It did not go unnoticed that the Biden Administration’s “climate czar” John Kerry attended the coronation of King Charles III. He was seen wearing a chest full of military medals on a gray pin-stripe suit. Kerry briefly served in the US Navy during the Vietnam era. US Navy uniform regulations call for the wearing of miniature medals on a civilian attire, and not the large medals, as Kerry had worn.
Kerry attending King Charles III coronation
Kerry has been plagued throughout his adult life with questions about his military medals including the circumstances of how he received some of them and what he did with them following his military service.
Throughout his political career, John Kerry offered a rather heroic version of the events of February 28, 1969, that led to his being awarded the Silver Star. The Silver Star is the fourth-highest military award. Kerry spoke proudly of his Silver Star when he was campaigning for elected office, especially the presidency in 2004. Yet, years earlier, he used the award as a prop when he claimed he threw away his medals while participating in anti-war protests.
There had long been controversy over the circumstances of how Kerry earned his Silver Star. Then-Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry received the Silver Star when he was the officer-in-charge of Swift Boat PCF-94. A Swift Boat was a fifty-foot-long boat that primarily operated along the coast and in larger inland waterways. A smaller, more agile 31-foot patrol boat, referred to as a PBR, was used deeper inland on smaller, narrower waterways. PBRs bore the brunt of enemy action.
Swift boat (top) & PBR (bottom)
The question of Kerry’s Silver Star erupted into a scandal when he launched his campaign for the presidency in 2004. Kerry offered one version of the events that led to his award. Several eyewitnesses offered a markedly different account. The core of the dispute relates to the details surrounding the killing of a suspected Viet Cong guerilla by Kerry.
The heroic version of events offered by Kerry was presented in his 2004 campaign book, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War. This version described a “guerilla holding a B-40 rocket launcher aimed right at them.”[1] Kerry claimed he shot the enemy before the enemy combatant could fire on the Americans.
Kerry’s 2004 campaign book
Kerry buttressed his version of events with the narrative in the Silver Star certificate he publicly released. The certificate included a summary of the events that led to the award. The problem with this certificate was that it was signed by Secretary of the Navy John Lehman. Lehman began serving as the Navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan in 1981, and the certificate promoted by Kerry on his presidential campaign website was generated 17 years after Kerry was originally awarded the Silver Star.
Why didn’t Kerry release a copy of the original certificate that accompanied the award?
Shortly after he was elected to the Senate, Kerry contacted Lehman’s office, alleged he lost his original Silver Star certificate, and he requested a new one. A staff member in Lehman’s office, who wishes to remain anonymous, explained what happened. Kerry offered language for the replacement certificate. The narrative offered by Kerry downplayed the involvement of other personnel in the engagement and embellished the personal actions of Kerry.
Silver Star certificate issued in 1986
The staffer recognized the sensitive politics involved in the request: Kerry was a sitting US senator. The Navy Department, like every other federal agency, will go to great lengths to accommodate a sitting member of Congress, especially a senator.
The Navy Secretary’s office treated the use of Kerry’s proffered language as harmless, since Kerry had left military service nearly two decades earlier. The language for the certificate offered by Kerry, even if it differed significantly from the original, would have little impact, Lehman’s office reasoned since Kerry had long ago ended his military service. The expectation in Lehman’s office was that Kerry would likely hang the certificate in his Senate office to impress visitors and constituents.
The Navy quickly issued a replacement certificate utilizing the language Kerry offered. The problem with this turn of events was that a copy of Kerry’s original Silver Star certificate existed and was readily available, if Kerry had truly lost the original, as he claimed. Kerry merely had to request a copy of the original certificate from the US Navy archives. He chose not to go that route and instead requested a new certificate containing a new narrative. A narrative he offered.
The now-declassified after-action report from PCF-94 that detailed the events of that day has shed light on which certificate is more accurate. The after-action report is the personal responsibility of the Swift Boat’s officer-in-charge, and it is the official account of the day’s activities. Kerry was the officer-in-charge. As such, the after-action report was his narrative of what happened.
