse on April 12, 1969, when they saw Droz killed in a brutal ambush that left PCF-43 an abandoned pile of wreckage on the banks of the Duong Keo River. That was just a few months after the birth of his only child, Tracy.

The survivors of all these events are scattered across the country now.

Jerry Leeds lives in a tiny Kansas town where he built and sold a successful printing business. He owns a beautiful home with a lawn that sweeps to the edge of a small lake, which he also owns. Every year, flights of purple martins return to the stately birdhouses on the tall poles in his back yard.

Cueva, recently retired, has raised three daughters and is beloved by his neighbors for all the years he spent keeping their cars running. Lee is a senior computer programmer in Kentucky, and Lamberson finished a second military career in the Army.

With the debate over that long-ago day in February, they're all living that war another time.

[Sixpence]

Good read. God bless them all.

[rpm]

Contrary to what some would want you to believe, medals are investigated before award. They don't pass them out like candy.

to all the men who put themself in harm's way. It's a shame they would try and belittle their service.

[Nash]

I wonder how many here ever thought that one day they'd end up trying to disgrace a man for his military service.

In your wildest dreams.... who here would have thought that they'd one day be doing that?

Let me ask you this, now... Who here thought that they'd be doing this as a result of a short, fat political wonk desk jockey who never served but has a knack for making people believe, say and do things that they would have considered repulsive just months ago?

Lookit what happened.

So one more question.

What's your limit? Do you have a sense of one? How low will you allow yourself to be taken?

[NUKE]

Kerry is the one who made his service a central campaign issue, so his record deserves looking into. I myself find it very odd that Kerry could receive 3 purple hearts and never miss a day of duty from injury...in fact I find it very questionable.

Kerry wants a free ride on his war service yet can't stand the heat when fellow vets voice their views?

Kerry is stupid for making VN a central issue and attacking Bushs' Guard record.

Kerry is a dispicable person in my opinion. He was no friend of the people fighting and dying in VM while he was stateside calling them war criminals and murderers. I don't care what his war record was, it's blanked out by all the harm he caused for our soldiers and our country during Vietnam.

[Nash]

Originally posted by NUKE
Kerry is a dispicable person in my opinion. He was no friend of the people fighting and dying in VM while he was stateside calling them war criminals and murderers. I don't care what his war record was, it's blanked out by all the harm he caused for our soldiers and our country during Vietnam.

Jesus man... This has turned into the same crap a la terrorists and Iraq.

Yeah. Kerry talked about the atrocities in his Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony. Even said he took part in them. And it comprised a very small percentage of his argument.

Are you saying that atrocities didn't happen? If you can't, then why are you angry at Kerry for stating a truth?

At any rate, he didn't accuse anyone of being war criminals.

A reasonable, considered parsing of his testimony would lead one to the conclusion that Kerry was saying "Bad watermelon there, not workin' out, should consider the idea of getting the hell out of Dodge".

Oh but.... This is such treachery, right?

Why, exactly?

I can pretty much guarantee you that there is far, far, more than one grandfather, son, daughter, grandson and granddaughter alive right now - all owing their lives to Kerry for his courage; not on the battlefield but off of it.... Yet blissfully unaware of that fact, and hell, likely attacking him along the same weak lines as you.

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by GScholz
Spoken like a true nationalist.

spoken like a true whatever.

The man is voicing an opinion and you want to label him?

why dont you just call him a nazi outright and get it over with.

Add to the discussion or dont post!

As far as the post goes.  This is one account of many other people that were there.  I don't discount what these vets say outright nor do I want them silenced!

Kerry will be his own undoing.

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by Nash
Jesus man... This has turned into the same crap a la terrorists and Iraq.

Yeah. Kerry talked about the atrocities in his Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony. Even said he took part in them. And it comprised a very small percentage of his argument.

Are you saying that atrocities didn't happen? If you can't, then why are you angry at Kerry for stating a truth?

At any rate, he didn't accuse anyone of being war criminals.

A reasonable, considered parsing of his testimony would lead one to the conclusion that Kerry was saying "Bad watermelon there, not workin' out, should consider the idea of getting the hell out of Dodge".

Oh but.... This is such treachery, right?

Why, exactly?

I can pretty much guarantee you that there is far, far, more than one grandfather, son, daughter, grandson and granddaughter alive right now - all owing their lives to Kerry for his courage; not on the battlefield but off of it.... Yet blissfully unaware of that fact, and hell, likely attacking him along the same weak lines as you.

when it aids the enemy we are currently fighting yes it is trechory.  When it is strictly used as propaganda to demoralize our fighting me....yes it is aiding the enemy.  When it is used as a tool to beat out confessions of POWs in order to turn them into war criminals yes it is aiding the enemy.

He's an officer he should have known better.  If you want to protest the war fine.  By all rights be my guest, but dont join the other side in order to do so.

Nash if you want to discuss atrocities I sudjest we start another thread....I have many many sources on the atrocities commited by the north.....they were far more numerous, frequent, and brutal than anything our GIs EVER did.

[NUKE]

Are you saying that atrocities didn't happen? If you can't, then why are you angry at Kerry for stating a truth?

Kerry said that atrocities where the rule rather than the exception. He said he witnessed these atrocities, yet did not report them until he was before the senate?

He is despicable in my opinion.

[NUKE]

Originally posted by GScholz
Was he wrong in coming forward and telling about the war crimes being committed?

If he witnessed war crimes, he was wrong to not report them while he was in Vietnam. Instead, he waited until he could read a  speach about them before congress.

Yes, Kerry was wrong not to report if he witnessed war crimes.

Kerry's testomony was written for him. I believe even he has since said that he never actually witnessed  war crimes himself.

Kerry is lower than low.

[Holden McGroin]

Congressional Record April 22, 1971
John Kerry: I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

We call this investigation the "Winter Soldier Investigation." The term "Winter Soldier" is a play on words of Thomas Paine in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriot and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.

We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, no reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.

Seems to me he was telling the Fulbright committee about the consensus results of this "Winter Soldier Investigation", not necesarily of his own personally witnessed experience.

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by GScholz
Was he wrong in coming forward and telling about the war crimes being committed?

yes, He never witnessed them nor commited them.  

If a crime is taking place and I inform the public in a way that sounds completly blown out of proportion nor do I talk about any of my enemy's crimes that I was in fact fighting against that provides some sort of balence and that information helps my enemy win a war am I not aiding my enemy in wining the war?

Protest, sure.  Tell blatent rumors based on hersay in formal hearings to be taken as fact and later used to torture POWs that wear the very same uniform that he did?

Not to mention he looked like a total disgrace while doing so (in utility uniform)

either way gunther does that mean you have to call NUKE a Nazi?  Such a cop out response considering you are so much better than that

[Nash]

Originally posted by Gunslinger
when it aids the enemy we are currently fighting yes it is trechory.  

What if the fighting is wrong?

I mean, merely engaging in a conflict does not inherently make it right. Or staying in a conflict that is rapidly going South with no end in sight is not right.

Mistakes happen, eh? They just do. People shreck up.

Kerry said "Hey, it's just my opinion fellers, but this doesn't look right to me".

And that's wrong to you? I can't get behind that.... I don't get it.

[NUKE]

Originally posted by GScholz
I agree, he should have protested his orders.




He said he himself committed war crimes in VN ... and he did. Thousands of Americans did.

His orders? What orders?

He later recanted and stated that he never witnessed a war crime. He's a pathetic person.