Shot In The Dark: Musical Gunners

August 14, 2004

Musical Gunners

Captain Ed notes a problem with the timeline for one of John Kerry's most articulate supporters:

Bingo! Yachtzee! Alston received his serious wounds in that same exact battle that took Peck out of service. On January 29th, Alston was medevaced out to a hospital with head wounds and no records indicate that he ever returned to the unit. Kerry took command of PCF-94 the next day. Alston never served a day under Kerry's command. In fact, Kerry received a replacement, Fred Short, on 28 February as a replacement for Alston.

And in his speech at the Democrat convention, Alston's time with Kerry was the subject:

I know him from a small boat in Vietnam, where we fought and bled together, serving our country. There were six of us aboard PCF-94, a 50-foot, twin-engine craft known as a "Swift Boat." We all came from different walks of life, but all of us-including our skipper, John Kerry-volunteered for combat duty. And combat is what we got.

We usually patrolled the narrow waterways of the Mekong delta, flanked on both sides by thick jungle. As our crewmate Gene Thorson put it, we were a traveling bulls-eye. And we often came under sudden attack from the enemy, hidden in the shadows. Machine-gun fire, rocket-propelled grenades, it all came fast and furious, and Lieutenant Kerry had to make quick, life-or-death decisions for the entire boat.

It's seared in his memory. Seared.

Posted by Mitch at August 14, 2004 08:20 AM | TrackBack

Comments

This story on top of the Cambodia fib, cause me to think that the wheels are getting wobbly on the Kerry campaign. Just how many of these holes in his story can we have, before people start to question the rest of the stories he tells?

John Kerry has based his adult life on his ability to tell riveting stories. He started off, after his brief naval career, telling stories about atrocities or war crimes in Viet Nam. Another one was the "Christmas of 1968 in Cambodia" story.

I disagree with Gary Trudeau's present political stance, but in three cartoons from October 1971, he had nailed John Kerry as a self-promoting egotist. I don't see that anything changed in the intervening 33 years.

This Viet Nam theme in John Kerry's campaign only took off, due to Jim Rasmussen's parachuting in to the primary campaign from a flying saucer. After that, they had the idea to find the other Viet Nam veterans, including David Alston, to stand up and say good things about John Kerry and his service.

Jim Rasmussen is the prize in all this, as he was a participant in a Kerry medal, but he can't even tell you the same story twice (was he on John Kerry's boat or not?). Now we find out that David Alston wasn't on PCF-94 with John Kerry, despite his statements during the campaign. We can't help but notice that none of the other "band of brothers" has called anything that David Alston has said into question.

Has anyone checked out the other guys? How many of them are just "telling a good story" because it helps John Kerry?

This is bad stuff.

Jim Bender

http://anglo-dutch-wars.blogspot.com/

http://17th-centurynavwargaming.blogspot.com/

http://kentishknock.com/

http://anglodutchwarsblog.com/

http://dreadnought-cruisers.blogspot.com/

Posted by: Jim Bender at August 14, 2004 11:04 AM

I would never refer to Alston as "articulate".

Posted by: Jimboster at August 14, 2004 02:02 PM

Wait a sec, this was the guy on standing on the DNC podium, "We fought and bled together.."

And it turns out that they never even served on the same fargin' boat together??

Incredible.

Posted by: Gideon at August 16, 2004 12:37 AM

It may be that Alston was on Kerry's boat from March 5-6 until the Mar 13 mining ...

Still his speech about "taking it to Charlie" was a complete fabrication ...

Posted by: Jeff at August 26, 2004 11:55 AM