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DAVID BALLINGRUDStill divisive after all these years, the Vietnam War plays role in the campaign of an ambivalent hero.
On Feb. 28, 1969, PCF-94, with Lt. j.g. John Forbes Kerry in charge, set out to insert a small force of South Vietnamese troops and a few U.S. explosives experts into the heavy jungle along the Dong Cung River in An Xuyen Province.
PCF stands for Patrol Craft Fast, and the 50-foot, heavily armed speedboats were called "Swifts" by their five- or six-man crews. Sprinting along the narrow rivers and canals of Vietnam was extremely dangerous duty. The shorelines were heavily overgrown and ambushes were common.
PCF-94 soon encountered small-arms fire that day, and Kerry put the boat's bow on the shoreline to allow the South Vietnamese troops ashore. A little farther up the river, a rocket attack suddenly blew out the vessel's port side windows.
Kerry ordered helmsman Del Sandusky to steer PCF-94 directly toward the point of ambush on the shoreline, where the crew spotted a "spider hole," a narrow sort of foxhole where the enemy Viet Cong often stashed food and other supplies.
"Standing in this particular hole, to the horror of the Swift crew, was a VC guerrilla holding a B-40 rocket launcher aimed right at them," writes Douglas Brinkley in his new book, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War. "With the grace of God he was more startled than they were."
The Viet Cong soldier fled. A bullet from an M-60 machine gun hit him, but he continued down a trail, rocket launcher in hand. Kerry grabbed an M-16 rifle, jumped off the boat and pursued him, followed by crewman Michael Medeiros.
"With my adrenaline racing, I started following him off the boat," Medeiros recalls in Brinkley's book. "So I was right behind him. . . . As the VC guerrilla got 20 or 30 meters down the path, just about in front of a lean-to, the (future) senator shot the guy. He had been standing on both feet with a loaded rocket launcher about to fire. He fell over dead."
"I don't have a second's question about that, nor does anybody who was with me," Kerry told the Boston Globe last year. "He was running away with a live B-40, and, I thought, poised to turn around and fire it."
From Jan. 30 to March 13, 1969, Kerry and the crew of the PCF-94 would conduct 18 missions in the Mekong Delta river system. In that time he would earn a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts to add to one he received earlier. For his actions on that day in February 1969, he would win the Silver.
Today, having won most of the Democratic primaries and caucuses held thus far, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry is the front-runner to challenge President George W. Bush in November. He and his supporters are burnishing an image of a decorated combat soldier with a conscience.
And it seems to be working. Should Kerry win the nomination, the resonance of his Vietnam service will likely be seen as a key factor for a campaign that stumbled at the start.
On Jan. 4 in Indianola, Iowa, with Kerry trailing Howard Dean in most state and national polls, the candidate got a big boost from a crowd of 250 who braved a blizzard to hear him speak at an American Legion post.
He asked the veterans in the group to stand for recognition and got a rousing response. "It signaled to me the number of veterans who are out there for us," Iowa campaign leader John Norris told reporters.
David Yepsen, political columnist for the Des Moines Register, said he thought Kerry got rolling earlier, at the Jefferson Jackson speech at the Des Moines Veterans Memorial Center last November. "There was a feeling he had to do something, and he changed his style," Yepsen said. "His speeches became shorter, angrier . . . and he began to work the veteran issues hard. I think a lot of Vietnam and Gulf War veterans think this is their time."
Attacking Bush that night, Kerry said: "It's not enough to lay a wreath at Arlington Cemetery while he cuts veterans' health care and 40,000 veterans are left on a hospital waiting list. There are tables of veterans here and they know the truth. What has George Bush given our veterans? A raw deal."
Apart from the Civil War, the Vietnam War was perhaps the most divisive in the nation's history, and Kerry's involvement in it was not a simple matter. In June 1966, as a graduating senior at Yale, he delivered his class oration and spoke out against U.S. policy in Southeast Asia.
"We have not really lost the desire to serve," he said, "we question the very roots of what we are serving."
Nonetheless, after graduation Kerry signed up with the U.S. Navy. Ensign Kerry's first posting was the USS Gridley, a guided-missile frigate which served in Vietnam but generally stayed offshore. Aboard ship, with time on his hands, he struggled to reconcile duty and honor.
"I have been thinking a lot about Vietnam and the reasoning of the uncommitted soldiers," he wrote to his parents. "How can one oppose the war and still fight it?"
Despite his misgivings, Kerry proved a gung-ho soldier, admired by his crew as tough and fair, and willing to take unusual risks. He volunteered for the Swift boats.
"You had to be a bit of a cowboy to want a Swift," said David Simons, a Gridley crewmate quoted in Brinkley's book. "It meant that you were willing to get shot up all the time."
Even a superior officer was taken aback by Kerry's exploits. Referring to the February 1969 incident, Division Commander George Elliott told the Boston Globe last year that he initially wondered if Kerry should be commended or disciplined. "When (Kerry) came back from the well-publicized action where he beached his boat in the middle of an ambush and chased a VC around a hootch and ended his life, I said, John, I don't know whether you should be court-martialed or given a medal, court-martialed for leaving your ship, your post.
"But I ended up writing it up for a Silver Star, which is well deserved, and I have no regrets or second thoughts at all about that." A Silver Star commends distinctive gallantry in action.
