Now about that purple heart...

All the fuss about John Kerry's Purple Heart decorations (perhaps if Dick Cheney had one, we wouldn't be having to hear about this) reminded me of a conversation I had just about the same time Sen. Kerry was getting his decorations. I encountered an acquaintance of mine, a Marine Sergeant, somewhere in Yokohama. I think it was at the New Zebra Club, but, after all, it was a long time ago. We had worked together sometime earlier, and I had gone on to a post in Yokohama, while he had continued on at the detachment in Yokosuka.
When we ran into each other (at the New Zebra Club, I'm pretty sure), he was wearing a leg cast, and sported crutches. Naturally, I asked what had happened.
This is the story: ...I went TDY to DaNang with two of the other Marines in the detachment for sixty days. We were assigned the night shift in the Radio Shack. We pretty much ignored the nightly mortar shelling because nobody seemed to care much about it one way or the other. Last month, a round hit the roof of the shack. A chunk of cement (from the roof) hit my foot, and broke my toe.
I said I was sorry to hear it.
He said: Hey, I really got lucky. Think about it - a Purple Heart, thirty days recuperation leave, and ten points toward my next promotion!
I said I thought he was pretty lucky.
He agreed.
My point, if I have one, is that in a conflict, people view things in a different way than in peacetime, or in civilian life. At that time, in that place, Vietnam was a place where you went to a.) Make More Money. b.) Get A Promotion. c.) Re-Enlist With A Double Re-Up Bonus. d.) Some Or All Of The Above. The grander, more abstract, idea that we were invading, occupying, and pretty much destroying a foreign country in order to protect oil companies' interests in the South China Sea (see Domino Theory), wasn't generally given much thought. Neither was the situation of the Vietnamese people, who had been thoroughly dehumanized, as is required by the necessities of war, to allow one to kill without remorse or even much thought. Where in WWII the enemy were called Japs, Nips, Krauts, Nasties, etc., in Vietnam they were called Charlie, or VeeCee, or by a number of more derogatory terms. Just as today, the Iraqis are referred to by words that place them outside the pale. That's why the troops in Vietnam referrred to everywhere else as "Back In The Real World". Vietnam didn't seem real. It was all just a bad dream.
But I digress.
Considering a.-d. above, what kind of reaction will a participant in combat have when he gets a boo-boo in course of same? Why, he's going to put in for a medal. It's the Way Things Are Done.
If John Kerry hadn't Played The Game properly, he would have been sneered at, and his ability to command anything or anyone would have been totally lost. He really had no choice but to work the system for whatever it would give him. I really doubt that he gave that any consideration though. It's a different time, and a different place, and a different existence. Though Bob Dole says he doesn't believe Sen. Kerry "bled for his country", I bet he will agree with that statement.
Those like the Swifties for Truth, who try to pretend that moral considerations and motivations were the same then as they are now, are either still in the morass of thirty five years ago, or they are being completely disingenuous (read, lying).