Yes, he did. Tours in Vietnam are one year long. Kerry fenagled a way to get three purple hearts--almost anyone with three would be a cripple with serious scars but Kerry can't show you even a small one--and used an obscure regulation to cut his tour short at just under 90 days and leave.
I can read between the lines with Kerry having lots of experience with the Navy to pretty much know what that POS did. He was a Div O (Division Officer) on a destroyer after he was commissioned. This is a typical first duty assignment for an officer. It's not particularly interesting or self-promoting, it's a mundane job. Kerry didn't want that. He had political ambitions.
So, he was looking through a copy of
Link, the periodical publication at the time that listed all the billets (jobs) open in the Navy. He sees the one for Swift boats and a tour. He sees this as a way to get some heroic medals and such and make a name for himself he can use politically later. So, he applies and gets transferred.
He gets a boat and then sets out to get the medals.
You have to understand how awards like that are generated to know that Kerry gamed the system--repeatedly. Awards / medals start with a recommendation from an officer for that award. While it is frowned on, an officer can self-promote and put themselves in for one. Kerry did this with his. The next officer up would review this recommendation then approve or disapprove it. If approved it was forwarded up the chain. 95% of the time, from this point on it's just a bureaucratic function. In the 5% (give or take) the higher command might downgrade the award or disapprove it. These are rare but it happens.
Anyway, Kerry embellished the narrative and got his recommendations approved. He must have known about the three purple heart thing as well. Using that he cut his tour short and left. Given he wasn't physically injured where he couldn't command, a more selfless officer would have stayed for the full tour as that would be the right thing to do. But Kerry had political ambitions and was now at least on paper, a war hero.
Coming home, Kerry finds that war heroes are not the in thing they were a few years earlier. Instead, the anti-war hero is the politically popular thing. He shifts sides in that respect joining the VVAW etc., and becoming anti-war. When it becomes popular years later to be a war hero again, Kerry suddenly 'finds' the medals he tossed away supposedly in his anti-war hero years and puts them in his senate office. Now he becomes a war hero.
The guy is a typical, mendacious, narcissistic POS. He'd sell you in a second to get ahead. He has no values or morals.
