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" You'll earn a fourth Purple Heart, and it won't be for a minor scratch, you freak of nature."

This was posted to me today by mohresearcher :

"Just finished reading Douglas Brinkley's book "Tour of Duty." Senator Kerry supplied most of the material about Kerry's war experiences in Vietnam, and Brinkley adds snippets from other published sources (mostly from a leftist perspective, but excluding extensive coverage by the Communist Party newspaper Daily World, which glorified Kerry's antiwar activities in 1971.) Anyway, I was particularly interested in knowing the details of the three Purple Hearts that Kerry was awarded for supposed combat wounds.

Most of the men that I knew personally or read about were dead on their third Purple Heart wound in Vietnam. I am an Army veteran, and most combat units had strict rules prohibiting Rambo wannabes from claiming the Purple Heart for scratches from shrapnel that could be covered with a Band-Aid.

Brinkley writes about Kerry's first Purple Heart on pp. 146-148. The so-called action happened on December 2, 1968 in the DaNang area. Brinkley's description is glaringly vague, and Brinkley does not report any other crewmen being injured. Kerry didn't need any hospitalization for that injury, which most Army and Marine combat veterans would find suspicious. Wags might call this event Kerry's personal Gulf of Tonkin incident.

The second Purple Heart wound was on February 20, 1969 in the Delta, covered on pp. 280-288. There was enemy action recorded in detail, and Kerry had another minor shrapnel wound, for which he did not need hospitalization. Again, he was the only one injured. Why is he the only one very slightly wounded?

The third Purple Heart was on March 13, 1969, also in the Delta. It was a legitimate combat wound from my reading of Brinkley's description of the action on pp. 304-317. If I read this section carefully, Kerry was the only one injured on his Swift boat. Brinkley records others injured on other boats in the engagement.

So, inquiring minds must be pondering: which came first, Kerry reading Navy regs to learn that if you had three awards of the Purple Heart you could get out of Vietnam pronto; or, a deliberate strategy on his part to get his return ticket punched a third time so he could abandon his crewmates and bug out after only four months in a combat zone? "

It appears that Kerry was the only one injured,in all three of the engagements, where he earned his each of his PHs.
This is a huge red flag and may be the reason why Kerry refuses to authorize the military to release his full military record.
I cannot imagine the odds that Kerry would be the only one injured and eligible for a PH,not once,not twice,but, three times.

And if I'm not mistaken, I believe that I read somewhere that Kerry himself signed off on at least one of his own Purple Hearts, or something to that effect. Did you hear about this as well? I don't know Navy regs well enough to say if this is legit or not, but one would think that you couldn't go about pinning medals on your own chest......

What sort of system was there to validate his claims...what is to stop him from making stuff up to get the purple heart?

"I cannot imagine the odds that Kerry would be the only one injured and eligible for a PH,not once,not twice,but, three times."

Well, with what, 8 guys on a boat? , that would be 1 chance in 8 x 8 x 8, or 1 chance in 512. That's assuming the stories about taking fire are correct , and that all the wounds would be minor.

What I find interesting is that nobody on his boat seems to recall his being wounded (wouldn't you notice if the skipper was wounded? ) , and that so much of his story (and apparently his medals) are based on his own testimony. Very wierd.