More John Kerry hyperbole. Aboard the USS Gridley in 1967.

Here are the comments of Phil Carter, RD2, on some of the items in the TOUR OF DUTY coverage of Kerry's time on GRIDLEY. He urges everyone to read it for themselves.

I was an E-5 radarman on the USS GRIDLEY and was onboard from 1965 until May of 1968. My principal role in 67 and 68 was to prepare intelligence information to brief the rescue helo pilots and the ship’s officers. I received a commendation from CINCPACFLT for this activity. I stood quite a few CIC watches with Ensign Kerry where we discussed many things, including the war. I was college educated, had traveled extensively in Europe before the Navy and spoke French, so there was some commonality despite my being enlisted. By that time, I was on my 3rd cruise and against the way the war was being waged. He was not, as I recall.

I am a registered independent and have no axe to grind with him. I gave him a reasonably large campaign contribution in the mid 1990’s and visited with him for about 30 minutes in an alcove outside the Senate chambers in 1996 when I was in DC on business.

Ensign Kerry was a fine young officer. He came aboard as a boot Ensign on June 8, 1967 and quickly impressed the senior officers in his chain of command. His fitness reports were outstanding. His privileged upbringing with experience in yachting and flying a private plane gave him a leg up on the other Ensigns.

When I read “Tour of Duty”, I became concerned because the material on Kerry’s time on GRIDLEY appeared in many instances to be exaggerations and in some cases figments of an overactive imagination.

1. Kerry never talked about his time on GRIDLEY. He says on page 74 that it is because “nothing much of note” happened while he was onboard. He uses words like monotony and tedious, when, despite being a boot ensign he was given every opportunity for responsibility by Captain Slifer and Commander Kelly (XO). He came aboard designated for Electrical Officer (80100), a grunt position in the Engineering Department and spent four months in that position. He was assigned duty as First Lieutenant, as Commander Kelly recalls, because of his knowledge of seamanship and his experiences with small boats and sailing. Besides being responsible for the decks of the ship, the First Lieutenant is also responsible for the ship’s small boats. He also was assigned collateral duties as Public Affairs Officer. Despite all the responsibilities he was given, he gives the impression that serving on GRIDLEY was somehow beneath him. He certainly had less of an opportunity to collect “gongs” there.

2. Page 78 – “motivate 400 swabbies” – The First Lieutenant is responsible only for the personnel of 1st Division, not the entire crew. 1st Division had a roster of about 30 in 1968. To the extent that other divisions had responsibility for deck space, their officers would have been responsible for motivating them.

3. Page 87 has Kerry “shuttling sailors and provisions” between GRIDLEY and KITTY HAWK in a small motor whaleboat out in the Gulf of Tonkin. The regular method of travel between the two ships was via helo. That is how I went over to the KITTY HAWK. If such an event did occur, it would have been unusual and hardly a shuttle.

4. Later on page 87 Kerry talks about Olongapo in the Philippines. He talks about bloated corpses floating in the river and starving women with babies dying of malnutrition. Now Olongapo was a wild and wooly town that existed solely for the entertainment of the US Navy, but in over three years of calling there, I never saw a single instance of either thing happening. Kerry uncovered this in his first visit. If this was from his letters home then he was certainly writing for dramatic effect. Balderdash.

5. The trip to Danang – GRIDLEY went into Danang for briefings before going to Northern SAR. This section is so full of hyperbole that the urge to giggle is almost uncontrollable. “The panic and pressure onboard GRIDLEY, strapping on a .45, wondering if I would have to use it, B-52’s howling overhead”. A B-52 over Danang would have been so high that only contrails would have been visible, cloud cover permitting. David Simons confirmed my recollection that during our brief stay in Danang Harbor, the sky was overcast to the point of being ominous.

More seriously, no one can remember John Kerry going ashore. I was part of the shore party that went to Monkey Mountain. We were taken in a screened in truck (to protect against grenades being tossed in) and made to unload our .45’s. The driver said that he did not want us newbies to shoot anyone by accident.

