. . . .lengthy profile by Charles Sennott in the 10/6/96 Boston Globe. After describing a dangerous raid in the Mekong Delta, Sennott got to the heart of the matter:
SENNOTT: And Kerry just happens to have captured it all on film.
"I'll show you where they shot from. See? That's the hole covered up with reeds," says Kerry, showing the films on a recent evening, his hand tightening on the remote control as he clicks the images down to slow motion.
"This is just something that I improvised. The point was not to just take an ambush, but to go directly at them," adds Kerry, pointing to where he brought the boat ashore, and explaining how he returned later with a Super 8 millimeter hand-held movie camera to record highlights of the mission. "That's me right there. One of my crew was filming all this."
The films have the grainy quality of home movies. In their blend of the posed and the unexpected, they reveal something indelible about the man who shot them - the tall, thin, handsome Naval officer seen striding through the reeds in flak jacket and helmet, holding aloft the captured B-40 rocket. The young man so unconscious of risk in the heat of battle, yet so focused on his future ambitions that he would reenact the moment for film. It is as if he had cast himself in the sequel to the experience of his hero, John F. Kennedy, on the PT-109.