An angry dispute over a rescue in the river

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A number of the combat commanders, fellow officers and other men who served with Sen. John Kerry in Vietnam challenge his accounts of combat heroism in a new book, "Unfit for Command" (Regnery Publishing), by John E. O'Neill, who took over command of Swift Boat PCF 94 from Lt. Kerry, and Jerome R. Corsi, who has written extensively about the Vietnam War protest movement. This is the last of three excerpts that include comparisons of Mr. Kerry's earlier published accounts to recollections of others who served with him.

Last of three excerpts

John Kerry was involved in his final "combat" in Vietnam on March 13, 1969.

The public has seen it: The incident has been the subject of more than $50 million in paid political advertising.

The incident was featured before the Democratic presidential caucuses in Iowa, where Kerry met in tearful reunion with Jim Rassmann, the Special Forces lieutenant who he "rescued from the water."

Here is Kerry's account of the final episode of his four-month Vietnam cameo, for which he received his third Purple Heart and a Bronze Star:

A mine went off alongside Kerry's Swift Boat, PCF 94. Rassmann was blown into the water. Kerry was terribly wounded from the underwater mine.

Kerry, 25, turned his boat back into the fire zone and, bleeding heavily from his arm and side, reached into the water and pulled Rassmann to safety with enemy fire all around. Kerry then towed a sinking boat out of the action.

There is only one problem with this scenario involving five Swift Boats on the Bay Hap River, described in Douglas Brinkley's biography "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War" (William Morrow, 2004) and elsewhere: It is another gross exaggeration of what actually happened and, in several ways, a fraud perpetrated upon the Navy and the nation.