Original Silver Star certificate issued in 1969
The events as described in the 1969 Silver Star certificate and the February 28, 1969 after-action report are nearly identical to the account reported in Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. Moreover, this account differed dramatically from Kerry’s version of events as portrayed in Tour of Duty.
Book detailing eyewitness accounts to Kerry’s actions
Most Swift Boat veterans believe Kerry’s actions on February 28, 1969, were contrived as a way for Kerry to earn a medal for valor. According to eyewitnesses, Kerry concocted a plan ahead of time with his crewman Michael Medeiros “to turn the [Swift] Boat in and onto the beach if fired upon.”[2] There was even “a prior discussion of probable medals for those participating [in the plan].”[3]
It was the view of other Swift Boat veterans that “Kerry did follow normal military conduct and displayed ordinary courage, but the incident was nothing out of the ordinary and to most Swift and Vietnam veterans, Kerry’s actions would hardly justify any kind of unusual award.”[4]
Moreover, there are troubling indicators of what transpired that led other veterans present that day to question Kerry’s judgement and treatment of a retreating enemy. Even the version offered in Kerry’s campaign book suggested he shot a wounded man as he fled the battlefield.
Using an M-60 machine gun, a crewman “managed to hit the fleeing foe in the leg,”[5] according to the version of events Kerry offered in Tour of Duty. The Swift boat was beached, and Kerry gave chase to the fleeing Vietnamese. According to an account given by Kerry’s crewman years later, the “guerrilla got twenty or thirty meters down the path, just about in front of a lean-to, the [future] senator shot the guy.”[6]
“Whether Kerry’s dispatching of a fleeing, wounded, armed or unarmed teenage enemy was in accordance with customs of war, it is very clear that many Vietnam veterans and most Swiftees do not consider this action to be the stuff of which medals of any kind are awarded,” according to the account in Unfit for Command.[7]
Kerry received the medal only two days after the event occurred and without the normal and proper review, which would typically take several months. This immediate approval of the award was done, Vietnam veterans pointed out, to boost morale, which had reached a low point for troops deployed to Vietnam in 1969.
According to eyewitnesses, “A young Viet Cong in a loincloth popped out of a hole, clutching a grenade launcher which may or may not have been loaded, depending on whose account one credits. Tom Belodeau, a forward gunner, shot the Viet Cong with an M-60 machine gun in the leg as he fled. At about this time, with the boat beached, the Viet Cong who had been wounded by Belodeau fled. Kerry and Medeiros (who had many troops in their boat) took off, perhaps with others, following the young Viet Cong as he fled, and shot him in the back, behind a lean-to.”[8]
After-action report authored by Kerry
The summary of events Kerry had written in his after-action report on the very same day of the incident stated, “PCF 94 beached in center of ambush in front of small path when VC sprung up from bunker 10 feet from unit. Man ran with weapon towards hootch. Forward M-60 gunner wounded man in leg. OinC [officer-in-charge, Kerry] jumped ashore and gave pursuit while other units saturated area with fire and beached placing assault parties ashore. OinC of PCF 94 chased VC inland behind hootch and shot him while he fled capturing one B-40 rocket launcher with round in chamber.”
The after-action report account closely resembled the version of events as described by several eyewitnesses and not the nerve-tingling, John Wayne version presented in Tour of Duty.
Other questions have arisen regarding Kerry’s military awards. There was controversy over the Purple Heart medals Kerry claimed he received. A Purple Heart is given to someone injured by enemy action. Kerry claimed he was wounded in combat on December 3, 1968, resulting in his first Purple Heart medal. Acting on a policy in place at the time that was available to those who were thrice wounded, Kerry requested an immediate transfer out of Vietnam only four months into his one-year assignment, after he claimed to have received a third Purple Heart.
