Swiftboat Crewman: Kerry Boat Under Fire

AP ^ | August 26, 2004

[Shermy]

PORTLAND, Ore. - A swiftboat crewman decorated in the 1969 Vietnam incident where John Kerry (news - web sites) won a Bronze Star says not only did they come under enemy fire but also that his own boat commander, who has challenged the official account, was too distracted to notice the gunfire.

Retired Chief Petty Officer Robert E. Lambert, of Central Point, Ore., got a Bronze Star for pulling his boat commander — Lt. Larry Thurlow — out of the Bay Hap River on March 13, 1969. Thurlow had jumped onto another swiftboat to aid sailors wounded by a mine explosion but fell off when the out-of-control boat ran aground.

Thurlow, who has been prominent among a group of veterans challenging the Democratic presidential candidate's record, has said there was no enemy fire during the incident. Lambert, however, supports the Navy account that says all five swiftboats in the task force "came under small arms and automatic weapon fire from the river banks" when the mine detonated.

"I thought we were under fire, I believed we were under fire," Lambert said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

"Thurlow was far too distracted with rescue efforts to even realize he was under fire. He was concentrating on trying to save lives."

The anti-Kerry group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, has been running television ads challenging the Navy account of the boats being under fire. Kerry has condemned the ads as a Republican smear campaign.

A career military man, Lambert is no fan of Kerry's either. He doesn't like Kerry's post-Vietnam anti-war activity and doesn't plan to vote for him.

"I don't like the man himself," Lambert said, "but I think what happened happened, and he was there."

A March 1969 Navy report located by The Associated Press this week supports Lambert's version. The report twice mentions the incident and both times calls it "an enemy initiated firefight" that included automatic weapons fire and underwater mines used against a group of five boats that included Kerry's.

Kerry's Bronze Star was awarded for his pulling Special Forces Lt. Jim Rassmann, who had been blown off the boat, out of the river. Rassmann, who is retired and lives in Florence, Ore., has said repeatedly that the boats were under fire, as have other witnesses. Lambert didn't see that rescue because Kerry was farther down the river and "I was busy pulling my own boat officer (Thurlow) out of the water."

Thurlow could not be reached for comment about Lambert's recollections.

But speaking for the Swift Boat Veterans group, Van Odell, who was in the task force that day, remembers it differently from Lambert.

"When they're firing, you can hear the rounds hit the boat or buzz by your head. There was none of that," he said in a telephone interview from Katy, Texas, where he lives.

Lambert said the swiftboats were on their way out of the river when a mine exploded under one, PCF-3.

"When they blew the 3-boat, everyone opened up on the banks with everything they had," he said. "That was the normal procedure. When they came after you, they came after you. Somebody on shore blew that mine."

"There was always a firefight" after a mine detonation, he said.

"Kerry was out in front of us, on down the river. He had to come back up the river to get to us."

Lambert retired in 1978 as a chief petty officer with 22 years of service and three tours in Vietnam. He does not remember ever meeting Kerry.

[gogipper]

O'neil said this himself the first time I heard him interviewed. A mine would go off and the boats would put out protective fire, anticipating an ambush.

Don't get bogged down in minutia. The main points are:

Kerry lied about his record - proven by his retraction of the Cambodia story

Kerry defamed his fellow warriors - in congressional testimony. These lies may have prolonged the Viet Nam war and caused additional deaths.

Kerry showed awful judgement and possibly disloyalty to his country - consorting with the Viet Namese while still an officer. He is memorialized as a hero in their war museum.

This is why he should not be president

[Reactionary]

"A swiftboat crewman decorated in the 1969 Vietnam incident where John Kerry (news - web sites) won a Bronze Star says not only did they come under enemy fire but also that his own boat commander, who has challenged the official account, was too distracted to notice the gunfire."

Oh, goody. I guess the idiot liberals are trying to maintain that it's perfectly natural not to notice when you're being shot at.

