Kerry’s Purple Hearts
Friday, July 30th, 2004Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry insisted on being awarded his first Purple Heart in Vietnam even though his injury amounted to no more than a “fingernail scrape,” his commanding officer at the time now says.
Still, the former Navy man remembered that Kerry insisted on receiving a Purple Heart for the wound he said was incurred during a Dec. 3, 1968. Retired Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard tells the Boston Globe that he can still recall Kerry’s wound, and that “it resembled a scrape from a fingernail, People in the office were saying, ‘I don’t think we got any fire,’ and there is a guy holding a little piece of shrapnel in his palm.”
Kerry persisted in his quest for a war decoration for the scratch.
“I finally said, ‘OK, if that’s what happened … do whatever you want,’” Hibbard said. “After that, I don’t know what happened. Obviously, he got it, I don’t know how.”
Kerry was awarded two additional Purple Hearts for subsequent wounds that have also been described as minor. He then invoked a little-used regulation that entitled a triple Purple Heart winner to return to the United States.
Kerry’s Swift Boat crew
A breakdown of the Swift boat officers in the photo showing where they stand.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth contacted surviving members of this group to find out how many actually support John Kerry, and discovered that of 19 Swift boat skippers pictured other than Kerry, 11 consider him unfit, 4 are neutral, two have died, and 2 are working with the Kerry campaign. Four other officers were not present for the photo session; all oppose Kerry.
