Reply #11: Not only did Kerry volunteer, but he did so at the worst moment of the war [View All]

[markses]

Kerry's request for duty in Vietnam is dated FEBRUARY 10, 1968 - that is, at the height of the Tet Offensive. At that point, it looked like everything was going to hell - street fighting had been going on all over South Vietnam for the last week and a half, and the battle of Hue was at its murderous worst (although it would continue to get worse). It was generally thought that there would be some kind of large-scale attack on the Marine base at Khe Sanh, which had by then been jacked up to 5,000 Marines, all of whom were under steady artillery fire. Large scale street fighitng continued to go on in Saigon proper and environs (Cholon, Gia Dinh) through May, but in early February, it looked just awful. The uprising of the NLF in the Mekong Delta was also at its full height, though it would steadily decrease due to NLF losses during Tet.

To sign a request for service for Vietnam on February 10, 1968, you had to be pretty damn committed. Nobody knew how the clusterfuck would cash out then, but it certainly didn't look good.