Perhaps the VC were shooting popcorn or peas this time around.

[Wil H]

Are you with me on this

and it constituted enemy fire because "we have met the enemy and we are him"

[MonroeDNA]

Yes, He's tanking bad.

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

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.


Al Hubbard Sgt., 22 Troop Carrier Squadron Aug. ’65-June ’66
- 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."

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

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

Jane Fonda tells the student audience at the Michigan State University in 1969;
"I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope,
you would pray on your knees, that we would someday become communist."

Joe Moore, Can Tho Airfield 550th Signal Company

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

[ApplegateRanch]

In the local (Medford, which adjoins Central Point; also it says he is from EAGLE POINT; miles away.) paper, this guy says that Kerry's boat DIDN'T tow the #3. He says, without stating which boats, that the #3 had another boat moored to each side of it to take it back to base.

He says they were ALL running "wide open" to get out of there.

He makes it sound like it only took a few minutes, start to finish, rather than the hour to hour & half.

---

http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2004/0826/local/stories/01local.htm

Swift boat memories
Eagle Point vet who was there backs Kerry’s assertion that bullets were flying the day he won two medals on a river in Vietnam

By PAUL FATTIG
Mail Tribune
Robert E. Lambert doesn’t plan to vote for John Kerry.

But the Eagle Point man challenges claims by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that there was no enemy fire aimed at the five swift boats, including the one commanded by Kerry, on March 13, 1969 on the Bay Hap River in the southern tip of what was then South Vietnam...

...The five swift boats were operating off U.S. Coast Guard cutters farther out in the bay on March 13....

..."We were done with our OPs and on the way back out to sea," Lambert recalled. "We were exiting the river. Kerry’s boat went through, then the 43 boat."...

...The six-member crew was stunned and shaken by the blast; the boat was running free....

..."It was running wide open — we were all running wide open, trying to get out of there," he said....

...Lambert, who reached down to help Thurlow aboard, was awarded the Bronze Star for his "courage under fire," according to his citation.

"We went right back to the 3 boat and he (Thurlow) went back on the boat," he said. "We got the 3 boat off the sandbar, got a boat tied to each side of it and down the river we went."

---

This guy has some real credibility problems, that someone much more qualified than I should look at.

The local story should be referenced, as it seems closer to an un-spun account of an interview, than what the AP put together using it, with other matterial and spin added.

Hell, the AP can't even get his home town right.

[henbane]

Lambert: ..."We were done with our OPs and on the way back out to sea," Lambert recalled. "We were exiting the river. Kerry’s boat went through, then the 43 boat."...
...The six-member crew was stunned and shaken by the blast; the boat was running free....
..."It was running wide open — we were all running wide open, trying to get out of there," he said....
"We went right back to the 3 boat and he (Thurlow) went back on the boat," he said. "We got the 3 boat off the sandbar, got a boat tied to each side of it and down the river we went."

These bolded points don't seem to match the exhaustively researched story and graphics featured in the big Washington Post article.

The rabidly anti-Bush WPost gives a pretty fair account of the March 13 incident, if you can ignore a totally imaginary, "unidentified" second explosion the newspaper invents to cover Kerry's butt.

The graphic shows Kerry in panic flight going up the river away from the group--the only one who bailed--and he ran 3 miles along the opposite bank from the mine explosion--dumping Rassmann along the way. Kerry bruised his shoulder/arm in his reckless flight--but will get a Purple Heart for yet another self-inflicted injury.

But right now, the key point in this graphic history is the one thing that is not mentioned at all in the highly focused detail of the action--the Washington Post's illustrated history contains NO DESCRIPTION--NO MENTION WHATSOEVER OF A HOSTILE FIREFIGHT.