Neither Commander Kelly nor LCDR Rueckert (Kerry’s immediate boss) can recall approving a trip ashore for Ensign Kerry. The author uses remarks of David Simons IC2 as a lead in to the Danang section. I spoke to David and he has no personal knowledge of Kerry going ashore at all. He did talk to a researcher and made some generic remarks about Danang but had never discussed Danang with Kerry. He recalls arguing with the researcher because he tried to put the words “cowboy” in his mouth, which ended up in the book.

There is no mystery about the “gruesome site of a pile of dead VC.” We saw no sign of anything like this. However, our escort to Monkey Mountain did tell us how the VC bodies were stacked up on the LZ’s after the TET Offensive, which had been several months before. Ensign Kerry would have been told this story by members of the shore party.

If, indeed, he got to the pier, because he was in charge of the motor whaleboat, it certainly would not have been within his purview to wander Danang, eating dog meat and drinking beer in a bar (under arms). It also seems amazing that he had all these observations on Vietnam in such a brief visit.

6. In command – Again with the hyperbole. Kerry makes much about being “in charge” of the ship after the Captain and XO. The OOD is in charge of the operation of the ship during his four hour watch but hardly in charge of the ship. Kerry qualified almost immediately as OOD(P), in port OOD but that is a given. For much of his time onboard he would have been Junior Officer of the Deck when underway. Although his fitness report as of 22 March says "he is qualified as OOD(I) now" (Independent steaming – with no ships or land anywhere near) , only OOD(P) is listed under duties. His Fitness Report from July 1968 lists two months as OOD(I) which would mean he qualified after leaving the war zone.

Some of these points may be perceived as picky, but they seem to show a deliberate effort in his writings of the time to build a mystique for a future political career showing him as a great leader, father confessor to the ship and astute analyst of political and military happenings.

That is not to say that Kerry was not a good officer. He was and to my recollection was well liked. Did he stalk the passageways showing his future presidential timber? Absolutely not. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune actually asked me that. When I told him that he was just another goofy Ensign, he was horrified and did not use that quote.

I corresponded with a CNN Producer who was working on Kerry's bio that was shown on July 25. I provided them with three or four photographs of Kerry on GRIDLEY but they were uninterested in anything else I had to say.

I was the BT on the forward Fueling station. Kerry was the Deck officer in charge of it. I came up to man the station for fueling and Kerry informed me that we would fuel at 50 PSI and he wanted 15-10-54321 standbys to secure. I informed Hinderliter BT1 and the oil king of the order. Before Hinderliter had a chance to respond LCDR Butts came on the line from Main Control (Fwd Engine room) and said to put Kerry on my phone line. For everyones info, the fueling phone system was on a speaker in the two enginerooms. Lcdr Butts informed Kerry he was responsible for hooking up the hose and unhooking it and seamanship on the fwd fueling station. The oil king would fuel the ship. That was my contact with Kerry while he was aboard.

Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2004 10:25 p.m. EST
Gen. Giap: Kerry's Group Helped Hanoi Defeat U.S.

The North Vietnamese general in charge of the military campaign that finally drove the U.S. out of South Vietnam in 1975 credited a group led by Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry with helping him achieve victory.

In his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap wrote that if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S. - according to Fox News Channel war historian Oliver North.

That's why, he predicted on Tuesday, the Vietnam War issue "is going to blow up in Kerry's face."

"People are going to remember Gen. Giap saying if it weren't for these guys [Kerry's group], we would have lost," North told radio host Sean Hannity.

"The Vietnam Veterans Against the War encouraged people to desert, encouraged people to mutiny - some used what they wrote to justify fragging officers," noted the former Marine lieutenant colonel, who earned two purple hearts in Vietnam.

"John Kerry has blood of American soldiers on his hands," North said.

Ops4 God Bless America!

This was posted as a link on the Goatlocker. I read it and thought some of you may.

Jim Hampton BTCM-USN-RET
Kerry's qualifications for the presidency

By James F. Kelly Jr.
August 12, 2004

I've been receiving a lot of queries lately about things that did or did not happen during the time John Kerry and I served together in the Navy. I've also received large quantities of reading material, mostly e-mail and mostly unpersuasive, from people attempting to trash, for political purposes, his relatively brief combat service in Swift Boats. I have also declined offers to join groups attempting to discredit him on the basis of his naval service.

