"I assume they fired back," Zaladonis recalled in an interview. But neither he nor Runyon saw the source of the shrapnel that lodged in Kerry's arm. '`We came across the bay onto the beach and I got [hit] in the arm, got shrapnel in the arm," Kerry told the Globe in a 2003 interview. Kerry has also said he didn't know where the shrapnel came from.
Back at the base, Kerry told Hibbard he qualified for a Purple Heart, according to Hibbard. Thirty-six years later, Hibbard, reached at his retirement home in Florida, said he can still recall Kerry's wound, and that it resembled a scrape from a fingernail. "I've had thorns from a rose that were worse," said Hibbard, a registered Republican who said he was undecided on the 2004 presidential race.
The Globe asked Kerry's campaign whether the Massachusetts senator is certain he was under enemy fire and whether he recalled that a superior officer raised questions about the matter. The campaign did not respond directly to those questions. Instead, Meehan said in a prepared statement that Kerry "received the shrapnel wound early in the course of that combat engagement. " Meehan also provided a copy of a medical report showing treatment for a wound on Dec. 3, 1968. The Purple Heart regulation in effect at that time said that a wound must "require treatment by a medical officer."
Nearly three months later, a document was sent to Kerry informing him that he would receive a Purple Heart "for injuries received on 2 December 1968." The Naval Historical Center, which could not locate a copy of the original card for the incident, nonetheless confirmed that Kerry did receive the Purple Heart.