Word: swiftness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Every sailor who served under Lieutenant John Kerry on Swift boats PCF-44 and PCF-94 have gushed about his poise under enemy fire. They tell stories of his rescuing a Green Beret from drowning, killing a Viet Cong sniper, and saving 42 Vietnamese civilians from starvation. To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway they claim that in combat Kerry exemplified ?grace under pressure.? But PCF-44 Gunner?s Mate Stephen M. Gardner-in a long telephone interview from his home in Clover, South Carolina-has a starkly different memory. ?Kerry was chickenshit,? he insists. ?Whenever a firefight started he always pulled...
...Hatch, a boatswain?s mate who served under Kerry on PCF-44, proved particularly elusive. Eventually I located him in Niagra Falls, New York and he told me about his admiration for Chuck Berry guitar licks, rose tattoos and John Kerry. As my book went to press the only Swift crewmate I couldn?t locate was Gardner. A quick count in the index of Tour of Duty shows that Gardner?s name appears on a dozen different pages throughout my narrative. He also periodically appeared in Kerry?s war diaries. Still, my various inquiries to the U.S. Naval Historical Center...
...Navy. ?My dad was in the navy, so I wasn?t gonna be an army ?ground pounder,?? he recalled. ?I really liked boats and hunting. Shooting things.? He attended gunnery school at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Waukegan, Illinois and was then sent to Swift boat school at Coronado, California, the same place where Kerry trained in August-October 1968. From there-in late 1965-Gardner was sent off to Subic Bay in the Philippines where he helped load Swift boats onto an LST and headed to Vietnam...
...Over the next three years Gardner served as gunner on four different Swift boats, each with a different commanding officer. His least favorite was his last: Lieutenant (j.g.) John F. Kerry of PCF-44. When describing Kerry he unloads choice adjectives, ?opportunist? being his favorite. His most colorful phrase is claiming that all Kerry wanted to do was ?save his lily-white ass.? Up until now he has kept his resentment mostly to himself. ?I?ve told a few of my friends that he was an asshole,? Gardner says. ?But I?m not looking to make news...
...Gardner?s first bone of contention involves an incident that took place on the morning of December 29, 1968. PCF-44 was in a small canal just off the Co Chien River. They had been probing the waterway with another Swift boat on a minor Operation SEALORDS raid and on their way back had come under enemy fire. ?We went into a dangerous area that had numerous hooches and sampans,? Wasser recalled. ?The enemy was thick. Once we got in the canal we took a lot of small arms fire, followed by mortar. Our adrenaline was racing; we went right...