John Kerry has visited the place in the Mekong Delta where he was ambushed during the Vietnam War.
The outgoing secretary of state and former Navy lieutenant met a 70-year-old former member of the Viet Cong, who remembers the 1969 attack.
John Kerry and his former enemy, Vo Ban Tam, warmly shook hands.
The secretary of state, who is in Vietnam as part of his last trip before leaving office, won a medal for bravery for his actions but became an anti-war campaigner after returning home.
John Kerry told Vo Ban Tam he was glad they were both alive.
Vo Ban Tam, now a shrimp farmer, said he knew a man whom John Kerry shot and killed and remembered the plan of attack when they first spotted the US patrol boat.
Image source Flickr
The Viet Cong unit had a rocket launcher and was shooting at the US fighters to try to steer them into its range.
However, John Kerry took a bold move by leaping ashore to pursue his assailants, and shot dead the rocket launcher’s operator.
John Kerry, then aged 26, was credited with saving his crew and was awarded the US military’s Silver Star for bravery.
Vo Ban Tam named the dead fighter as Ba Thanh and said he was 24 years old.
“He was a good soldier,” he told John Kerry, speaking through an interpreter.
John Kerry never knew the name or age of the man he shot.
When he unsuccessfully ran for president in 2004, John Kerry faced critics who claimed he shot a teenager.
One of John Kerry’s aides told the Washington Post that the former military man had been searching Google Maps for the site of the ambush. On January 12, he was said to have woken, jetlagged, in the middle of the night in his Hanoi hotel and called one of his old crew members to rack his brains.
John Kerry said returning to the scene was weird and a little surreal.
The secretary of state is visiting Vietnam as the first stop on his last foreign trip before stepping aside when the Trump administration takes power on January 20.
It is John Kerry’s fourth visit to Vietnam as Washington’s top diplomat.
Working under President Barack Obama, John Kerry is known for taking a specific interest in improving relations between the US and Vietnam.
He was awarded other honors for his service in Vietnam, including three Purple Hearts for being wounded in action, but he became a prominent anti-war activist after returning to the US in 1969.
According to AFP, John Kerry told reporters on January 14: “It impressed on me the notion that you really need to analyze and understand what lies underneath the slogans.”
Si Merritt “Si” Robertson is Duck Commander Phil’s younger brother, best friend, and partner in crime.
Born on April 27, 1948, Si Robertson has a very specific job at the Duck Commander workshop, fashioning the reeds that are inserted in every patented duck call. It’s a pretty easy job, made needlessly difficult by the fact that Si Robertson can never seem to stay on task.
A Vietnam War veteran, Uncle Si Robertson often shares his war stories with the guys in reality show Duck Dynasty
A Vietnam War veteran, Uncle Si Robertson often shares his war stories with the guys in reality show Duck Dynasty, which usually gets the crew behind schedule, much to his nephew Willie’s dismay.
Si Robertson’s most famous story is that while serving overseas, his mother sent him a blue mug. Thirty years later it’s still hanging from his back pocket and he continues to only drink from this cup, every day.
Uncle Si is married to Christine for many many years and they have together two children: a daughter, Trasa Cobern Robertson, and a son, Scott Robertson. Christine, Trasa and Scott are not featured in the reality show.
Oregon authorities are investigating how farmer Terry Vance Garner was devoured by his pigs in Coos County.
Terry Vance Garner, 69, went to feed his animals last Wednesday on his farm by the coast, but never returned.
His dentures and pieces of his body were found by a family member in the pig enclosure, but the rest of his remains had been consumed.
The Coos County district attorney’s office said that one of the animals had previously bitten Terry Vance Garner.
The animals are estimated by the authorities to each weigh about 700 lb (320kg).
Investigators say it is possible that the hogs knocked Terry Vance Garner over before killing and eating him.
But they have not ruled out the possibility that the farmer could have collapsed from a medical emergency, such as a heart attack.
A pathologist was unable to determine the cause of Terry Vance Garner’s death and his remains have been sent to the University of Oregon to be analyzed by a forensic anthropologist.
Terry Vance Garner’s older brother, Michael, described him as a “good-hearted guy”.
He said his brother had raised several large adult sows and a boar called Teddy, and they would sell their piglets to local children.
“Those animals were his life,” Michael Garner, 75, told the Register-Guard newspaper.
“He had all kinds of birds, and turkeys that ran all over the place. Everybody knew him.”
Terry Vance Garner was a Vietnam war veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to his brother, and the farm had been a “life-saver” for him.
Michael Garner said one of the hogs had bitten his brother last year, after he had accidentally stepped on a piglet.
“He said he was going to kill it, but when I asked him about it later, he said he had changed his mind,” he told the Register-Guard.
Coos County District Attorney Paul Frasier told the local newspaper: “For all we know, it was a horrific accident, but it’s so doggone weird that we have to look at all possibilities.”
Paul Frasier added that he had not intended to release details about the case, but changed his mind after word spread about the incident.
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