destroyed the sampans, and took off. During this encounter, Kerry suffered a wound from a small piece of shrapnel in the left arm above the elbow. Dr. Louis Letson, a member of the anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT), claimed to have treated Kerry for this wound, but the sick bay report is signed by medical corpsman J.C. Carreon. According to Letson's account and the sick bay report, shrapnel was removed and the wounded area was treated with bacitracin antibiotic and bandaged. Kerry returned to duty the next day on a regular Swift boat patrol. Kerry was later awarded his first Purple Heart for this injury. Kerry's opponents, including the SBVT, have contended that this wound was too minor to merit a Purple Heart. However, guidelines for a Purple Heart do not distinguish between degrees of injury; in addition, a 2004 review by the Navy inspector general concluded that Kerry's awards, including his first Purple Heart, were properly approved. Meeting with Zumwalt and Abrams At the time, the U.S. military command in Vietnam had an established policy of "free-fire zones": areas in which soldiers were to shoot anyone moving around after curfew, without first making sure that they were hostile. Such encounters could result in the deaths of innocent civilians. Kerry has stated that he never thought he or his crew were at fault: "There wasn't anybody in that area that didn't know you don't move at night, that you don't go out in a sampan on the rivers, and there's a curfew." Nevertheless, he soon concluded that the policy should be changed. On January 22, 1969, Kerry and several other officers had an unusual meeting in Saigon with Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the commander of U.S. Naval forces in Vietnam, and U.S. Army General Creighton Abrams, the overall commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Kerry and the other officers reported that the "free-fire" policy was alienating the Vietnamese and that the Swift boats' actions were not accomplishing their ostensible goal of interdicting Viet Cong supply lines. According to some who retell the story, Kerry and the other visiting officers' concerns were dismissed with what amounted to a pep talk. One of the other officers who participated later recalled, "We all looked at each other and thought, 'What is this crap?'" Kerry later said that the Saigon meeting left him "more depressed than when I came." Second Purple Heart