The U.S.S. Gridley has its own website which in turn has a page dedicated to recollections of Kerry's service on the ship. Here's an excerpt:
More seriously, no one can remember John Kerry going ashore. I was part of the shore party that went to Monkey Mountain. We were taken in a screened in truck (to protect against grenades being tossed in) and made to unload our .45's. The driver said that he did not want us newbies to shoot anyone by accident.
Neither Commander Kelly nor LCDR Rueckert (Kerry's immediate boss) can recall approving a trip ashore for Ensign Kerry. The author uses remarks of David Simons IC2 as a lead in to the Danang section. I spoke to David and he has no personal knowledge of Kerry going ashore at all. He did talk to a researcher and made some generic remarks about Danang but had never discussed Danang with Kerry. He recalls arguing with the researcher because he tried to put the words "cowboy" in his mouth, which ended up in the book.
There is no mystery about the "gruesome site of a pile of dead VC." We saw no sign of anything like this. However, our escort to Monkey Mountain did tell us how the VC bodies were stacked up on the LZ's after the TET Offensive, which had been several months before. Ensign Kerry would have been told this story by members of the shore party.
If, indeed, he got to the pier, because he was in charge of the motor whaleboat, it certainly would not have been within his purview to wander Danang, eating dog meat and drinking beer in a bar (under arms). It also seems amazing that he had all these observations on Vietnam in such a brief visit.
When reading the accounts of these veterans I often get the feeling that they liked Kerry while he was in Vietnam but changed their minds about him after he began his political career. For a lot of them the dislike began when he was an anti-war activist. For others it came later when he began exaggerating his war stories in biographies and in statements before the Senate.
One gets the feeling that if Kerry had just been more up front about his service and less prone to exaggeration a lot of them wouldn't have have a problem with him at all.