IV.

The Vietnam War Period

A.

Tour of Duty

Despite Kerry’s misgivings about the U.S. role in Vietnam, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1966, before he graduated from Yale. Protests against the war were just beginning to grow. By the time Kerry finished his naval training, the U.S. role had escalated greatly.

As Kerry began the first of his two tours of duty with the Navy, his best friend from Yale, Richard Pershing, the grandson of World War I general Jack Pershing, was killed in combat in Vietnam. Kerry’s first tour of duty was a noncombat tour during which he was only briefly in Vietnam. He reported for duty in 1967 on the USS Gridley, a guided-missile frigate which arrived in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam in 1968.

Kerry saw intensive combat on his second tour of duty, starting in the fall of 1968. He volunteered to command a 15-m (50-ft) aluminum craft that was officially known as a Patrol Craft Fast (PCF) and commonly called a “swift boat.” The boats were used to patrol the canals and rivers of South Vietnam. With five crewmembers under his command, Kerry frequently engaged the enemy.

During four and a half months of combat, Kerry was awarded three Purple Hearts, all for relatively minor wounds. He won the Silver Star, a high commendation for gallantry, for his action on February 28, 1969, in which he leapt from his boat and killed an enemy fighter who was carrying a rocket launcher. He won the Bronze Star for rescuing a U.S. soldier who had gone overboard in a canal and was under enemy fire. See also Medals and Decorations.

Kerry was deeply affected by his experience in Vietnam. Five of his friends died in the war. Kerry also had concerns about whether the U.S. policy that enabled sailors to fire on people in so-called free-fire zones was resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians. Kerry had gone into military service with the memory of how U.S. forces were viewed as the liberating force in much of Europe, but he had become concerned that the U.S. military was not as welcome in Vietnam.

B.

Antiwar Activist

Kerry returned home in the spring of 1969 and became attracted to the antiwar movement. Released honorably from active duty in January 1970, Kerry briefly tried but failed to become the Democratic nominee for a U.S. House seat in Massachusetts. Kerry then took a more active antiwar role, becoming a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in early 1971. By April 1971 Kerry had become a public figure in the antiwar movement. On April 22 he testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, saying, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” He told the senators that U.S. soldiers had committed many atrocities, including some who had “personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads.” See also Anti-Vietnam War Movement.

Kerry’s charges that the U.S. military committed war crimes in Vietnam angered many Vietnam veterans. They also resented the fact that Kerry and other VVAW protesters threw away their battle medals and ribbons in a protest at the Capitol the next day. When it was later disclosed that Kerry had thrown away his battle ribbons but not his medals, some critics charged that he retained his medals because he wanted to use them to his political advantage in the future.

Soon after the protests, Kerry appeared on the television program Meet The Press, and said: “There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones.” He went on to say that those who designed the policy that allowed U.S. servicemen to shoot at anyone in a free-fire zone were “war criminals.” In 2004 Kerry appeared on the same news program and said: “I think some soldiers were angry at me for that, and I understand that and I regret that, because I love them. But the words were honest but on the other hand, they were a little bit over the top.” Critics from both the left and the right said this was another sign of political waffling on Kerry’s part.

Kerry’s appearance on the public stage had a dramatic impact on his life and career. Weeks after Kerry delivered his Senate testimony, he was asked on the television program 60 Minutes whether he wanted to be president. Kerry called it a “crazy question.” But even President Richard Nixon was noticing the young protester. In secretly recorded Oval Office tapes, Nixon said that Kerry was the “real star” of the Senate hearing. Nixon’s chief of staff H. R. “Bob” Haldeman agreed, saying Kerry was “a Kennedy-type guy. He looks like a Kennedy, and he, he talks exactly like a Kennedy.” On another occasion, Nixon told his counsel, Charles Colson, that Kerry was “sort of a phony.” Colson agreed, saying, “He’s politically ambitious and just looking for an issue.”

Kerry eventually left the leadership of the VVAW, which he believed had become too radical. Nixon, meanwhile, ran for reelection and told the nation that he had a plan to end the war. Kerry decided that he could have the most impact as a congressman, and he once again set out to win a seat in the U.S. House.