Anybody hear Neal Boortz interviewing the doctor who attended Kerry for his first Purple Heart (the only one on which he is releasing records, btw)?
The doctor said Kerry put in for a Purple Heart where he was stationed, but was turned down by his commanding officer. Two months later, an officer stationed in Saigon authorized a Purple Heart for Kerry.
Interesting that he would have to go to an officer out of his unit to get this approved - furthermore, the officer is now dead, so there's no risk that he could explain exactly how this happened.
Here are excerpts from Thomas Wright's story that explain exactly how he got the 3rd PH:
Thomas Wright was one of John F. Kerry's fellow Swift boat officers in Vietnam. Since Wright outranked Kerry, he was Kerry's sometime boat group Officer-in-Charge, so Wright had occasion to observe Kerry’s behavior and attitudes, and the circumstances surrounding his early departure from the war zone. The intervening years have not dimmed his memories.
“I had a lot of trouble getting him to follow orders,” recalls Wright. “He had a different view of leadership and operations. Those of us with direct experience working with Kerry found him difficult and oriented towards his personal, rather than unit goals and objectives. I believed that overall responsibility rested squarely on the shoulders of the OIC or OTC in a free-fire zone. You had to be right (before opening fire). Kerry seemed to believe there were no rules in a free-fire zone and you were supposed to kill anyone. I didn’t see it that way.”
It got to a point where Wright told his divisional commander he no longer wanted Kerry in his boat group, so he was re-assigned to another one. “I had an idea of his actions but didn’t have to be responsible for him.” Then Wright and like-minded boat officers took matters into their own hands. “When he got his third Purple Heart, three of us told him to leave. We knew how the system worked and we didn’t want him in Coastal Division 11. Kerry didn’t manipulate the system, we did.”