Controversy surrounds the first Purple Heart he received after he claimed to have been wounded only days after he arrived in Vietnam. He was among several navy personnel conducting a nighttime patrol in a Boston Whaler. Tour of Duty provided an account of a wild firefight between Kerry and the Vietnamese enemy, during which a piece of enemy shrapnel “socked into my arm and just seemed to burn like hell.”[9]
An eyewitness account offered a markedly different sequence of events. William Schachte, who later rose to the rank of rear admiral, was in the Boston Whaler alongside Kerry. According to Schachte’s recollection, “Kerry picked up an M-79 grenade launcher and fired a grenade too close [to the Whaler], causing a tiny piece of shrapnel (one to two centimeters) to barely stick in his arm…There was no enemy fire.”[10]
Lieutenant Commander Louis Letson was the Navy medical officer who treated Kerry’s wound. “Dr. Letson used tweezers to remove the tiny fragment, which he identified as shrapnel like that from an M-79 (not from a rifle bullet, etc.), and put a small bandage on Kerry’s arm.”[11]
Beside the eyewitness accounts that contradict Kerry there is another troubling issue. Two very critical documents were generated during the Vietnam War when someone was wounded by enemy fire. The first was a combat casualty card, a three-by-five inch, typewritten card. This card contained the main facts, such as the wounded serviceman’s full name, military service number, rank, branch of service, the date and description of the wound, and the prognosis for recovery. Navy officials described combat casualty cards as “valuable as gold,” and they were “protected like Fort Knox” because they were a key record often used to determine disability benefits after military service.
Combat casualty card & personnel casualty report for Kerry’s February 20, 1969 wound.
A document called a personnel casualty report was generated every time someone had been wounded in action. This mandatory report was transmitted to Washington, DC, with the details of the injury.
Combat casualty cards and personnel casualty reports exist for the wounds resulting in John Kerry’s second and third Purple Hearts. However, Navy officials have never located a combat casualty card or a personnel casualty report for Kerry’s injury for which he received his first Purple Heart. In fact, no Navy record has ever been unearthed documenting that there was any hostile action that occurred that specific night involving Kerry and the Boston Whaler.
Officers in Kerry’s chain of command recall turning down Kerry’s request to be given a Purple Heart for his self-inflicted scratch that was treated with a simple bandage. It was the opinion of Vietnam veterans that a Purple Heart should go to someone who suffered a wound that resulted in scar, not a scab.
The possibility certainly exists of Navy officials losing a combat casualty card or a personnel casualty report. However, according to a Navy archivist, the possibility of losing both documents for the same individual and for the same event is “virtually impossible.”
The lack of any definitive Navy documents, the absence of a combat casualty card and a personnel casualty report, and the failure by John Kerry to provide a full release of his medical records, are strong evidence that he was not wounded, as he had claimed. During the confusion that existed at the time, Kerry began claiming he earned a Purple Heart from enemy action when an eyewitness and Navy medical doctor reported otherwise.
Kerry’s lobbying for a Purple Heart for an minor, self-inflicted injury that was unrelated to enemy action reminds me of a young soldier I met in Iraq in 2004. I was at a US Army camp near Ramadi when he walked in with wounds from an IED explosion. He was riding on the back of a Humvee when a roadside bomb detonated just moments after the vehicle passed. The back side of his uniform top and trousers were covered with dozens of small tears. There was some minor bleeding. It was as if he had been hit with birdshot from a reasonable distance away. “Will you put in for a Purple Heart?” I asked. He replied, “Hell no, sir. My first sergeant chews more ass than this.”
Mark Hyman is an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter, Gettr, Parler, Post, and Mastodon.world at @markhyman, and on Truth Social at @markhyman81.
His books Washington Babylon: From George Washington to Donald Trump, Scandals That Rocked the Nation and Pardongate: How Bill and Hillary Clinton and their Brothers Profited from Pardons are on sale now (here and here).
[1] Douglas Brinkley, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, (New
York: William Morrow, 2004), 290.
[2] John E. O’Neill and Jerome R. Corsi PhD., Unfit for Command: Swift
Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, (Washington, DC: Regnery,
2004), 82.
[3] O’Neill and Corsi, Unfit for Command, 82.
[4] Ibid, Unfit for Command, 81.
[5] Brinkley, Tour of Duty, 291.
[6] Brinkley, Tour of Duty, 291.
[7] O’Neill and Corsi, Unfit for Command, 83.
[8] Ibid, Unfit for Command, 83.
[9] Brinkley, Tour of Duty, 147.
[10] O’Neill and Corsi, Unfit for Command, 36.
[11] Ibid, Unfit for Command, 37.