Purple Heart: how a *real* Vietnam warrior acted, in Kerry’s situation

Lance Corporal Randall K. McGlone was an Artillery Scout Observer with Company L, Third Battalion, First Marines, Ninth Marine Amphibious Brigade. In 1968 his unit was deployed along the Cua Viet River, a key supply route which linked the South China Sea with Dong Ha. From the air base at Dong Ha, supplies were shipped to Khe Sanh. The following account is from McGlone’s 1992 autobiographical book, Guts and Glory, and describes an incident which took place when Lima Company were defending positions around the village of Mai Xai Ti, from almost continuous attack by North Vietnamese Army regulars.

.....I decided the firing had to be coming from the grass huts. Despite the wet weather, I knew those huts would burn. I called for a repeat of the fire mission, with white phosphorous and high-explosive shells mixed. Again the rounds were right on target: eighteen rounds of high explosives and eighteen rounds of white phosphorous.

On the other side of the river was an inferno. The grunts laughed, grinned, and yelled, “Get ‘em, Mac.” One grass hut was burning, and the other was smoking.

Anyone who has called in a great amount of artillery fire will tell you that the fireworks can hypnotize a man. Maybe it is in part because of the intense concentration of the forward observer. When a person calls for rounds to drop only fifty yards from the observer himself, he has to concentrate. But there is something else. The person calling in the fire gets the feeling that he is God, that the artillery explosions are his creations, that he has the power of life and death over others. And another thing: the beauty. If a person enjoys fireworks at Fourth of July celebrations, then he would enjoy watching the artillery do its work. Just watching the fireworks themselves can be mesmerizing.

I was now in such a state. Without being conscious of it, I had moved away from the protection of the bunker. I was exposed to shrapnel that was whizzing all around me. I just kept saying, “Repeat, variable time, white phosphorous, and high explosives, danger close, fifty meters ..”

The grunts were awed. I paid no attention to O.E., who kept motioning me to come back to the bunker, nor to the sergeants and others who urged me inside. I kept calling the artillery in even though shrapnel continued to hit all around me. I was in my own world. I had created the explosions, and the artillery would not hurt me.

Then a whistle in the air caught my attention, and I felt something hit my hand resting on my right thigh. I looked slowly down. The top of my hand was a mess of blood. Instantly O.E. and Sergeant Havelok were on top of me, dragging me back to the bunker.

While the platoon sergeant was wrapping my hand in a battle dressing, O.E. was lecturing. “You crazy xxxxx. You almost blew yourself up. We tried to git you back in here. You just ain’t got sense enough to learn.” I had to listen to this kind of talk for the next thirty minutes. I didn’t have enough sense to learn, and O.E. didn’t have enough sense to realize he was wasting his words.

For a moment I was shocked when I stared at the bloody battle dressing on my hand. But I was lucky at that. The shrapnel had hit only five inches from my private parts. If I had been as well endowed as some of the Romeos in the company claimed they were, it would have been a disaster.

Back at the headquarters bunker, one of the men said, “You can get a Purple Heart for that.”

I guess my eyes widened a little: getting a Purple Heart for an injury I had brought upon myself! I would never live that down. No, I was not about to accept a Purple Heart.

Anyway, that platoon sergeant had told me I had done a good job and we could leave off the artillery for a while. No more sniper fire came that day, so maybe the artillery had killed all the snipers, or at least had put them out of business for a while.

We found a corpsman in a nearby bunker. He was just finishing dressing the wound of another marine, and when he saw me, his eyes lit up. The last time I had seen him, he had broken up a fight between another marine and me, a fight in which I had received the worst of it.

I was happy to see him; it was kind of like a link to a happier time when, in comparison to now, we were both babies. He was regular Navy, friendly, and easy to get along with. He was always telling marines we were stupid. “Why would anybody put up with all the bullshit, and then get stuck right out in the thick of it when fighting breaks out? You marines go to more trouble to get killed than anyone else in the world.”

By now he had been in the field so long that he could have gone back to the ship at any time. But he stayed on the front, doing whatever he could to help the wounded.

“Well,” he said now, “I see you haven’t learned your lesson. Anyway, you’re still in one piece.”

