Salon: John Kerry's First Purple Heart

With questions lingering over President Bush's service in the Guard, conservatives hope to diminish Kerry's Vietnam heroics -- but they can't erase his real battle record.

By Douglas Brinkley

(snip)

As generally understood, the Purple Heart is given to any U.S. citizen wounded in wartime service to the nation. Giving out Purple Hearts increased in 1968 as the United States Navy started sending swift boats up rivers in the Mekong Delta. Sailors -- no longer safe on aircraft carriers or battleships in the Gulf of Tonkin -- were starting to bleed, a lot. Vice Adm. Elmo Zumwalt himself would pin the medal on John Kerry at An Thoi about six weeks after the doctor at the Cam Ranh base took the shrapnel out of the young officer's right arm. "He called me in New York to tell me he had been wounded," his then girlfriend and later wife, Julia Thorne, remembered. "I was worried sick, scared to death that John or one of my brothers was going to die. He reassured me that he was OK."

Now it is 2004, John Kerry is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, and a couple of reporters are bringing into question whether he deserved a Purple Heart for that daring action. The Boston Globe and the New York Post have run hurtful stories quoting Kerry's commanding officer that evening, Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, now a retiree in Gulf Breeze, Fla., grouching that Kerry's wound wasn't large enough. Hibbard was not even on the Boston Whaler when the firefight erupted. Nevertheless, the New York Post quotes Hibbard -- a proudly registered Republican -- as griping Kerry's injury "didn't look like much of a wound to me."

In the wake of the controversial Bush National Guard story, reporters today, anxious to break a headline, are combing through Kerry's Vietnam past. The name of the game is to find a conservative ex-Vietnam hand to say something negative about Kerry. It's an automatic newsmaker, guaranteed to get picked up by Newsmax.com, the Weekly Standard, Rush Limbaugh, the New York Post and other conservative outlets. At issue is an attempt to downgrade Kerry's Vietnam War heroism. The major anti-Kerry Vietnam War Internet complaint, it seems, echoes Hibbard: that his minor wounds weren't big enough to warrant Purple Hearts. Unfortunately neither the Boston Globe nor New York Post takes the time to explain to readers that Purple Hearts are not given out to soldiers/sailors for the size of the wound. Only by the grace of God did the hot shrapnel that pierced Kerry's arm not enter his heart or brain or eye.

(snip)

…Call me naive, or too pro-veteran, but it seems to me we should be thanking every Purple Heart recipient for their duty to country, not demanding of them explanations for why their wounds weren't bigger or fatal. Only somebody craven -- or with a political agenda -- could stoop so low. Ridicule Kerry on his liberal Senate record, or so-called aloofism, or even his outspoken Vietnam Veterans Against the War protests, but leave his old battle scars alone.

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/17/kerry_purple/index.html

But, since this group of cowardly thieves never served, it wouldn't matter to them. The idea that there might be a future Republican war hero damaged by reciprocal smears never enters their tiny, self-involved minds.

Its really pathetic to stoop this low. This reminds me of what they did to Clinton and it looks like the lowlife witchunts of the nineties are being resurrected.

They've had this disgruntled vet on H&C. He's unimpressive.

the majority were deserved but some were not. it`s really a diversion on the real story-the silver star-not many got one of those. while bush was yucking it up in texas, kerry was saving his crew,that`s the real story that they don`t want people to know..