Hoffmann, a decorated Korean War veteran whom Navy officials chose to carry out that strategy, has not forgiven Kerry for questioning Sealords' results.
"He never saw the big picture," Hoffmann, 78, said during an interview at his Virginia home. "The key concept was to take over the rivers and work up to the Cambodian border. Well, we did that."
Plucked off a destroyer to head the Navy's effort to slash Vietcong supply routes, Capt. Hoffmann demanded initiative and obedience. A distant figure known by his code name, Latch, he popped in on missions, standing watch on deck with a .45 on his hip and a cigar clenched in his teeth. He gave officers authority to fire at will, and demanded body counts to prove their success. Favored lieutenants were cheered on with terse "Bravo Zulu" messages that signified "Well done." Sometimes Hoffmann added: "Good shooting."
Hoffman commanded more than 100 Swift boats, also called PCFs, for "patrol craft fast," as part of the Sealords mission. The boats advanced inland at a high cost. Several were sunk by rocket blasts, and, by the war's end, 51 men had died out of the nearly 3,000 officers and enlisted personnel in the "brown water navy."
As the boats pushed deep into Mekong waterways, only the dense southern Ca Mau Peninsula -- where Kerry would spend most of his war -- remained impenetrable. There, Hoffmann dispatched Swift boats carrying special forces and mercenaries on harassing coastal sweeps similar to "Jeb Stuart's civil war raids. There was never any real effort to take territory. We kept them off-balance," Hoffmann said.
Even before he had his first boat command, Kerry sailed off on a "dangerous mission" that led to his first wound -- and to skeptical murmurs. Patrolling north of Cam Ranh Bay in a small skimmer on the night of Dec. 2, Kerry and two crewmen fired on Vietcong guerrillas massed on a beach. Amid the din, he felt a sting in his forearm.
"I didn't see where it came from," Kerry said. Radarman Jim Wasser, who patrolled that night in another boat and who later sailed with Kerry, recalled hearing a radio message that "someone had a slight wound."
The next day, the base medical officer used tweezers to remove a shrapnel shard from Kerry's arm. According to the former medic, retired Dr. Louis Letson, Kerry said he had been "under hostile fire." But corpsmen heard from other crewmen that there was no return volley, said Letson, now among Hoffmann's anti-Kerry faction.
