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| Home Front: Politix |
| The 10th Kerry "brother" |
| 2004-03-10 |
| I edited substantially. Just when it looked like Senator John Kerryâs so-called Band of Brothers were unified in vouching for his leadership in Vietnam there is suddenly a lone ripple of dissent in the ranks. âWhat can I say?â Kerry said when told that a former crewmate had unpleasant memories of him as his commanding officer. âIâll take nine out of ten testimonies anytime.â Every sailor who served under Lieutenant John Kerry on Swift boats PCF-44 and PCF-94 have gushed about his poise under enemy fire. They tell stories of his rescuing a Green Beret from drowning, killing a Viet Cong sniper, and saving 42 Vietnamese civilians from starvation. To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway they claim that in combat Kerry exemplified âgrace under pressure.â But PCF-44 Gunnerâs Mate Stephen M. Gardnerâin a long telephone interview from his home in Clover, South Carolinaâhas a starkly different memory. âKerry was chickenshit,â he insists. âWhenever a firefight started he always pulled up stakes and got the hell out of Dodge.â I cut here about how all the other brothers had different stories and how Brinkley wasnât able to find Gardner So it was with a sense of genuine relief when PCF-44âs Jim Wasser telephoned me last week with the news that Gardner had ârung him up out-of-the-blueâ to discuss their shared days together in Vietnam. âIt was greatâ Wasser told me. âYou know he fought bravely in Vietnam. He is still a brother. I miss him. I would like to see him.â He then hesitated and went on. âBut he has developed a strange, negative assessment of Lieutenant Kerry. It shocked me. His memory is dead wrong. He remembers things so differently.⊠He has some kind of weird grudge against Lieutenant Kerry.â âI was driving down the road, and I hit that [radio] button and Rush was talking about Kerry and his campaign and how something just didnât feel right to him,â Gardner recalled, his voice full of conviction. âSomething about what John Kerry did or was doing, just really didnât set right with him. And you know I served with this guy, and the bottom line to it is; harsh as this may sound or as good as it sounds to any Democrat, out there, John Kerry is another âSlick Willy.â Heâs another Bill Clinton and thatâs exactly what he is. And Iâm telling you right now, that if John Kerry gets to be president of these United States, itâll be a sorry day in this world for us. We canât stand another Democrat like that in there again. Weâll get our asses in such a sling this time; we wonât be able to get out of it. And the bottom line to it is, I donât care how much John Kerryâs changed after he moved off my boat, his initial patterns of behavior when I met him and served under him was somebody who ran from the enemy, rather than engaged it. If Iâd had Rushâs 800 number, or known how to reach him, I would have called in.â Gardner was born on January 3, 1948 in Portsmouth, Ohio. Shortly after his seventeenth birthday he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. âMy dad was in the navy, so I wasnât gonna be an army âground pounder,ââ he recalled. âI really liked boats and hunting. Shooting things.â He attended gunnery school at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Waukegan, Illinois and was then sent to Swift boat school at Coronado, California, the same place where Kerry trained in August-October 1968. From thereâin late 1965âGardner was sent off to Subic Bay in the Philippines where he helped load Swift boats onto an LST and headed to Vietnam. Over the next three years Gardner served as gunner on four different Swift boats, each with a different commanding officer. His least favorite was his last: Lieutenant (j.g.) John F. Kerry of PCF-44. When describing Kerry he unloads choice adjectives, âopportunistâ being his favorite. His most colorful phrase is claiming that all Kerry wanted to do was âsave his lily-white ass.â Up until now he has kept his resentment mostly to himself. âIâve told a few of my friends that he was an asshole,â Gardner says. âBut Iâm not looking to make news.â He dismisses the glowing eyewitness accounts of his crewmates Jim Wasser (Radarman), Bill Zaladonis (Petty Officer), Drew Whitlow (Boatswainâs Mate) and Stephen Hatch (Boatswainâs Mate) as bunk. âKerry sat some of them down and convinced them to buy into his side of what happened over there,â he explains in bizarrely conspiratorial fashion with no evidence to back him up. âWhen youâre as persuasive as Kerry itâs not hard to make a guy change something that he saw.