User:JamesMLane/Schachte section

''This is a sandbox for a possible version of the discussion of the Schachte allegations in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth article. Under the heading "Allegations and Evidence", subheading "First Purple Heart", the first several paragraphs, through and including the reference to Letson, discuss other evidence. The following would replace the rest of that section.''

On the night in question, Kerry's skimmer opened fire on suspected guerillas on the shore. During this encounter, Kerry suffered a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. Accounts differ over the crew aboard the skimmer and the source of Kerry's injury. No after-action report for this incident is known to exist.

SBVT's claims about the incident are based primarily on the account of retired Rear Admiral William Schachte, then a Lieutenant. Schachte has stated he was the senior officer on Kerry's skimmer on the night of Kerry's injury. Schachte claims that there was no hostile return fire and that Kerry was "nicked" by a fragment from an M-79 grenade launcher he fired himself. 

At the time of the incident, Schachte was the second-in-command of Coastal Division 14, where Kerry, newly arrived in the area, was training as a Swift boat captain. In the skimmer missions, a Swift boat would tow a smaller 15-foot boat (the skimmer) to the designated area. The skimmer would cut its engine and drift silently, while the crew looked for signs of movement. The target areas were not near villages. Therefore, explains Schachte, "We knew if anybody or anyone were around, they were enemy." Schachte states that he went on the skimmer in command of each of the missions, about nine in total, with one other officer and one enlisted man. Kerry volunteered to be the officer accompanying him on his last mission. According to Schachte, during the mission he thought he saw movement onshore. He opened fire, and Kerry followed suit. When their guns jammed, Kerry fired the grenade launcher. In an interview with the Boston Globe in April 2003, Schachte described the incident as a "firefight" and said Kerry "got hit", but not seriously. Now, however, Schachte states there was no hostile return fire. He claims that Kerry's injury occurred because he fired the grenade launcher too close to the boat, and was hit by a ricochet.

Kerry crewmates Bill Zaladonis and Patrick Runyon dispute Schachte's account. Zaladonis has stated that "Myself, Pat Runyon, and John Kerry, we were the only ones in the skimmer." Runyon added, "Me and Bill aren't the smartest, but we can count to three." Both Runyon and Zaladonis believe, but are not completely certain, that the skimmer received return hostile fire; Runyon commented, "It was the scariest night of my life." Runyon also stated that he is "100 percent certain" that no one on the boat fired a grenade launcher.  Zaladonis has noted that Schachte went on "a bunch of" other skimmer missions and speculated that Schachte might have inadvertently mixed up his dates. 

Schachte is not a member of SBVT and did not appear in the group's advertisements. He contributed to the Bush campaigns in 2000 and 2004.

SBVT member Larry Thurlow, in contending that there was no enemy fire, said that he based his statement on the account of Kerry crewmember Steve Gardner. However, Gardner himself has stated he was not aboard the skimmer that night. 

SBVT also points to the narration of a subsequent event in Tour of Duty (pp. 188-89). Brinkley opens the account of a four-day cruise by telling us how "Kerry &mdash;who had just turned 25 on December 11, 1968&mdash; was a fine leader of his men". He goes on to quote Kerry's reflections in his notebook: "A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky." SBVT argues that this journal entry shows that the incident could not have involved enemy fire. Others argue that Kerry was referring to ambushes, a common misfortune for Swift boats that Kerry had not yet suffered.