Five had never tasted combat. Kerrey himself, although in command, had arrived in Vietnam only five or six weeks before. In hostile territory, in the dark, with small numbers threatened by an unknown, unseen force, tension strings the nerves as taut as a piano wire. When gunfire erupts to break the heavy silence, the adrenaline surges like a crimson tidal wave. As retired Army Col. David Hackworth noted in a recent TV interview, speaking from years of combat experience that included Vietnam, those seven SEALs would be expected to remember seven different versions of their terrible encounter.
Violent confrontations do that to the human mind.
But the larger issue now, with the collage of differing memories and the fog of 32 years' passage, is whether Kerrey should be held to account for what may have been a war crime. I think not. The record is incomplete. Facts are in dispute. Disparate memories cannot reconcile those divergent facts.