U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (L) talks with Vo Ban Tam, a former Viet Cong guerrilla who took part in the attack on Kerry’s Swift boat on Feb. 28, 1969, in Vietnam. Photo from
CA MU,
Vietnam, -- Days before
departing as secretary of state, John
Kerry visited the spot where he
killed a Vietnamese soldier almost 50 years ago when his Swift boat was
attacked by the Viet Cong.
It was Kerry's fourth visit to Vietnam in his role with the U.S. State
Department.
On Saturday, Kerry, 73, met with Vo Ban Tam, a 70-year-old
veteran who helped ambush the secretary's Swift boat on Feb. 28, 1969, during
the Vietnam War. Ban Tam explained that he knew the man Kerry killed, a
24-year-old friend and fellow soldier, Ba Thanh.
"Today I met Vo Ban Tam, a former VC enemy who farms shrimp
and crab on the same #Mekong river we once fought over," Kerry tweeted.
Until then, Kerry didn't know the name of the soldier.
They shook hands and Kerry give him one of his commemorative
Challenge Coins.
"I'm glad we're both alive," Kerry told him.
Ban Tam told Kerry the Viet Cong could hear the Swift boats from
3,000 feet away.
"We were guerrillas," he said through a translator. "We were never where you were
shooting."
Kerry was a young U.S. Navy officer at the time and the battle
in the Mekong river earned him a Silver Star. Kerry also was awarded the Bronze
Star and three Purple Hearts while serving in Vietnam.
Kerry tweeted: "Very powerful that veterans from both sides
of the war can now be friends & work towards same goal of strengthening
U.S.-#Vietnam relations."
"It's a wonderful sense, that after all the horror we went
through, we now like each other," said David Thorne, Kerry's boyhood
friend, brother-in-law and adviser. "It's a small miracle that we have
found a way back, to reconciliation."
Kerry, who leaves as secretary of state when Donald Trump becomes president on Friday, says he
will return to Vietnam.
Kerry ran for president in 2004 and served as a U.S. senator in
Massachusetts from 1985 until 2013.
During his presidential campaign, a number of Vietnam veterans
who had served on Swift boats formed an organization with the intent of discrediting
his military record and attacking his subsequent antiwar activities as a member
of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. As a consequence, swiftboating became a
term used to describe an unfair or untrue political attack.
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