â Gardnerâs first bone of contention involves an incident that took place on the morning of December 29, 1968. PCF-44 was in a small canal just off the Co Chien River. They had been probing the waterway with another Swift boat on a minor Operation SEALORDS raid and on their way back had come under enemy fire. âWe went into a dangerous area that had numerous hooches and sampans,â Wasser recalled. âThe enemy was thick. Once we got in the canal we took a lot of small arms fire, followed by mortar. Our adrenaline was racing; we went right back at them with all the firepower we could muster. Thatâs when Gardner got hit.â As recounted in Tour of Duty by Kerry, Gardner had shouted: âThereâs somebody running over thereâŠHeâs got a gunâŠon the port side, on the port side!â PCF-44âs crew had been firing at thatched huts on their way out of the canal, and the reports of their own guns had muffled those of the shots being fired at them. Suddenly, Gardner shrieked, âIâm hit,â and stopped firing for a moment. Before Kerry could ask his condition, Gardner shouted from his post: âIâll be okay,â and went back to firing his two .50s. There is a dispute between Kerry and Gardner about what happened next. Kerry insists that the engagement was over when the boats pulled out. âWe didnât leave until the mission was over and all the boats headed out together,â says Kerry. He claims that only after the firefight was overâand enemy fire had been supressedâdid he order PCF-44 to head back to a primitive base at Dong Tam so Gardner could receive medical attention from the U.S. Armyâs Third Surgical Division, based in a makeshift hospital there. But Gardner asserts that Kerry was simply fleeing the firefight. âHe wanted to get out of the river to save his own ass,â Gardner maintains. âI was ready to keep going.â Then there is Gardnerâs bold claim that Kerry use to take PCF-44 four or five miles from shore every night so not to get shot at. When pressed how this could be so, since oftentimes they were 25 miles upriver, he backed down. âOkay, when we were in the rivers we didnât go to sea,â he averred. âBut he always tried to park it away from the action and hide.â The other members of PCF-44 were incredulous when they heard Gardnerâs claim. To Wasser it was âerroneous to his memory,â to Zaladonis âjust not true,â to Whitlow âfalseâ and to Hatch âa falsehood.â For most of the article Brinkley takes great care to paint Gardner as someone not to be believed, off his rocker, etc. |
| Posted by:AF Lady |
| #3 he explains in bizarrely conspiratorial fashion with no evidence to back him up. Reporter lost all credibility as an objective reporter with that unbiased comment and other unnecessary little slams to discredit this man. So who cares what Lt. Kerry did or didn't do in the war. Bottom line is he really wasn't there very long - and he managed to get three purple hearts but refuses to release his medical records. I'm not saying that he didn't serve honorably or that he wasn't a good CO - but they were a bunch of kids and he was their leader in combat - so all's this tells us is that he was popular with his crew. Fine - but so what? Does that mean he can lead a country? Hardly. What really matters is Kerry's record since then...and it's pretty "chickenshit" as far as I can tell. |
| Posted by: B 2004-3-10 10:28:44 PM |
| #2 This *could* be simply sour grapes. Perhaps some of his crewmates should be interviewed about what really happened. Would any of this information be in Kerry's (or others) service record? If so can it be checked out? |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2004-3-10 10:10:17 PM |
| #1 Sad - these stories always leave so much wiggle room that it's hard to know whom to believe. Honestly. Sigh - I hope others will come forward, now, and something of a consistent nature can be established so we know if there's fire where there's smoke - or not. I recognize that anyone who was in combat may not be totally forthcoming - it's very appealing to characterize your service in positive terms, so Kerry's recollection must be the more attractive choice, by a wide margin... especially if you've been less than honest with the home folks, perhaps even embroidering your stories, and now have a Prez Candidate to vindicate the fiction. The real problem may be that, since Kerry was only in-country 4 months, there may not be many more people to hear from. Thx, AF Lady! |
| Posted by: .com 2004-3-10 10:08:02 PM |