John Kerry: The mission I found in Vietnam

WASHINGTON The year 1968 was unlike any other I have known. I was 24 years old, a newly minted naval officer in a convoy headed for the Gulf of Tonkin.

I remember lazy moments standing watch on the U.S.S. Gridley - out on the fantail, the fo'c'sle, anywhere, looking at the sea, enjoying glorious sunsets and sunrises on the bridge.

Then, on the afternoon of Feb. 26, when we had left Midway Island, the reality of Vietnam hit me right between the eyes. Gridley's executive officer came to me and asked if I had a friend named Pershing - and I knew immediately why he was asking.

I fought to restrain an empty crying. I didn't even have to read the telegram; I knew that Dick Pershing, my childhood and college friend, was dead. For days on the empty Pacific I could barely stand the knowledge that I would never see him again. It was the loss of someone irreplaceable, a loss of innocence, a loss of the sense of invincibility and bravado that young men have as they go to war.

Soon after, off Vietnam, we learned that Senator Eugene McCarthy and a band of college students living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches had rocked the foundations of the political world in the New Hampshire primary, sending the message to President Lyndon Johnson that he couldn't be president any more.

Weeks later we heard of the death of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated while campaigning for justice in America. We knew that cities across the country had exploded in riots and much of Washington itself was in flames. There was war all around us and war at home.

After a few months of search and rescue work in the Gulf of Tonkin, the ship was returning to California when the crackling radio picked up the end of Robert Kennedy's victory speech, the shots fired in the kitchen, the chaos. We docked early the next morning - June 6, 1968. Robert Kennedy died that day.

I spent a lost weekend in Long Beach glued to the television set. It was strange, leaving a place of violence to come home to violence - violence that shook our sense of the order of things. Later that summer I reported for Swift boat training in Coronado, California. We lived with the deep-throated roar of Phantom afterburners streaking out of the naval air station, carriers dominating the harbor, Marine recruits surviving basic training, and we watched the turmoil in our own country. I had been a participant and an observer, and my beliefs were challenged during that difficult time.

Soon I found myself back in Vietnam, on the front lines of a very different war from the one I had known on my first tour of duty. We were outsiders in a complex war among Vietnamese. Too many allies were corrupt. Adversaries were ruthless. Enemy territory was everywhere.

It is hard still to explain the clashing feelings. There were the deep and enduring bonds forged among crewmates, brothers in arms from all walks of life fighting each day to keep faith with one another on a tiny boat on the rivers of the Mekong Delta. And there was the anger I felt toward body-counting, face-saving leaders sitting safely in Washington sending to the killing fields troops who were often poor, black or brown. But that was Vietnam, where the children of America were pulled from front porches and living rooms and plunged almost overnight into a world of sniper fire, ambushes, rockets, booby traps, body bags, explosions, sleeplessness and the confusion created by an enemy who was sometimes invisible and firing at us and sometimes right next to us and smiling.

I found understanding only in the shared experience of those for whom the war was personal, who had lost friends and seen brothers lose arms and legs, who had seen all around them human beings fight and curse, weep and die.

At times it seemed that we were the only ones who really understood that the faults in Vietnam were those of the war, not the warriors.

I returned home to America and moved to New York City, prepared to serve out the remainder of my naval duty in Brooklyn. Part of me wanted to forget Vietnam and get on with my life, but part of me felt compelled to tell the story. I was unsure how.

Then, in April 1969, I received news so eerily similar to what had happened on that first voyage to Vietnam. Another close friend - Don Droz - had been killed in a swift boat ambush in the Duong Keo River.

At that moment I knew I couldn't wait. There was no further thinking to do. It was time. That's the day I decided to give all my energy and strength to one more mission: to end the war in which I'd fought.

John Kerry, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, is candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

who were often poor, black or brown.

V'nam Casualties by Race, Ethnicity and Natl Origin

Enlisted	USA	USMC	USN	USAF
White	28044 (83.5)	11888 (85.5)	1823 (94.7)	735 (81.1)
Black	5095 (15.1)	1860 (13.3)	78 (4.0)	82 (9.0)
Amer.Ind.	138 (.4)	73 (.5)	7 (.3)	1 (0.5)
Asian	241 (.7)	76 (.5)	17 (.8)	9 (1.0)
Unknown	26 (.07)	1 (.007)	--	79 (8.7)

Of all enlisted men who died in V'nam, blacks made up 14.1% of the total. This came at a time when they made up 11.0% of the young male population nationwide. If we add officer casualties to enlisted then the black percentage is reduced to 12.5% of all casualties.

Of the 7262 blacks who died, 6, 955 or 96% were Army and Marine enlisted men. The combination of our selective service policies, our AFQT testing of both drafted and volunteers, the need for skilled enlisted men in many areas of the armed forces, all conspired to assign blacks in greater numbers to the combat units of the Army and Marine Corps. Early in the war, when blacks made up about 11.0% of our V'nam force, black casualties soared to over 20% of the total (1965, 1966). Black leaders protested and Pres Johnson ordered that black participation should be cut back in the combat units. As a result, the black casualty rate was cut to 11.5% by 1969.

The DoD database contains no info on Hispanic-Amer casualties. Hispanics can be of any race, but the 1980 census revealed that only 2.6% regard themselves as black. In a massive sampling of the database we were able to establish that between 5.0 and 6.0> had Hispanic surnames. These were Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban and other Latino-Americans with ancestries based in Central and South Amer. The 1970 census which we are using as our V'nam era population base, estimated Hispanic-Americans at 4.5% of the US population.

Thus we think it is safe to say that Hispanic-Americans were over-represented among V'nam casualties-an estimated 5.5% of the casualties against 4.5% of the 1970 population. These casualties came largely from California and Texas with lesser numbers from Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Florida and New York and some from many states across the country.

During the V'nam war, the Navy and Air Force became substantially white enclaves. Of the 4953 Navy and Air Force casualties, both officer and enlisted, 4, 736 or 96% were white.

Officer casualties of all branches were overwhelmingly white. Of the 7877 officer casualties, 7595 or 96.4% were white, 147 or 1.8% were black; 24 or .3% were Asian, 7 or .08% were Amer Indian and 104 (1.3%) were unidentified by race.

In terms of natl origin/ancestries our massive sampling of the database reveals that Americans of Italian, French Canadian, Polish and other Southern and Eastern European surnames made up about 10% of the casualties. These casualties came largely from the Northeast and North Central regions, many from the traditionally patriotic working class neighborhoods.

It becomes apparent that the remaining 70% of V'nam enlisted casualties were of English/Scottish/Welsh, German, Irish, and Scandinavian-Amer ancestries, more from the South and Mid-West than the other regions, many from the small towns with a family military tradition.

The officer corps has always drawn heavily on English, German, Irish and Scandinavian-Amer ancestries from lower-middle and middle class white collar homes with other large percentages from ambitious blue-collar and career military families. By region, officer casualties came more from the South and West (4.1 per 100000 population) to 3-5 from the Northeast and North Central.Data compiled William F. Abbott from figures obtained shortly after the construction of the Vietnam War Memorial

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