The next morning, according to Letson, Kerry showed up at the Cam Ranh Bay medical unit asking for treatment. Letson said the wound was slight and that he removed a tiny shard of shrapnel with tweezers. He said Kerry reported being in a firefight with Viet Cong guerrillas.
But later, Letson said, he learned from some medical corpsmen that other crewmen had confided that there was no exchange of fire and that Kerry had accidentally wounded himself as he fired at the guerrillas.
Letson said he didn't know if the crewmen giving this account were in the boat with Kerry or on other boats. The crewmen "were just talking to my guys," Letson said. "We weren't prying into it. There was not a firefight -- that's what the guys related. They didn't remember any firing from shore. It's Kerry who made the issue of him being a war hero. That opens it up for some question."
In a June interview, Kerry described taking fire from the guerrillas but was unsure whether he was wounded by others or by himself. "I didn't see where it came from," he said.
The Kerry campaign has questioned Letson's role, noting that a medical account detailing Kerry's treatment is signed by a "J. Carreon" -- not Letson. But Letson insisted he was the one who treated Kerry. Carreon was a Filipino corpsman, a "hospitalman first class," not a doctor, Letson said, and routinely made entries on his behalf.
Kerry won the Purple Heart for the wound, but Letson said he did not deserve it because it was too slight and reportedly self-inflicted. Letson conceded in The Times interview that he made no effort then to officially question Kerry's account.
Navy rules during the Vietnam War governing Purple Hearts did not take into account a wound's severity -- and specified only that injuries had to be suffered "in action against an enemy."
Self-inflicted wounds were awarded if incurred "in the heat of battle, and not involving gross negligence." Kerry's critics insist his wound would not have qualified, but former Navy officials who worked in the service's awards branch at the time said such awards were routine.
A Times review of Navy injury reports and awards from that period in Kerry's Swift boat unit shows that many other Swift boat personnel won Purple Hearts for slight wounds of uncertain origin.
When Kerry reported the injury to his commander, Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, he only asked Hibbard to file an injury report, Kerry told The Times.
