Two injuries – a small bruise on his right arm and a minor injury to his buttocks – won Kerry his Third Purple Heart and a trip home. However, the vets say, the wound to his buttocks was self-inflicted and should never have received Purple Heart consideration.
While Kerry claims the injury came from shrapnel from an underwater mine, Larry Thurlow, an officer on shore with Kerry that day, insists the wound was the result of Kerry's decision to throw a concussion grenade into a rice pile. The "shrapnel," he says, was actually rice pellets.
As further evidence, the vets say, Kerry himself reflected in his own journal that his buttocks' wound came, not from a mine but, rather, from a grenade tossed into a rice cache.
Sworn statements of those present say there was no hostile fire involved in this incident for which Kerry received his third Purple Heart and the coveted Bronze Star.
"The conclusion is inescapable: that Kerry lied by reporting to the Navy that he had been wounded by shrapnel in his backside from an enemy mine when in reality he negligently wounded himself and then lied about the wound in order to secure a third Purple Heart and a quick trip home," reads the letter.
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He actively sought to keep his name out of the lottery. That's dodging, or at the very least trying to dodge, the war. 
