Try this account, Josh:
"Kerry, who understood well the importance that the media placed on imagery, put an exclamation mark on [a 1971 anti-Vietnam protest] by lining up with veterans to return their medals to the military on April 23. Kerry said he suggested that veterans place their medals and ribbons on a table and return them. But he said other members of the antiwar veterans group wanted to throw the medals and ribbons over a fence in front of the Capitol, and Kerry went along with the idea. ? Some press reports say that Kerry 'threw his medals.' But Kerry has long maintained he threw his own ribbons but someone else's medals. In an interview, he said that he had previously met two veterans ? who had asked Kerry to return their medals to the military. Kerry said he stuffed them into his jacket. He said that when he prepared to throw his ribbons over the fence, he reached into his jacket and pulled out the medals from those two veterans. He said his own medals remained in safekeeping" (Boston Globe, June 17, 2003).
Hummm... I wonder if those people who asked him to "return their medals to the military" wanted to do so in that way.