---

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The River, The Mission, The Ambush
Washington Post ^ | 8-21-2004 | Thorp, Spirito, Kirkman

Posted on 08/22/2004 1:48:37 AM EDT by XHogPilot

The Mission, The River, The Ambush. On March 13, 1969, John F. Kerry participated in the mission that has become a centerpiece of his campaign for the presidency- and his account has been disputed by some fellow Swift boat veterans. The dispute focuses on when and how Kerry was injured on the mission, and whether the force of five Swift boats came under Vietcong fire after one was hit by a mine on the Bay Hap River. Here are the events of the mission and ambush, according to eyewitness accounts and U.S. Navy reports:

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...

---

TOPICS:

[sevry]

Somebody on shore blew that mine.

Is this a correct statement?

That's how it read in Unfit for Command - a "VC sympathizer" (why not actual VC, I don't know) was behind a 'bunker', and set it off. Odell and others have been referring to it as a "command detonated" mine. It was, in fact, an ambush. There COULD have been others armed on the bank. The surprize was that there WAS NO enemy fire. That should have been emphasized in the book.

There are problems with the book, otherwise. Corsi may be the root of those errors. I don't know. I don't know how much O'Neill actually contributed. It's almost as if the authors didn't first consult with the eyewitnesses now making the rounds. There was no 35 boat for Rassman to fall off, in other words. And Chenoweth supposedly has a diary entry which shows him trailing Pease on the left, not leading Kerry, on the right, as it says in Unfit. So . .

I don't know if Corsi even still posts here.

[ApplegateRanch]

Thank you SO MUCH for that map & diagram! That is the first time I've seen it. I have read too many accounts that confuse up & down stream, so that I ended up with the impression they were headed UP river, to a base; not out to sea.

I notice in the boat diagram, Gardener is not listed nor shown. He is also not shown in the photo, nor mentioned as absent, unlike Madieros. I thought he was still there for this incident??

Gosh, so much to try and keep straight, about who was where when, according to whom. It is more confusing to keep score on than a DNC convention in a whore house!

Lambert is so far away from all other descriptions; and the AP story even left out the more damaging chunks of it, is why I posted that.

To hear him, they were pretty much 'crossing the bar' into the bay; and it didn't last long, both patently false.

I knew his story wasn't straight, but too many young people with no knowlege of Vietnam, matters-military, and reading/reasoning skills 'honed' by public schools will read it totally uncritcally. Worse, they will read it without even knowing what was left out that makes it stink even more, and on that basis, along with the other crap that was trotted out, decide "Kerry is right; they're liars!"

[sirchtruth]

Yes, He's tanking bad.

Where are those numbers?

[RogueIsland]

Kerry paniced when the #3 boat struck a mine. He gunned his engine and struck an underwater obstacle, probably the fishing weir. The boats impact with the underwater obstacle knocked Rassman off the boat and into the water.

In his after action report, Kerry feared the consequences should he say he struck the fishing weir with his boat so he blamed the damage to his boat as being from a near miss from a mine.

And there's still the third variation, told by Kerry himself and entered into the Congressional record, in which he says Rassmann fell overboard when Kerry initiated a sharp turn to starboard - no mention of either a mine or an object.

[shezza]

Kerry claims that he was under fire for 5 km, downstream then back up to get Rassmann.

Right, and this is in the after-action report (written by Kerry). If he was 5000m (3 miles!) downstream, how did he know what was going on upstream, how long did it take him to realize Rassmann had "been blown off the boat" (i.e., thrown into the water when Kerry bugged out so quickly) -- obviously 3 miles worth of time -- and how long did it take him to turn around and go back upstream to get to the scene of the mine-damaged 3 Boat?

And yet he's the one who volunteered to write the after-action report. Just one more opportunity to mold the "official navy record" into his proof that he was a hero.

Rassmann is the one who submitted Kerry for the Silver Star for this event, and the other citations issued for other medals handed out for this event are based on -- you guessed it -- Kerry's after-action report.

