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2004-08-30 Home Front: Politix

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Posted by Dar 2004-08-30 3:06:57 PM|| || Front Page|| [2 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Is it just me or there a pattern emerging here?

Posted by Matt 2004-08-30 3:31:17 PM|| 2004-08-30 3:31:17 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 check out the letter Kerry wrote home while on the Gridley in Pearl Harbor(!):

"The world I'm a part of out there is so very different from anything you, I, or our close friends can imagine. It's fitted with primitive survival, with destruction of an endless dying seemingly pointless nature and forces one to grow up in a fast â no holds barred fashion. In the small time I have been gone, does it seem strange to say that I feel as though I have seen several years experience go by.... No matter [where] one is â no matter what job â you do not and cannot forget that you are at war and that the enemy is ever present"

RTWT, in this fisking LOL

Posted by Frank G 2004-08-30 3:56:37 PM|| 2004-08-30 3:56:37 PM|| Front Page Top

#3 Suddenly from the left, front of the boat came the noise of 11 Charlie-Cong whizbangs, trying to cut down the little Gridley.

Posted by Shipman 2004-08-30 4:10:29 PM|| 2004-08-30 4:10:29 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 The trip to Danang â GRIDLEY went into Danang for briefings before going to Northern SAR. This section is so full of hyperbole that the urge to giggle is almost uncontrollable. âThe panic and pressure onboard GRIDLEY, strapping on a .45, wondering if I would have to use it, B-52âs howling overheadâ. A B-52 over Danang would have been so high that only contrails would have been visible, cloud cover permitting...

More seriously, no one can remember John Kerry going ashore. I was part of the shore party that went to Monkey Mountain. We were taken in a screened in truck (to protect against grenades being tossed in) and made to unload our .45âs. The driver said that he did not want us newbies to shoot anyone by accident.

Neither Commander Kelly nor LCDR Rueckert (Kerryâs immediate boss) can recall approving a trip ashore for Ensign Kerry. The author uses remarks of David Simons IC2 as a lead in to the Danang section. I spoke to David and he has no personal knowledge of Kerry going ashore at all. He did talk to a researcher and made some generic remarks about Danang but had never discussed Danang with Kerry...

There is no mystery about the âgruesome site of a pile of dead VC.â We saw no sign of anything like this. However, our escort to Monkey Mountain did tell us how the VC bodies were stacked up on the LZâs after the TET Offensive, which had been several months before. Ensign Kerry would have been told this story by members of the shore party.

If, indeed, he got to the pier, because he was in charge of the motor whaleboat, it certainly would not have been within his purview to wander Danang, eating dog meat and drinking beer in a bar (under arms). It also seems amazing that he had all these observations on Vietnam in such a brief visit.

I remember going to Da Nang twice, the first time in late 1967 or very early 1968, before the Tet offensive. I can't recall ever eating dog meat anywhere in Vietnam, though I did consume some other unusual things. The Hmong, in Laos, used to raise dogs for meat, but no ethnic Vietnamese that I can recall did. I could be wrong, and I can't vouch for what the hillbillies ate...

Piles of bodies usually weren't left lying around. Even when they were fresh, they usually weren't out where visiting firemen and sailors would stumble over them. After an afternoon in the sun they're swollen and discolored and covered with flies, so they were disposed of as quickly as possible.

Da Nang was where Marines -- and Army supporting the Marines -- went for a couple days' relaxation. I believe a trip to Monkey Mountain was the ostensible purpose of my trip, but the main thing I remember is a very cross-eyed but reasonably priced hooker. (And "33" beer, with ice in it, but that applies to most places.)

B52s didn't buzz Da Nang. Usually you saw the contrails or heard the booms, hopefully far off in the distance. They flew in from out of town, then left. The only one I saw close up was when it made an emergency landing at Cam Ranh.

That's my last war story, I promise.

Posted by Fred 2004-08-30 4:26:45 PM|| 2004-08-30 4:26:45 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 but is it Kerry's last? Surely he can come up with some new material? LOL

USS Gridley's Kerry Page

Posted by Frank G 2004-08-30 4:48:14 PM|| 2004-08-30 4:48:14 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 "Is it just me or there a pattern emerging here?"

No, it's not just you. The pattern that is slowly becoming clearer (it started emerging a few weeks back, IMO) is of Kerry being a habitual bullshitter and teller of tall tales.

It's one thing to do that in a bar with your beer buddies; it's another thing entirely to base an entire presidential campaign on it.

What a drip.

Posted by Dave D. 2004-08-30 4:59:26 PM|| 2004-08-30 4:59:26 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 If his 4 month stint on a swift boat was supposed to be his sequal to PT109--going so far as to shoot some of the footage himself on Super-8 film--his time on the Gridley sounds more like his Mr. Roberts.

Posted by eLarson 2004-08-30 6:01:00 PM|| [http://larsonian.blogspot.com] 2004-08-30 6:01:00 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 Even my wife now gets a giggle at the film of Kerry, almost tripping over a coconut, with his M-16 dangling around like a toy pop gun. Obviuosly a fake piece of crap. It's hilarious, he looks so full of shit.

Fred, there a war stories and clarifications to the subject. I have a photo of myself in the RAF Woodbridge control tower with a mic as though I was talking to aircraft. It was funny to me and I made sure I used the old fashioned mic, the ATC guys didn't use it anymore, remember the type that had an inverted U hook on top. The guys told me I should use the one they used but it just didn't have the same look I was after. I needed the one you saw in the old movies. One of my most prised photos I have, and a complete fake. Never thought about a taking a movie though. Sheesh, that would have been a riot to me.

Posted by Lucky 2004-08-30 7:22:26 PM|| 2004-08-30 7:22:26 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 From the title, I first thought this was another damn crosspost from Scrappleface, but then I realized I was thinking of the CSS HUNLEY and not GRIDLEY. Never mind.

Posted by SteveS 2004-08-30 9:35:47 PM|| 2004-08-30 9:35:47 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 Even my wife now gets a giggle at the film of Kerry, almost tripping over a coconut, with his M-16 dangling around like a toy pop gun.

"Gilligan!!!!"

Posted by eLarson 2004-08-30 11:23:33 PM|| [http://larsonian.blogspot.com] 2004-08-30 11:23:33 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 eMan, exactly!

Shipman, The Little Gridley, putting itself between safty and harms way!

Posted by Lucky 2004-08-31 12:27:55 AM|| 2004-08-31 12:27:55 AM|| Front Page Top

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