Robert A. Cook, PE said:
"All offshore. Does being on leave count?" Hmm...Where is the confusion?...
Navies do their jobs on the water. The theater of war included the Gulf of Tonkin. One might reasonably wonder how much in harm's way the US Navy was during the VietNam war but then one might wonder how much in harm's way I was while in country. Who makes the decisions and how they make them with regard to campaign inclusion I don't know. But I believe that ships in the Gulf qualified.
Just pointing out that the Gridley wasn't "involved" in the Tet offensive nor the fighting (inshore and on interdiction duty offshore) that the river boats were directly involved in.
Sure.
Sea-lawyer it ("left for Vietnam vice "arrived in theater" adds a few days to the supposed tour of duty. "Left for home" adds a few more days.
Sure, the Gridley did its duty offshore. Somebody had to. Great. Fantastic. I'm glad they did. Realistically, does "1 day" really off-shore mean you really earned a campaign medal?
OK, so it's "legal" that that he qualified for a service star om his ribbon for sitting off-shore drinking coffee and scraping paint while others fought in Tet. There is a Tet campaign recognition. There NEEDS to be one!
But think about it. Isn't it more revealing that Kerry is so deluded that HE THINKS he earned a campaign star by being "off-shore 1 day" ..... Then, abuses his power over the Pentagon to get HSI record OFFICIALLY changed 30 years later to get "his" star?
Remember, Kerry ignored letters warning HIM about slack airport security IN BOSTON BEFORE 9/11... But Kerry ignored those letters. Was he too busy polishing his shrine?
But, WHY IS KERRY SO DESPERATE TO GET his old record changed in the year 2000?
So, 30 YEARS LATER, why go to the DOD and tell THEM to re-write your ancient service history so "you" can add 4 stars to ribbons in a shrine in his Senate office building??
Do "you" want this obsessive, compulsive, self-worshipping, self-centered man to have the key to nuclear bombs?
I was on a destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin for 6 months in 68-69. It was considered to be in the war zone and we qualified for combat pay and earned the Vietnam Service Medal while rarely being in sight of land.
I also recall that in the month we left, we spent a few days doing shore bombardment. There was something about qualifying for combat pay by either being in the 'zone' for the entire month of being in combat for part of the month. Never understood the full details of that.