Editor’s note: This is the first of two stories detailing the history of Ames resident and Fort Dodge native Gene Thorson with Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry during the Vietnam War.

Ames’ older residents are generally glad to tell stories of their glory days, and Gene Thorson is no different: he doesn’t mind retelling his time spent on a swift boat in Vietnam, ferrying troops up the Mekong delta.

However, he’ll casually omit the fact he spent 18 months serving under this year’s leading Democratic presidential candidate.

Thorson, a 13-year Ames resident, spent much of his tour of duty in Vietnam under John Kerry, the Democratic challenger for the White House.

Although he doesn’t often mention that he personally knows Kerry, Thorson doesn’t hide his support for his presidential campaign. The front of his Kellogg Street home is plastered with nearly a dozen “Kerry for President” signs.

He also advertises with his car by showing off bright blue Kerry stickers on his 1996 Jeep Cherokee — which takes him to his job as a cement mason where he’s worked for 34 years.

Seeing his zeal, the Kerry campaign decided to use Thorson in Kerry’s Iowa rallies last fall. He stood onstage beside Kerry as a visible reminder that Kerry was the champion of rights for veterans and those in the Armed Forces.

“I feel sorry for guys in Iraq,” he often says as he stumps for Kerry. “The government is calling in a lot of Guard members. They never planned on going to war — they just wanted to pay the bills.”

The 60-year-old Thorson has been caught up in election-year hoopla, but he still looks at Kerry as an old war buddy, not someone who could be the next leader of the free world. Thorson calls him “Kerry” with the same fraternal tone in his voice he would use describing his other shipmates.

He carries an unusual amount of affection for a man with whom he has almost nothing in common.

Thorson grew up near Fort Dodge on a farm his father worked for nearly 40 years. His plans for life after high school graduation didn’t extend far beyond the farm.

As he neared graduation, however, global events were affecting the lives of everyone in America, including those in the rural Midwest.

America was being drawn deeper into Vietnam, and when the draft was activated, he saw classmates and friends sent across the Pacific.

Realizing the draft was inevitable, Thorson decided to act before he was acted upon.

“I was trying to finish high school, but the draft was sneaking up on me,” he said. “I decided to act first, so I signed up for the Navy [in 1965].”

His fate was signed and sealed. After a stint in South Carolina, he was soon shipped to Vietnam.

Upon arriving, Thorson was shown his new home for the next four years: a 50-foot American-made aluminum patrol craft, commonly called a “swift boat.” Originally created as a water taxi to serve offshore oil rigs, the boat had been adopted by the Navy and turned into a patrol vessel, armed only with a .50-caliber machine gun and an 81-millimeter mortar.

Those weapons would be used against the Viet Cong, whom he would encounter countless times during his patrols.

He was assigned to the dangerous river assaults in the Mekong delta. The strategy was to choke off the waterborne supply network from North Vietnam and Cambodia so “we could stop troop movement, ammunition supplies and food supplies for the Viet Cong,” he said.

Fate arrived when Thorson was introduced to the skipper of his swift boat.

He saluted his new officer, a 24-year-old lieutenant with a squarejaw who looked like he belonged in an Ivy League lecture hall, not dressed in army fatigues and dog tags.

Their new commander, John Forbes Kerry, commanded five men on his boat, and they could hardly have been more diverse in background, age (from 19 to 37), education or anything else, except their distance from their Yale-grad skipper’s affluence.

None of the other men on the boat were educated beyond high school. Thorson didn’t receive his GED until after he joined the Navy.

Kerry, on the other hand, spent most of his childhood in Europe while his father was stationed overseas in the Foreign Service. He attended boarding school in Switzerland before coming back to the United States and graduating with honors from Yale in 1965.

Despite the class conflict, Thorson said there was never a “him/us” mentality on the swift boat.

“He was just a normal guy, not some East Coast hot-shotter,” he said.

The 6-foot-4 Kerry and the 5-foot-8 Thorson spent a lot of time together during their tour of duty. While the crew was together, they completed 18 missions over 48 days. Many times, they would wake up before sunrise and go up and down the rivers for 17 hours a day, knowing the Viet Cong could strike at any time.

The most intense action came during 10 firefights in eight days, which Thorson called the “days of hell.”

“We were in a 50-foot long boat, moving at two miles an hour,” he said. “We were basically a sitting target for the Viet Cong and their AK-47s,” he said. “As soon as you entered the river, you had to be on the ready at all times.”

The endless hours of waiting for the enemy to strike made the days fade into a blur. But despite the nonstop stress, Thorson has one memory he’ll never forget.

Kerry, who was tired of being target practice for the Viet Cong, devised a plan that could go two ways: it would either keep the enemy at bay or get him court martialed, if he wasn’t killed first. He decided to throw away the rulebook and take his swift boat headfirst into the Viet Cong.

Thorson was apprehensive. He knew he was going home soon, but he didn’t know whether it would be on a return flight or in a body bag.

Tomorrow: The results of Kerry’s daring maneuver, and Kerry’s lengthy reunions with Thorson leading up to his Iowa caucus win.