[Cboldt]

And another variation, told by Kerry when Rassmann came out during the primaries.

http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/releases/pr_2004_0117d.html <-- Kerry's 2004 version

On March 13, 1969, Rassmann, a Green Beret, was traveling down the Bay Hap river in a boat behind Kerry's when both were ambushed by exploding land mines and enemy fire coming from the shore. Kerry was hit in the arm, while a mine blew Rassmann's boat out of the water. With enemy fire coming from both sides of the river and swift boats evacuating from the area, Kerry's crew chose to turn their boat toward the ambush to save Rassmann.

"We were still under fire, and he was wounded at the time...," recalled Rassmann. And with his boat's gunners providing suppressing fire, Kerry extended his wounded arm into the water and the two lieutenants locked arms.

[Lady GOP]

Thank you Dave :)

[mewzilla]

I understand Newsweek broke this story, with docs out of Denver, CO? If so, did the mag find the docs or were they ngiven to the mag? I notice that AP doesn't discuss the provenance of the docs in this article. Gee, wonder why? Lambert can't be found, and no provenance on the docs. Find out if these docs are legit, who wrote them up (which is still in question, I gather), and how the mag got a hold of them and i think the answers to those questions will tell us a lot. On a number of subjects.

[PeoplesRepublicOfWashington]

I'm amazed at the poor quality and apathy of reporting on this issue. It's clear that the Media Wing of the 'Rat Party wants nothing to do with the facts.

[shezza]

Well look at THIS Rassmann account from just a few weeks ago!

Wall Street Journal op-ed

John Kerry's courage and leadership saved my life.

While returning from a SEA LORDS operation along the Bay Hap River, a mine detonated under another swift boat. Machine-gun fire erupted from both banks of the river, and a second explosion followed moments later. The second blast blew me off John's swift boat, PCF-94, throwing me into the river. Fearing that the other boats would run me over, I swam to the bottom of the river and stayed there as long as I could hold my breath.

When I surfaced, all the swift boats had left, and I was alone taking fire from both banks. To avoid the incoming fire, I repeatedly swam under water as long as I could hold my breath, attempting to make it to the north bank of the river. I thought I would die right there. The odds were against me avoiding the incoming fire and, even if I made it out of the river, I thought I'd be captured and executed. Kerry must have seen me in the water (from 3 miles downstream??)and directed his driver, Del Sandusky, to turn the boat around. Kerry's boat ran up to me in the water, bow on, and I was able to climb up a cargo net to the lip of the deck. But, because I was nearly upside down, I couldn't make it over the edge of the deck. This left me hanging out in the open, a perfect target. (So he was already out of the water, had climbed by himself up the net to the boat -- in this version Kerry didn't reach his arm down into the water and the two LTs locked arms.)John, already wounded by the explosion that threw me off his boat, came out onto the bow, exposing himself to the fire directed at us from the jungle, and pulled me aboard. For his actions that day, I recommended John for the Silver Star, our country's third highest award for bravery under fire. I learned only this past January that the Navy awarded John the Bronze Star with Combat V for his valor.

[gimme1ibertee]

"I thought we were under fire, I believed we were under fire,"

I THOUGHT and I BELIEVED aren't good enough.
Those words hardly constitute a "we were definitely".

[Wolf_Lochert]

The local story should be referenced, as it seems closer to an un-spun account of an interview, than what the AP put together using it, with other matterial and spin added.

Hell, the AP can't even get his home town right.

Local newspaper accounts are usually the source of AP reports, as supplied by local newspapers that are AP members. The AP is nothing more or less than a co-op service of those member papers.

Another interesting question: Where is the PCF-94 now? Was it one of the boats abandoned to the North Vietnamese on 30 April 1975? Or one of those "rescued" by the South Vietnamese Navy and one maverick US Naval advisor to their riverine force, most of which were transferred to the naval forces of the Phillipines?

My bet is that nobody wants to golooking under that particular rock, knowing what it could lead to.

[Alamo-Girl]

Interesting question! Thanks for the ping!