Free Republic

John Kerry continues to play damage control on his decades-long contention he was on a secret mission in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968, as word comes the author of a positive account of his Vietnam duty is preparing a column to explain the candidate's suspect story. According to the Drudge Report, historian Doug Brinkley, author of "Tour of Duty," is writing a piece for the New Yorker saying it was actually January 1969 when Kerry was sent into Cambodia, not December 1968. Kerry spent four months in Vietnam as skipper of a SWIFT Boat before returning to the U.S. and...

I thought it might be useful to get some basics down from Brinkley's book; the people, the boats, the timelines. This time I was able to get a non-large print version of Tour of Duty, so I will be able to highlight the pages where the information is located. I'm starting with Chapter 10, since that concerns the events of Christmas Eve, 1968) Kerry's boat at Christmas 1968 was the PCF-44 (Page 209). Men on board the PCF-44 are as follows: Drew Whitlow (209), James Wasser, Radarman (213) also second in command (228); Stephen Hatch, Bosun's Mate (214), Stephen Gardner,...

Aformer member of John Kerry's swift-boat crew says the Democratic presidential candidate's account of spending Christmas 1968 in Cambodia is not true. Steve Gardner, who served on board PCF-44 under Kerry's command in December 1968, as well as part of January 1969, says that at the time, in the area in which Kerry and his crew were operating, it was not possible to take a swift boat to Cambodia. It was physically, totally, categorically, across-the-board impossible to get into the canal that went to Cambodia with a swift boat," says Gardner. "There were concrete pilings that were put in the...