He laughed when he learned how I had gotten hit by shrapnel. “Well, you finally got a taste of your own medicine. This should make an interesting Purple Heart.”

A Purple Heart would be nice, and I hesitated before answering, “No, don’t put me down for a Purple Heart.”

He thought I was crazy and insisted he would do so, and said that the report would only say the wound was from shrapnel. But I would not go along. I could hear all the guys laughing and kidding me about going to all that trouble to wound myself just so I could be a hero. I finally convinced the corpsman not to write me up for the award.

“You damn jarheads are crazy. You go through hell for all the glory, and when you get it, you turn it down. Okay. No damn Heart.”

After he had cleansed the wound, which extended all the way down to the bone, and taped the skin back together, I thanked him and left. It would have been nice to talk awhile, but he looked exhausted.

I almost turned back to tell him I would like the Purple Heart after all. But thinking of the soldiers in many wars who had been so seriously injured, I felt totally unworthy of such an award. So, I left the bunker, knowing I would not be receiving a Purple Heart.

TRANSCRIPT: 8/26/04
Steve Gardner, Foregunner, PCF44:
http://swift2.he.net/~swift2/gardner2.mpg

"I spent more time on John Kerry's boat than any other crewmember.

John Kerry hasn't been honest - he has been deceitful.

John Kerry claims that he spent Christmas, in 1968, in Cambodia.

And that is catagorically a lie. Not in December. Not in January.

We were never in Cambodia on a secret mission. Ever."

Ramsey Clark to Join Panel for Saddam’s Defense

arabnews press release 25 August 2004

NOTE :
Ramsey Clark is pictured below with Kerry and
Vietnam phony vet Al Hubbard
Who was head of the
Vietnam Veterans Against the War movement.

NEW:
FReeper smith288 has an online version of
Kerry's "The New Soldier"
You can read it without downloading pdf files!
CLICK HERE

From Kerry's "The New Soldier":
Al Hubbard Sgt., 22 Troop Carrier Squadron Aug. ’65-June ’66

Emotions: Walking down the flight line at Saigon past stacks of aluminum cases containing American bodies and past stacks of aluminum luggage containing American currency. Seeing the tight, sad face of an Airman loading the bodies aboard a dirty Air Force Transport and the wide smiling face of a stewardess greeting the passengers aboard a clean Pan American Clipper Jet. Hearing a Vietnamese beg you to leave his country and an American colonel tells you to bomb his country. Hearing a Vietnamese invite you to live in his home, after the war and an American explain why you can’t live in his block, after the war. Flying over barren, brown, safe American held terrain and over lush, green unsafe enemy terrain. Feeling happy to be leaving a country in which you do not belong and sad to be returning to a country in which you are not allowed to belong. Sacrificing a portion of your consciousness so you won’t have to deal with being there and building mental blocks so you won’t have to deal with having been there.

- Al Hubbard, proven fraud who never set foot in Viet Nam. The only Vietnamese he ever met was when he was collaborating with the North Vietnamese in Paris
on the American Communist Party's nickel.
John Kerry's explanation: "He (Hubbard) simply exaggarated his particular position.
But nobody knew it at the time. And those things happen."

The New Soldier, (46 pages)
By John Kerry
and Vietnam Veterans
Against the War
PART I (pdf file)
PART II (pdf file)
PART III (pdf file)

Kerry hopes everyone
in the USA gets this book!

NEW:
“Without question,
we were held captive longer
because of the anti-war people,
the Kerrys, the Fondas and Haydens,
the names we knew over there -
they encouraged the enemy to hang on.”
Excerpt from “Stolen Honor” website
- Leo Thorsness
Former Vietnam POW
CLICK HERE

Copy and paste the links to everyone you know.

Send this url for the Steve Gardner video

http://swift2.he.net/~swift2/gardner2.mpg

Send this url for the online version

http://ejsmithweb.com/fr/newsoldier/

Send this url for the Stolen Honor website

http://www.stolenhonor.com/

Print this out (46 pages) and disribute it,
especially to the liberals you know.

http://nomayo.mu.nu/archives/New%20Soldier%20Inro.pdf

http://nomayo.mu.nu/archives/New%20Soldier.pdf

http://nomayo.mu.nu/archives/New%20Soldier%20Epilogue.pdf

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