The Washington Post gives a detailed account.
An examination of his record, supplemented by interviews with the candidate, his crewmates and some skeptics, found little to undermine Kerry's portrayal of his service.
But a group of Vietnam veterans, some of them partisans, portray him as an ambitious young officer who attempted to collect undeserved Purple Hearts for minor injuries and used those medals to cut short his tour. A military policy allowed those who received three Purple Hearts, regardless of the extent of their injuries, to leave Vietnam. Kerry could have requested to stay but did not.
So this is their argument? That he could have requested to stay after 3 Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star, but he didn't? Naturally they forget that their own horse in this race specifically declined to volunteer for service in Vietnam.
In combat, eight of nine of them say, he [Kerry] was daring and unflinching, never tentative. The ninth, Stephen M. Gardner, an avowed Bush supporter, recently told [historian Douglas] Brinkley: "Whenever a firefight started he always pulled up stakes and got the hell out of Dodge." Once, famously, Kerry -- in violation of regulations -- beached his boat and went after the enemy, chasing down and killing a Viet Cong guerrilla carrying a rocket launcher.
Doesn't sound like "getting out of Dodge" to me. Neither does the incident for which he received his Bronze Star: After being wounded, he turned his boat around into enemy fire and personally hauled a wounded Green Beret out of the river, saving his life at great risk to his own.
They are seriously nuts to continue to pursue any kind of battle with Kerry over military service. They're not going to win this one.
