Word: gardner
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Gardner was born on January 3, 1948 in Portsmouth, Ohio. His family moved to the Lake Erie shore town of Port Clinton, Ohio when he was seven or eight years old. Shortly after his seventeenth birthday he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. ?My dad was in the navy, so I wasn?t gonna be an army ?ground pounder,?? he recalled. ?I really liked boats and hunting. Shooting things.? He attended gunnery school at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Waukegan, Illinois and was then sent to Swift boat school at Coronado, California, the same place where Kerry trained...
...Over the next three years Gardner served as gunner on four different Swift boats, each with a different commanding officer. His least favorite was his last: Lieutenant (j.g.) John F. Kerry of PCF-44. When describing Kerry he unloads choice adjectives, ?opportunist? being his favorite. His most colorful phrase is claiming that all Kerry wanted to do was ?save his lily-white ass.? Up until now he has kept his resentment mostly to himself. ?I?ve told a few of my friends that he was an asshole,? Gardner says. ?But I?m not looking to make news...
...remember combat exactly the same way so Kerry has been extremely lucky that 9 out of his 10 crewmen have almost identical stories about his valor during various firefights and skirmishes. But memories can vary from person to person; Gardner insists that the Kerry he knew in Vietnam was a singularly un-heroic figure. He dismisses the glowing eyewitness accounts of his crewmates Jim Wasser (Radarman), Bill Zaladonis (Petty Officer), Drew Whitlow (Boatswain?s Mate) and Stephen Hatch (Boatswain?s Mate) as bunk. ?Kerry sat some of them down and convinced them to buy into his side of what happened...
...Gardner?s first bone of contention involves an incident that took place on the morning of December 29, 1968. PCF-44 was in a small canal just off the Co Chien River. They had been probing the waterway with another Swift boat on a minor Operation SEALORDS raid and on their way back had come under enemy fire. ?We went into a dangerous area that had numerous hooches and sampans,? Wasser recalled. ?The enemy was thick. Once we got in the canal we took a lot of small arms fire, followed by mortar. Our adrenaline was racing; we went right...
...recounted in Tour of Duty by Kerry, Gardner had shouted: ?There?s somebody running over there?He?s got a gun?on the port side, on the port side!? PCF-44?s crew had been firing at thatched huts on their way out of the canal, and the reports of their own guns had muffled those of the shots being fired at them. Suddenly, Gardner shrieked, ?I?m hit,? and stopped firing for a moment. Before Kerry could ask his condition, Gardner shouted from his post: ?I?ll be okay,? and went back to firing...