"I saw real heroism there … both the patients who endured an awful lot - physically and psychologically - as well as the people who cared for us," he said of his time at the hospital. He said he spent eight months at a naval hospital in Philadelphia, where his right leg had to be amputated below the knee. Kerrey was evacuated to Japan before returning to the U.S., where he learned how bad his leg wounds were. By the end of the ordeal, Kerrey was nearly unconscious, but he continued to direct his team’s actions until they were all evacuated - even their enemy captors, who eventually provided critical intelligence for the allied effort. He said that a few of his men had been deployed before, so they knew what to do. Kerrey, keeping calm and in control, had his team find an extraction site for a helicopter rescue. With the help of his radioman, he then called for more fire support, which seriously confused the Viet Cong, who ended up in its devastating crossfire. So, he directed the rest of his team’s fire into the heart of the enemy camp. Despite heavy blood loss and pain, he knew he had to keep the mission moving.
Kerrey said he quickly applied his own tourniquet and tried to stand but couldn’t. The blast threw him backward onto jagged rocks. Almost immediately, a grenade landed by Kerrey’s feet and exploded, causing massive injuries to his right leg. Kerrey said the Viet Cong fighters threw some sort of explosive device at them, setting off a firefight. They had broken camp and were on the move, and they made contact with us." "The second sleeping group - we got there a bit too late. "They were sleeping in two different groups," Kerrey said of the enemy encampment. But just as they were nearing their goal, the enemy found them. Kerrey said they’d even taken off their boots to scale the slope more quietly. While the night was still dark, the group split into two - one team entered the island from the front, while Kerrey’s six-man team scaled a 350-foot cliff by hand from the back so they could end up above a ledge on which the enemy was located. In the early morning hours of March 14, 1969, Kerrey led his SEAL team on a mission to the island to surprise the enemy.
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