I hate to go down this path, because I do not like to disparage anyone’s military service, and it looks to me like Kerry served honorably and well.
But the idea that Bush knew he’d be out of harm’s way and Kerry knew he would be in harm’s way is just not supported by fact.
First, Kerry volunteered for the NAVY. Just like the National Guard, the Navy got more than its share of volunteers because volunteering for the Navy generally kept you out of harm’s way, whereas waiting to get drafted meant you could be an infantryman sleeping in the mud while the enemy shoots at you.
Second, at the time George Bush volunteered for TANG, the very unit he volunteered for was participating in operation “Palace Alert” (or Palace Watch) in Vietnam.
Third, no one knew at the time what the Guard would wind up doing. In the end, it turned out that the Guard largely stayed out of the war, but it didn’t have to be that way. In fact, there was much debate over the Guard’s role, and Bush could easily have been called up.
Fourth, after Bush got his wings he volunteered for Vietnam. He was turned down.
Fifth, flying F-102 fighters, even outside of combat, was hella dangerous. Bush was at more risk of being killed doing that than he was of being killed as a draftee sent to Vietnam. In fact, two of Bush’s squadron mates were killed in flying accidents.
From this cite, 27 F-102’s were lost to accidents in the first 90,000 hours of flight, for a loss rate of one aircraft for every 3,333 flight hours. These are accidental, mind you - not combat losses. The average guard pilot probably racks up around 2,000 hours before getting out. That’s pretty big risk (losing an airframe in a jet fighter usually means losing the pilot, because the vast majority of operational accidents are during takeoff and landing, and a botched landing that destroys the airframs is usually not survivable).
Notice also that the F-102 early on was about six times more dangerous than the F-15, three times more dangerous than the F-16, and three times more dangerous than the A-10. Those old Century-series fighters were all a real handful to fly, and everyone knew they were dangerous beasts.
So Bush had anywhere from a 1 in 10 chance of being killed during his guard tour to maybe one in three.
Now let’s look at the stats for Navy service. The Navy suffered 1,628 combat deaths during Vietnam out of about 47,000 total hostile deaths - the lowest total for any branch of the service. Since that was over a space of ten years, that’s about 1,600 casualties per year, out of a total of several hundred thousand active Navy personnel. And most of those casualties came later. Also, my guess is that most of the casualties came from SEALS, Medical Corpsmen, naval aviators, seabees, and (later) coastal and river patrol.
The fact is, if you had to join the military, being on a ship in the Navy was about the safest place you could be. At the time Kerrey enlisted, going into the Navy certainly did NOT mean that you were itching for combat.
Now, I’m not saying that Kerry was intentionally trying to avoid combat. And the fact that he volunteered for Swift Boat duty shows that he was not averse to risk. The point is that guessing the motivations of either of these men is more of an exercise in projecting your own biases than anything rooted in fact.
In fact, having been a young man myself who tried to enlist in the military (eyes were too bad), my guess is that neither man was aware of the relative risks, although both probably knew that their choice of service was likely to keep them out of the mud and gunfire. I think Bush went in to aviation because his Dad was a pilot and being a fighter pilot is cool. Kerry probably went into the Navy because John Kennedy, his hero (so he claims) was a Navy man and Kerry loved boats (still does). Both good, honorable reasons for joining the military. Kerry may even have volunteered for Swift Boats because they were the closest thing to Kennedy’s PT-109 (again, nothing wrong with that).
My point is that the assumption that one joined the Guard because he was a coward and the other joined the Navy because he was rarin’ for combat is nothing more than speculation, unsupported by any facts. By objective measure, at the time they both joined Bush was heading into a riskier job than Kerry. But avoiding being shot at is not the only reason young men wanted to avoid the draft. Young men think they’re invulnerable. For many, the motivation was to avoid having to march all day with a pack on your back and sleep in the muck while being shot at. Both the Guard and the Navy were a good way to avoid that fate.
And of course, it’s entirely possible that Kerry’s blood was boiling with the true stuff of heroes, and he wanted nothing more than to command an attack boat against the enemy. Just like it’s entirely possible that George Bush wanted to learn to be a pilot so he could go to Vietnam and experience combat like daddy did.
Absent clairvoyance, making sweeping judgements about the internal motivations of two 18 year old men 40 years ago is ridiculous.
