According to the Senator's military doctor, the wound for which John Kerry received his first Purple Heart was minor, and close to having been self-inflicted:

Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a mortar round at close range to some rocks on shore. The crewman thought that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar round when it struck the rocks.

That seemed to fit the injury which I treated.

What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry's arm. The metal fragment measured about 1 cm. in length and was about 2 or 3 mm in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from a rifle.

I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than 3 or 4 mm. It did not require probing to find it, did not require any anesthesia to remove it, and did not require any sutures to close the wound.

The wound was covered with a bandaid.

The wound I described here was inflicted by a piece of metal about 1.5cm wide by .3cm thick (by 15cm long), and penetrated 3 or 4 millimeters. I pulled the metal out myself, and didn't bother with a bandaid.

Where's my Purpleheart?

Posted by Russ at 11:45 PM, May 4, 2004 in Politics