With all the hullabaloo about John Kerry’s service in Vietnam and his medals, I thought I’d ask my uncle (Dad’s bro), who served with the Navy there as part of the UDT (Underwater Demolition Team), if he knew the presumptive Democratic nominee back then. He said he didn’t know him personally, but added what I thought were some interesting observations:
The people on the Swift Boats were a good crowd. Kerry didn’t happen to measure up to their standards. There were many people in Vietnam who were in non-dangerous jobs but wrote themselves up for medals. I called them “cowboys.” They were worthless. They would wear their bush hats and tote 45 pistols, etc.
One day when I was on a riverine boat in one of the canals of Vietnam, I lost my balance and fell against a bale of barbed wire. I put my hand out to break my fall. My hand got all cut up. Some guy said, “You can write yourself up for a Purple Heart!” I said something to the effect that the citation would read, “This man has been awarded the Purple Heart for being a complete idiot!”
I never got into the nasty fighting that some of the Marines, Army, and fellow Navy people did. Apparently, the Tet Offensive was not nice…
While I’m on the subject of my uncle, he also was on the Navy splashdown rescue team for Apollo 11. He is not in this photo…
…which I e-mailed to him and asked about. He explained what was going on there:
In the raft are astronauts Collins, Armstrong, and Aldrin. The 4th is the BIG (Biological Isolation Garment) swimmer. He handled getting the astronauts decontaminated from moon bugs. He was a UDT swimmer named Clancy Hattleberg. I was a safety swimmer. In case anyone fell off the raft into the water, I was to retrieve him. I am out of the picture off to the right. The other two swimmers are further away from the spacecraft in a raft. This was the last step of the rescue before the astronauts were raised to the helicopter.
The first thing we did before the astronauts opened the spacecraft door, was put on the flotation collar and attach the rafts.
The rest is hysteria…
I couldn’t resist the opportunity to brag…I remember when I was five-years-old and how proud my whole family was that “Uncle Wes” was part of this. His image was captured by Life magazine at that time, as the UDT pulled the astronauts from the capsule, but that photo is not available online, that I can find.
I also remember at the time when I was in kindergarten and I shared the story in “Show and Tell” with my class, which was written in large letters on the chalkboard. It began “Paul has a famous uncle. His name is Uncle Wesley.”
Etc!
