Stephen Gardner

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One of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

April 13, 2004

From "John Kerry's Vietnam" by Andrea Stone in USA TODAY:

Not everyone agrees. Stephen Gardner, a gunner's mate on PCF-44, spoke out for the first time last month after hearing conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh question Kerry's war credentials. Gardner, who says "this country's in a world of trouble" if the Democrat is elected president, calls Kerry a "hesitant" commander who shunned danger.

Gardner, 56, claims Kerry retreated during a firefight under the pretense that he wanted to get Gardner medical attention. "It was a panic run," says Gardner, who calls his wound superficial. While he refuses to call Kerry a coward, he recalls "a guy who was protecting himself most of the time."

July 25, 2004

From "Vietnam etched Kerry's outlook" by Bill Lambrecht in St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Stephen Gardner, another Kerry critic, was the first in Kerry's crews to be wounded. Brinkley's "Tour of Duty" describes how Kerry rushed Gardner from a canal along the Co Chien river where the attack occurred to a makeshift Army hospital in Dong Tam and stayed with him while he was treated for an AK-47 bullet wound in the arm.

Despite Kerry's attentiveness, Gardner, contacted 36 years later at his home in South Carolina, had nothing good to say about his leader. Like many of Kerry's critics from the Vietnam era, Gardner's sentiments lie with Republicans. But Gardner asserted that Kerry often was indecisive or made bad decisions -- even on the day Gardner got shot, Dec. 29, 1968.

"I'm hit," he yelled to Kerry from the gunner's tub atop the Swift boat, where he operated .50-caliber machine guns. "I'm OK."

Gardner recalled further what happened: "It was a firefight, and I had a hole in my arm. I wasn't trying to be John Wayne or anything, but I put a bandanna around it and put my 50s back to work again. Kerry knew I was OK. But damn if he didn't spin the boat around right in the middle of the firefight and run out of the canal. When he did that, I couldn't shoot at the enemy anymore but they could damn well shoot at us. It's just by the grace of God we got out of it."

Whether Kerry jeopardized his vessel by a split-second decision is debatable. But Gardner and the rest of the crew survived the attack.

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This page was last modified 21:43, 15 April 2006 by dKosopedia user Allamakee Democrat. Based on work by dKosopedia user(s) Drew. Content is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.