STILLWATER – Forget what the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush say. Jim Rassmann was there, and he is here today thanks to the heroism of John Kerry, he told local Democrats on Wednesday.

Rassmann, 56, a former Green Beret who served in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969, visited the Stillwater home of Jesse Wilson, a Korean War veteran, to campaign for the Democratic presidential candidate.

Joining Rassmann in Wilson’s home were four women whose sons and nephews are serving in Iraq or are on their way there, as well as a Korean War veteran and another Vietnam veteran. All are supporting Kerry.

Rassmann’s visit to Maine is part of a whirlwind of political activism that began when Kerry contacted him and asked for his help. Rassmann lives in Florence, Ore.

“I’m a Republican,” he said, a registered member of the GOP for 33 years, though he conceded he voted twice for Bill Clinton and in 2000 for Al Gore.

“The Republican Party left me behind long ago,” he said. “I switched to vote for John [Kerry] in the Democratic primary in Oregon last year.”

Republicans, Rassmann said, and the Bush administration in particular, have lost their way.

“They’ve just gone off the deep end,” he said, especially on the foreign policy front.

“This election’s going to send the world a very significant message,” he said.

Rassmann said he met Kerry in late February or early March 1969. A 1st lieutenant in the Special Forces, Rassmann commanded a group of Chinese mercenary fighters and five or six U.S. soldiers in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam.

Navy SEALs needed help in the Cau Mau peninsula, he said, and Rassmann volunteered his crew of about 30 Chinese.

“The swift boat people were our transportation,” he said, to and from the mission. Of the boat officers, “John Kerry stood out among them as a real leader,” he said.

Sitting at Wilson’s kitchen table with the mothers of soldiers in Iraq, Rassmann said Wednesday he would tell the story of how Kerry rescued him, but joked that he was sick of hearing himself tell it.

The boats drew fire as they traveled to the Cau Mau peninsula on more than one occasion.

“I lost one of my sergeants. I lost some of my Chinese,” he said.

On March 13, 1969, Kerry’s boat drew fire. The crew landed and searched the area, discovering some munitions and a large cache of rice. One of Rassmann’s Chinese fighters was blown to pieces by a booby trap.

Kerry’s crew began recovering the body, Rassmann said, when they were fired on again.

The men retreated on the swift boats, but a mine exploded near a boat to the left of Kerry’s vessel, Rassmann said, blowing the 51-foot boat “clean out of the water.”

Kerry’s machine gunner had his weapon shot out from him, and Rassmann remembered the man screaming for another gun.

“I was in the pilothouse with Kerry and his pilot,” he said, but Rassmann tried to get a weapon to the gunner.

Another explosion threw Kerry against the bulkhead and knocked Rassmann into the water. One boat ran over him, forcing him to dive to the bottom. When he surfaced, “I saw no boats anywhere.”

Rassmann was being shot at in the water, so he swam under the surface as long as he could. Surfacing, two boats were headed toward him. Kerry’s boat ran over him, forcing him to dive again.

Surfacing again, Rassmann was able to grab a net hanging off the bow, and held on.

“I was totally exposed and under fire,” he said, “and suddenly Kerry started running toward me,” Rassmann said.

“He reached under the bow and pulled me aboard,” Rassmann said. Kerry was taken away by helicopter with other wounded troops, “and I never saw him again.”