Kerry and I served together on the Gridley in 1967 and 1968. The Gridley was a new guided missile frigate, later reclassified with the rest of the ships in her class as a guided missile cruiser. Ensign Kerry was first lieutenant, the division officer in charge of the deck force consisting of about 30 sailors. I was a commander serving as executive officer, or second in command.

The officers reporting directly to me were the department heads, mostly lieutenant commanders. Kerry reported to the weapons officer, one of the department heads, but had daily direct contact with me because of his responsibilities for deck seamanship, the ship's four boats and the external appearance of the ship and also because of his collateral duty as public affairs officer, a position I had previously filled in an aircraft carrier.

Kerry was a fine junior officer – intelligent, responsible and hardworking. Moreover, he possessed these qualities in degrees not common in inexperienced ensigns. His fitness reports (evaluations) that I drafted for the captain's signature reflected those qualities and more. He earned them.

We first received orders for Kerry to report while we were still deployed to the South China Sea and the Tonkin Gulf area. We had a rescue helicopter detachment on board, berthing was tight and we had no immediate need for another junior officer, so we decided that the best use of his services was to remain stateside filling required school quotas until we returned to Long Beach.

After a turnaround of less than eight months, the Gridley deployed again in February 1968 with Ensign Kerry on board. Much of that tour was, like the previous one, spent on search-and-rescue duty, providing support to the carrier and assistance to downed aviators and aircraft in distress.

We returned to Long Beach in June 1968, and Kerry left shortly after for Swift Boat training. He spent a little over four months on combat duty in the rivers of South Vietnam and was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. He left the Navy after his obligated service tour, joined the anti-war protest movement, entered politics and the rest, as they say, is history.

Kerry refers to his approximately one-year tour on the Gridley as tedious and monotonous. He has little to say about that one-third of his naval career because, he says, not much happened. You could have fooled me. I thought it was rather exciting. I have spoken with many of our former shipmates, and they seemed to feel that we were actually doing something important back then. I'm sure, however, that it seemed tame in retrospect compared to his four months on the rivers with the brown water Navy.

After much urging by former shipmates, I read Douglas Brinkley's account of Kerry's service in "Tour of Duty" (William Morrow: New York, 2004). In a chapter entitled "High Seas Adventures" (perhaps "adventures" is a bit strong, considering the boredom and monotony), Brinkley describes, in near heroic terms, Kerry's duties onboard the Gridley. I may have forgotten some of the awesome responsibilities that we heaped upon Ensign Kerry, but I'm sure that he handled those well, also. There's a good deal of hyperbole in that chapter, but then a little exaggeration is normal, I guess, when it comes to describing the past exploits of presidential candidates.

Be all that as it may, Kerry was a fine junior officer – one of the best I've served with. I can't comment on the four months or so on the rivers of Vietnam because I wasn't there. Others who weren't there shouldn't comment on them either. Nor will I second-guess his awards nor should anyone else unless they can prove for certain that the citations misstated the facts and that somebody lied. Thirty-five years later is no time to be questioning them. And besides, what does all of this have to do with his qualifications for president?

Kerry spent less than a year and a half on sea duty, much less than that in the combat zone. Most of the rest of his service obligation was spent in school. His service to his country is commendable, and his decorations attest to the quality of that service and to his bravery. To make this service the centerpiece of his presidential campaign 35 years later, however, is ludicrous.

Kerry's credentials to be commander in chief of the armed forces are flawed by his anti-war protest activities while his comrades were still fighting and dying. They are further soiled by his outrageous accusations of atrocities committed by his comrades in a war in which belligerents posed as civilians.

A three-year tour of service, even heroic service, does not qualify one to be president. Of far more relevance is his 19 years in the Senate, becoming its most liberal member and opposing most defense legislation. On this, his campaign is virtually silent and for very good reason: His record in public life has little to commend it to voters concerned about the defense of the United States against international terrorism.

Kelly, a Coronado resident, is a retired Navy captain, bank executive and a former Navy League national director and council president. He writes and speaks on defense issues.

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