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Has anyone considered that Thurlow got his award because of the same report that Kerry filed to get his own? Actually, according to my husband who was in Vietnam, it was not uncommon for Officers to write up reports for each other and puff things up to get awards. Max Clelland's injury was apparently not combat related either. Kerry is probably not alone in getting awards that should not have been given if the truth had been known. But Kerry then used his awards to get out early and go home to slime the guys who were left behind. JMHO

I have and this is one of the points that O'Neill has tried to bring out when he's been able to talk.

By the time these awards are usually handed out, commands have changed, units have changed, you're probably at a different base. Thurlow could have easily thought this particular award was from a different encounter and that dates/locale had been confused.

you have it exactly right here:

Has anyone considered that Thurlow got his award because of the same report that Kerry filed to get his own?

Thurlow didn't know what Kerry was doing behind his back & that's exactly what he & they have all said is at the heart of this matter!

Note the Compost is directed to this particular record and given misleading they spin they to propogate with this article rather than any acknowledgment that Alston has admitted he wasn't there for these same incidents as he led folks to believe when he appeared on ABC and the DemoncRAT National Convention.

Has anyone considered that Thurlow got his award because of the same report that Kerry filed to get his own? Actually, according to my husband who was in Vietnam, it was not uncommon for Officers to write up reports for each other and puff things up to get awards.

In WWII bomber crews, if I am informed correctly, it was common for several plane crews to claim a single "kill" (downed enemy plane) in after-action debriefings. Often the totals would not add up in the sense that there would have only been a total of X kills noticed by a squadron altogether, but individual claims totaled X + Y kills, where Y was the excess or overlap in which two or more crews claimed single kills. This would be an example of competitive claims rather than cooperative claims; the entire process might work differently for the Navy during Vietnam than for the AAF during WWII. However, there seems to be a definite potential for at least some confusion either way in many such wartime situations. In WWII, the confusion was recognized and apparently some kind of review system was in place to help sort out conflicting claims (although no doubt with less than total success).