I have read the same stories about Kerry's record, they were on a VVA site that someone linked to. I have read elsewhere about the fact that Kerry admitted to having recieved his medal for bravery for shooting a wounded man who was trying to escape, after someone in Kerry's unit had hit him and the hootch he was hiding in with multiple rounds of machine gun fire.
Kerry has also admitted that his first two wonds were only band-aid type injuries in which he lost no duty time and the third injury was a slight injury to his leg which necessitated two days in the hosp. Ordinarily it would have been back to duty after such a quick recovery, but not for Kerry. How did he do that? I've been wondering that myself.
"Kerry has also admitted that his first two wonds were only band-aid type injuries in which he lost no duty time and the third injury was a slight injury to his leg which necessitated two days in the hosp."
Yes. And note what his commanding officer said about that.
(This is from the Boston Globe series I linked above and which seems to be the source of just about all of these stories):
"Kerry had been wounded three times and received three Purple Hearts. Asked about the severity of the wounds, Kerry said that one of them cost him about two days of service, and that the other two did not interrupt his duty. "Walking wounded," as Kerry put it. A shrapnel wound in his left arm gave Kerry pain for years. Kerry declined a request from the Globe to sign a waiver authorizing the release of military documents that are covered under the Privacy Act and that might shed more light on the extent of the treatment Kerry needed as a result of the wounds.
"There were an awful lot of Purple Hearts -- from shrapnel, some of those might have been M-40 grenades," said Elliott, Kerry's commanding officer. "The Purple Hearts were coming down in boxes. Kerry, he had three Purple Hearts. None of them took him off duty. Not to belittle it, that was more the rule than the exception."
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061603.shtml