I was one of the officers in the picture of twenty Swiftees (standing on the far left). That picture was taken at Ton Sun Nuht Air Base on January 22, 1969 immediately following our meeting with General Abrams and Admiral Zumwalt.
The facts surrounding that meeting are as follows: the Paris peace talks were just beginning. Incredibly, almost two months had been wasted while the parties argued about the shape of the table. In September 1968 the Swifts began unauthorized, but regular, incursions into the rivers in the Ca Mau Peninsula. Most of those Swifts at the time were out of Coastal Division 11 in Anthoi, as were all the guys in the photograph. The Swifts out of Anthoi were taking some of the highest casualties of any Navy units in Vietnam. Indeed, this did affect our morale but not our determination or fighting effectiveness. Back in Paris the delaying arguments now shifted to the legitimacy of the American contention that we controlled all of South Vietnam. Specifically, North Vietnamese negotiator Lee Duc Tho was confronting Henry Kissinger with the assertion that he could not legitimately negotiate on behalf of the South Vietnamese because the U.S. did not control all of South Vietnam -- specifically the Ca Mau Peninsula.
That was when we were summoned to Saigon to meet with the General and the Admiral. You can imagine the impression that left on us; twenty officers from the remotest reaches of Vietnam being flown up to Saigon to meet with the two highest military officers in Vietnam. We were escorted into their highly secure tactical command center and seated in front of them. Both men were highly complementary of the job we were doing in the rivers, and they were very sensitive to the risks we were taking and to our high casualty rate.
The two senior officers then addressed the main purpose for bringing us there. They described the difficulty the U.S. was having at the Paris peace talks, with particular emphasis upon the contention that the U.S. did not control the Ca Mau Peninsula. They said we were going to be the solution to that and therefore would have a strategic role to play in the outcome of the war. (Imagine how we felt at this point). The plan was to send us into those rivers in the Ca Mau Peninsula with even more frequency and eventually establish a permanent presence in the Cua Lon River, which later became known as Operation Seafloat. Our river incursions would be named Operation Sealords and they would be persistant and unceasing. To make sure that the whole world knew what we were doing, and particularly Lee Duc Tho in Paris, MACV would place on our boats, on every river run, reporters and photographers from every news media they could muster to make sure that every night on the 6:00 o'clock news, and in every newspaper and magazine around the world every day, people would read about Swift boats running those rivers at will and controlling all of the Ca Mau Peninsula. On that day, out of 500,000 troops in Vietnam, we twenty officers felt that we had been chosen to lead a momentous effort to change the very conduct of the war. Our sense of pride and commitment was overwhelming.
And we went back and we did it. We went back to Anthoi and began an unrelenting assault on those rivers, and with us were some of the most intrepid news people and journalists in the world. Sure enough, our exploits were reported all over the world and soon the delegates in Paris began negotiating the substance of peace. The pride you see in all of us in that picture is a reflection of the honor we felt for having been chosen for such a strategically important job. Every one of us was given a copy of that picture and to this day I am sure it is the one memento from our service that we cherish the most.
You can imagine the bond this created among us, A true band of brothers. In the months that followed we took terrible casualties which bound us even closer. Extraordinary heroism became routine, mostly unheralded because it was so commonplace.
Very soon after this operation began, John Kerry went home and began his atrocious betrayal of all of us by attempting to rally the American public against all we were trying to do. He went in front of Congress and accused us of unspeakable crimes, and in one final act of disrespect for himself, threw away his own heroism by throwing his medals over the White House gate. Most of us in that picture, and most of the other Swifties, have borne the pain of that betrayal all these years.
And now John seeks the ultimate irony, to become the Commander in Chief.
Honor is a gift which, once betrayed, is lost forever. It is our turn to speak now and we will be heard.
-- Robert Elder