On March 13, 1969, Jim Rassmann, a U.S. Army Green Beret, was traveling in a group of Swifts down the Bay Hap River when one, the PCF-3, struck a mine and was immediately raked by gunfire from the shore. Everyone aboard was injured.
As Kerry's boat headed toward the damaged vessel, a second mine exploded nearby, throwing him against a bulkhead and injuring his arm. The explosion also tossed Rassmann out of a third vessel, the PCF-35. In the confusion and heavy gunfire from both sides of the battle, Rassmann began drifting down the river, where snipers saw him and tried to pick him off.
As Kerry sailed his vessel up to the PCF-3 to give help, someone noticed Rassmann, by this time a couple of hundred yards away, ducking bullets, and shouted man overboard. With enemy fire still coming from both sides of the river, Kerry and his crew raced to help.
"He came up to the bow of the boat and exposed himself to fierce fire," Rassmann said in an interview last week from his home in Florence, Ore. "With a wounded arm, he managed to pull me aboard. That is a quality of character that engenders a lot of loyalty."
Rassmann recommended that Kerry be recognized for his bravery, and Kerry was awarded the Bronze Star with Combat V.
After returning to the States, Rassmann became a lieutenant in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, retiring in 1989. He said he'd had no contact with Kerry over the years, "but I have followed his career."
Last month, when he heard that the Kerry campaign was struggling in Iowa, Rassmann called and offered to lend a hand, thinking he would be given a few small tasks or maybe work a phone bank. But when Kerry's aides heard Rassman's story, they asked him to fly to Iowa, where he soon found himself in front of television cameras in Des Moines, an unanticipated campaign asset.
Rassmann embraced Kerry, recounted the river rescue, and said, "So I figure I probably owe this man my life."
John Kerry came back from Vietnam a hero of a war he had come to despise.
Angered by the government's justifications of the bloody conflict, and troubled by the deaths of friends and the suffering of Vietnamese civilians, he joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and began speaking out against what he called a morally corrupt war.
In April 1971, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service . . . How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-R.I., thanked Kerry, then 27, for his testimony, adding that he hoped that Kerry "might one day be a colleague of ours in this body."
But Kerry also angered many vets when he tossed medals and ribbons on the steps of the Capitol as a form of protest. (Author Brinkley says Kerry actually returned only his ribbons; the medals belonged to veterans who could not make it to the D.C. march and gave them to Kerry to discard).
Rassmann said he was not put off by Kerry's vigorous opposition to the war when he returned home.
"That does not bother me. A lot of people had serious problems with the conduct of war and in particular with the Nixon administration. I was one of those people. But I was working for the sheriff's department in L.A. in those days, and one did not do those things."
Kerry, Rassmann said, "was not some long-haired protester. He was an intellectual, and the things he had to say made a lot of sense to a lot of people. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee thought so."
Not all Vietnam veterans are as enthusiastic. Writing in the Wall Street Journal last month, former U.S. Army Lt. Stephen Sherman applauded Kerry's bravery, but faulted him for his leadership role in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
"Many veterans believe these protests led to more American deaths, and to the enslavement of the people on whose behalf the protests were ostensibly being undertaken. I can understand my former comrade-in-arms (Rassmann) hugging the man who saved his life, but not the act of choosing him for president out of gratitude."
Should Kerry win the nomination, Democrats can be expected to contrast his Vietnam service with President Bush's record in the Air National Guard in the 1970s.
Bush spent most of his time in the Guard based near Houston, but in May 1972 he received a three-month assignment in Alabama so he could work on a political campaign of a family friend.
He was ordered to report for duty at the 187th Tactical Recon Unit in Montgomery, and there are conflicting reports as to whether he ever did so.
Retired Gen. William Turnipseed, a commander at the base, has said he never saw Bush appear for duty. Bush, however, says he remembers meeting Turnipseed and performing drills at the base. Bush received an honorable discharge in 1973.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe last week called Bush "AWOL" during his service with the Air National Guard, and indicated the party would make it an issue in the campaign.
In response, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan charged that the accusations "represent the worst of election-year politics. It is outrageous and baseless. The president fulfilled his duties. That's why he was honorably discharged."
Duke University political scientist Peter Feaver said the National Guard issue is unlikely to stick to Bush.
"It didn't get much traction as an issue in 2000, and it probably won't this year," he said. "The National Guard has often allowed people to be flexible with drill time, and that's what the Bush people are saying he did. There's no smoking gun there for the Democrats."
In any case, Bush would seem to be the man to beat for the veteran vote.
According to a recent poll of career military personnel by the Military Times, 57 percent of respondents said they voted Republican, 13 percent Democrat, and 18 percent independent. The rest declined to answer.
"A strong military record is an advantage to Kerry relative to Dean or (John) Edwards," said Feaver, an author who has written extensively on military-civilian issues. "But it doesn't put Kerry, or Wesley Clark, in a dominant position versus Bush."
What could hurt Bush among veterans, Feaver said, is the Republican record on veterans benefits. The Bush administration angered vets when it sought to cut access to Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals in its proposed fiscal 2004 budget. In addition, House Republicans proposed a budget that included $28-billion in cuts to veterans programs over 10 years.
To win in 2004, Feaver said, Kerry will need more than a strong military background.
"There's no way it's not a plus, but it's not a winner by itself, not a trump card. A multitude of factors tip a voter one way or the other. I don't think a good war record is decisive for a lot of people - some, but not many."
- Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this article.