On Feb 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of PCF-23, one of three Swift boats - including Kerry's PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz's PCF-43 - that carried Vietnamese Regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep of the area. Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no exception. The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush, firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream and putting...