Thurlow over his head

Newsweek uncovers the medal citation for Robert Lambert, the third man to recieve a Bronze Star the day John Kerry pulled Jim Rassman out of the water. Guess what's in the report (my emphasis):

NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the citation for Lambert’s Bronze Star from the National Personnel Records Center in St Louis under a Freedom of Information Act filing. This citation, like the others, says that following a mine explosion that wrecked one of the Swift Boats, the flotilla of five boats “came under small-arms and automatic weapons fire from the river banks.” Lambert won his Bronze Star for an action precisely paralleling Kerry’s: Lambert picked someone out of the river. In Lambert’s case, that someone was his skipper, Thurlow.

Thurlow had steered his Swift Boat to the aid of its companion damaged by the mine, personally leaping into the foundering craft to aid its badly wounded crew while Lambert “directed accurate suppressing fire at the enemy,” according to the citation. In the swirling confusion, Thurlow was then knocked overboard from the wrecked launch. Lambert “from an exposed position and with complete disregard for his personal safety” pulled Thurlow back on to his Swift Boat, the citation says. It concludes by commending Lambert’s “coolness, professionalism and courage under fire.”

Lambert’s surviving military records do not include the initial recommendation for this medal, so there is no way to know who filled the required role of witness to vouch for Lambert’s actions. But the citation contains such detail about the actions of both Thurlow and Lambert—actions that Kerry cannot have known since his launch was on the far side of the river—that it seems implausible Kerry could have written the recommendation.

Which would blow a hole in the claim that Kerry drove the reports that claimed there was gunfire.

And speaking of that, I watched Pat Buchanan on Hardball tonight say the fact that none of these man got shot was proof there was no gunfire that day from the enemy. Is he really suggesting that the any soldier who came home from Vietnam (and heck those in Iraq, too) without a bullet wound never faced enemy fire?